Christianity is a One Way Street

Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

John 14:5-6

King Solomon, the wisest of all humans, once wrote There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death. Proverbs 14:12 The way of which he spoke is the wrong path to salvation, a path strewn with good works which have been done for the purpose of attempting to appease God’s wrath for our sin; those works are patently futile. There is a right way and the 1^st century church knew where to find it because they believed what Jesus had told the disciples; that which John recorded in the 14^th chapter of his gospel. In fact, before they were called Christians the faithful were known as people who “belonged to the Way” (Acts 9:2). The apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians’ church reminding them of what they had received and what were to tell non-believers regarding the proper way to salvation: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. Ephesians 2:8-9

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor who was martyred (hung by the Gestapo) for his stand against the evils of Nazism and Hitler’s Third Reich wisely said, “If you board the wrong train it is no use running down the isle in the opposite direction.” Some people sitting in pews each Sunday are simply playing church, trying to strike a balance between the sin which we all possess (Romans 3:23) and some futile good works. Unknowingly they have simply boarded the wrong train; one that will inevitably derail and send them into a Godless eternity.

Only the work of Christ, living the perfect life none of us can attain and then going to the Cross to receive God’s judgment for carrying our sin, can satisfy the Holy God Almighty against whom we have sinned since our birth. When we avail ourselves of hearing the spoken Word of God taught so clearly each Lord’s Day at Old North Church, then God will speak to our hearts and show us the way. 600 years before Christ’s first advent he prophet Isaiah taught this fact; Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” Isaiah 30:21