16. Jesus Is the Way to God: The Human Messiah Who Brings Us to God

Throughout this section, I have argued that Jesus is not Almighty God.

He is God’s Son. He is the Messiah. He is Lord. He is the one whom God anointed with the Holy Spirit and power. He is the one through whom God worked miracles, spoke His words, revealed His character, defeated death, and opened the way to eternal life. He is the human being whom God raised from the dead and exalted above every other human being.

For some Christians, however, one question may remain: If Jesus is not God, why is Jesus so central to Christianity?

Why does everything seem to depend upon him? Why does Jesus say, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6)?

I believe the answer is extraordinarily beautiful.

Jesus is not the ultimate destination of Christianity. Jesus is the Way to the destination. And the destination is God.

Jesus is the human Messiah, mediator, pioneer, firstborn, teacher, Savior, and Way through whom God brings His children home to Himself.

Understanding this does not diminish Jesus. It explains why he matters so profoundly.

Jesus Brings Us to God

One of the clearest descriptions of Jesus’ mission appears in 1 Peter:

“Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18).

Notice the direction.

Christ does not ultimately bring humanity to himself. Christ brings humanity to God.

That is his mission.

Sin separates humanity from God. Jesus gives himself for humanity so that this alienation can end. Through Jesus, human beings can be reconciled to God, receive God’s Spirit, become God’s children, and ultimately share God’s life forever.

Paul describes the same movement in Ephesians:

“Through him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father” (Ephesians 2:18).

Again, notice the structure:

Through Christ. In the Spirit. To the Father.

Jesus is indispensable precisely because he is the one through whom God brings us into relationship with Himself.

This is also why Paul writes:

“There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).

A mediator stands between two parties and brings them together. Paul identifies those parties explicitly: God and humanity. Between them stands “the man Christ Jesus.”

Jesus does not replace God. He reconciles us to God.

“I Am the Way”

This makes Jesus’ words in John 14:6 even more meaningful:

“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Christians frequently quote the first half of this verse. But the second half tells us where the Way leads.

Jesus says, “No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Jesus is the Way. The Father is the One to whom the Way leads.

This distinction runs throughout John’s Gospel. Jesus repeatedly tells his followers that he was sent by God, speaks God’s words, performs God’s works, obeys God’s commands, and ultimately returns to God.

And in perhaps the clearest statement of all, Jesus prays:

“This is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ” (John 17:3).

Eternal life is knowing the only true God and knowing Jesus Christ whom that God sent.

The distinction does not make Jesus unimportant. It explains his importance.

God has chosen Jesus as the human being through whom humanity comes to know Him.

Jesus Shows Us the Father

Jesus is also the Way because he reveals what God is like.

When Philip says, “Lord, show us the Father,” Jesus answers, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.”

This does not require Jesus to be the Father or to be Almighty God. Jesus explains what he means immediately:

“The words that I tell you I speak not from myself; but the Father who lives in me does his works” (John 14:10).

Jesus reveals God because God dwells and works in him.

Jesus’ life becomes the human revelation of God’s character. His mercy reveals God’s mercy. His compassion reveals God’s compassion. His holiness reveals God’s holiness. His forgiveness reveals God’s forgiveness. His love for enemies reveals God’s love. His willingness to suffer for others reveals God’s self-giving heart.

Jesus is therefore not a distraction from God.

He is the clearest human window into God that humanity has ever received.

Jesus Is the Pioneer

Jesus is not only the Way because he teaches us where to go. He is the Way because he walked the road before us.

Hebrews repeatedly describes Jesus as the pioneer or founder of humanity’s salvation (Scott 47–54; BDAG, s.v. “ἀρχηγός”).

He suffered. He was tempted. He learned obedience. He was made perfect. He trusted God. He remained faithful through suffering and death. And God raised him into glory.

Jesus therefore does not simply stand at the finish line telling humanity what to do. He walks the human path. He shows us what dependence upon God looks like from inside genuinely human life.

That is why Hebrews can call Jesus “the author and perfecter of our faith.”

And it is why Christians are repeatedly called to follow him.

Jesus says, “Follow me.”

Paul says, “Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”

John says, “He who says he remains in him ought himself also to walk just like he walked.”

Jesus is our pioneer because he has already traveled the road God intends humanity to travel.

Jesus Became Perfect — But Perfection Does Not Mean Stagnation

This is also important for understanding what Scripture means when it says Jesus was made perfect.

Hebrews says:

“Though he was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which he suffered. Having been made perfect, he became to all of those who obey him the author of eternal salvation” (Hebrews 5:8–9).

Jesus underwent genuine development.

He learned. He obeyed. He suffered. He matured. He was brought to completion.

By the culmination of his earthly mission, Jesus had become the righteous, faithful, holy human Messiah God intended him to be.

But the biblical language of perfection should not be made to say more than it says.

Being made perfect does not necessarily mean becoming omniscient. It does not mean exhausting every possible dimension of human maturity. It does not mean a human being ceases to learn, experience, relate, choose, or grow. And it does not necessarily mean becoming metaphysically incapable of ever making a wrong choice.

Perfection is not the same thing as impeccability.

Jesus learned obedience through suffering and faithfully completed the mission God had given him. That is an extraordinary achievement. But genuine perfection need not mean static existence.

Perfection does not necessarily mean the end of growth.

Indeed, Jesus himself shows us that human perfection and human development are not opposites. He grew in wisdom and stature. He learned obedience. He was perfected through suffering.

Growth was part of his perfection. The word itself does not tell us that all possible growth must end afterward (Peterson; Ellingworth).

Christians Are Being Led Along the Same Road

And this is where Jesus’ humanity becomes enormously hopeful for us.

If Jesus were God simply living out a human life, his experience would not reveal in the same way what God can accomplish in humanity. But if Jesus really was human—dependent upon God, empowered by the Holy Spirit, learning obedience, enduring temptation, suffering, growing, and ultimately being perfected—then his life becomes an extraordinary promise.

What God accomplished in Jesus shows us what God intends to accomplish in humanity.

Paul says Christians are being “transformed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

John says, “We will be like him” (1 John 3:2).

Paul says God predestined His children “to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29).

And Jesus himself says, “Everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40).

Jesus therefore does not occupy a category of humanity that no other human being can approach.

He is the firstborn.

He is the pioneer.

He is the pattern.

He is the beginning of what God intends to do with an entire family.

But Even Christ Points Beyond Himself

There is an important final step.

Christians are called to become like Christ. But even becoming like Christ is not the final end in the sense of copying a frozen snapshot of Jesus.

Jesus himself points us beyond himself to God.

The ultimate moral standard Jesus gives is:

“Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).

Paul likewise says:

“Be therefore imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love” (Ephesians 5:1–2).

God is the ultimate source and standard of goodness.

God is love.

Jesus shows humanity what God’s love looks like when embodied in a human life. So becoming like Christ ultimately means becoming increasingly like the God whom Christ reveals.

The goal is not deity. Human beings do not become Almighty God. But God’s children can become increasingly filled with His Spirit, His love, His holiness, His wisdom, and His character.

And because God Himself is inexhaustible, eternal life need not mean eternal stagnation.

There can always be more of God to know, more love to experience, more wisdom to receive, more relationships to deepen, more beauty to discover, and more ways to reflect God’s character.

Jesus can be truly perfect without being a static being who can never develop again.

And Christians can truly become like Christ without reaching some point at which all possible growth ends.

The destination is perfect love.

And the source of that love is God.

The Son Ultimately Gives Everything Back to God

Perhaps no passage brings this entire picture together more beautifully than 1 Corinthians 15.

Paul describes the resurrection of Christ, the resurrection of humanity, the destruction of death, and the completion of Christ’s reign.

Then he writes:

“Then comes the end, when he will deliver up the Kingdom to God, even the Father, when he will have abolished all rule and all authority and power” (1 Corinthians 15:24).

Christ reigns. Christ conquers every enemy. Christ destroys death. Everything is placed beneath his feet.

And then something extraordinary happens.

“When all things have been subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28).

This is the destination of the biblical story.

Not:

Christ becomes everything.

But:

God becomes all in all.

Jesus receives authority from God. Jesus exercises that authority faithfully. Jesus completes the mission God gives him. Jesus brings creation into order. And then the Son himself remains joyfully subject to God.

The entire kingdom ultimately belongs to God.

This does not diminish Jesus.

It is Jesus’ triumph.

The human Messiah succeeds completely in the mission God entrusted to him.

The Way Is Not the Destination

I believe Christianity has sometimes unintentionally confused these two things.

We have taken the One who said, “I am the Way,” and made the Way into the ultimate destination.

We have taken the mediator between God and humanity and identified the mediator as the God to whom he mediates.

We have taken God’s supreme human image and identified the image with the One whose image he bears.

And in doing so, I fear we have sometimes lost something magnificent about Jesus.

Jesus does not compete with God for our attention.

He directs us toward God.

Jesus does not replace the Father.

He reveals the Father.

Jesus does not call humanity to stop at him.

He says:

Come through me to God.

That is why Jesus' role is so significant.

Through him we know God.

Through him we are reconciled to God.

Through him we receive the Spirit.

Through him we see what human life under God’s rule can become.

Through him death is defeated.

Through him resurrection comes.

Through him humanity is brought into God’s family.

Through him creation is reconciled.

And through him the kingdom ultimately returns to the Father.

Jesus is therefore far more than merely a teacher, far more than merely a prophet, and far more than merely a moral example.

He is God’s Messiah.

God’s Son.

Our Lord.

Our Savior.

Our mediator.

Our pioneer.

Our firstborn brother.

Our King.

And our Way.

But Jesus himself teaches us where the Way leads.

To the Father.

And at the end of all things, when every enemy has been defeated and even death itself is gone, the Son will have completed his mission.

Humanity will be restored.

Creation will be reconciled.

God’s children will have become what He always intended them to be.

And:

God will be all in all.

Jesus came to bring us to God (1 Peter 3:18), not to be our God.

Jesus is the Way who brings us home to God.