The Road to God
Do all roads lead to God?
When you want to go somewhere, you need the right directions. This is especially true in a city like New York, a place with roads, highways, bridges, trains, taxis, and busses everywhere. If you don’t have the right directions, you may easily get lost and arrive at the wrong destination, a place where you didn’t want to go.There is something more important than having the right directions to a destination in this life. It is having the right directions to God – in this life (which is temporary) and the next (which is forever). Are you on the right road? Do you have a peaceful, permanent relationship with God?
Do you have a peaceful, permanent relationship with God?
Two-thousand years ago, when Caesars ruled the world, the Roman government laid a large network of roads, like the highways and roads in the United States today. All these roads would eventually take you to the city of Rome, and that is why people said, “All roads lead to Rome.” Today, we use this phrase to say that many roads eventually lead to the same destination. While this may be true in New York City, it is not true with God.
We are going away from God, not towards him.
In the beginning, God created people, a man and a woman. They shared a close relationship with him and did not need to know how to get to God because they were with him already. This changed when they turned away from him by committing the first sin (Gen 3:8).Sin is anything which violates God’s purpose for your life (1 John 3:4). He made you to care for the world which he made and to do good things with it, according to his plan (Gen 1:28). He also made you to show others, through your life, what he is like (Gen 1:29). By disobeying his clear instructions, the first man and the first woman turned away from this good purpose for their lives. Since then, every person continues to do the same thing. We all sin. We all do things that are evil, wicked, and bad. We think, say, and do things which violate God’s reason for making us (Rom 3:12). We have all turned away from God. We are going away from him, not towards him.
Sin is anything which violates God’s purpose for your life.
Sometimes we believe that we are going towards God, but we’re not going towards him at all. That’s why God says, “There is none who seeks after God” (Rom 3:11). You might think that you are seeking after God, but you are not. God also says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Prov 14:12). All the roads that we think will bring us closer to God only take us farther away from him instead. Many pathways of life look like a good way to go, but if they are not the way that God teaches in his Word, then they will always lead to death and destruction instead (1 John 2:15-17).
Doing good things does not take you closer to God.
Many people are traveling on a very big road, like a major highway, which they think will somehow take them to a peaceful, permanent relationship with God. This is the highway of good works, and perhaps you are traveling on this road today. When people travel on this road, they try to do some good things to take away the bad things which they have done. But this never works. It only makes things worse. The Bible says that we are not saved by “works of righteousness which we have done” (Tit 3:5). This means that you cannot get to God by doing things that are right. In fact, the Bible says that “there is none who does good, no, not one” (Rom 3:10).You may be even more surprised to learn that when you do things that seem to be right, even those things are wrong and sinful before God. God says that “all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags” (Isa 64:6). When God looks at your life, he sees what you cannot see. He sees that everything you do is stained by the filthiness of your sin, just as a filthy rag contaminates a clean one (and not the other way around). Your sinful thoughts, motives, and desires infect everything you say and do, even the things which seem to be good. That is why the road of doing good things does not take you closer to God. It takes you farther away.
World religions and religious leaders do not take you closer to God.
This road of good works often has different routes to follow, in the form of world religions and religious leaders. There are about 4,200 religions in the world. That’s a lot of roads that claim to go to God! However, no world religions or their leaders lead you to God. They lead you to destruction instead. No religion and no religious leader but one can take you to a peaceful and permanent relationship with God.
- Buddha and the Eightfold Path cannot do it.
- Hinduism and its many gods cannot do it.
- Judaism and it’s many rabbis and rituals cannot do it.
- Muhammad and the Five Pillars of Islam cannot do it.
- No gods of any culture or ancestors of any family can do it.
- The Pope, the Roman Catholic Church, and the seven Sacraments cannot do it.
- Mormonism or the Jehovah’s Witness organization cannot do it.
No religious leader or religion can lead you to a peaceful, permanent relationship with God, no matter how sincerely you practice any one of them. This is not about being serious or sincere. You can travel on the wrong road and be very serious and sincere about what you are doing, but if you’re on the wrong road then none of this matters. The most serious and sincere person will end up at the wrong place if he or she is following the wrong directions. Jesus said, “Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it” (Matt 7:13). The majority of people are following the very large and very wide road of wrong religions, but this road takes people to destruction and not to God.But Jesus said, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). Do you see that? God loves the world so much that he has provided a way for anyone in the world (“whoever”) to escape the punishment for his or her sin. It is a narrow way, and many people refuse to go that way. Who is this way? Who is this road that God provides to lead you away from destruction and into a peaceful and permanent relationship with God?
God provided one way and one road away from the destruction that is coming your way because of your sin. That road is Jesus.
He told us this himself. He said, “I am the way … no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). He did not say, “I am a way,” or, “I am one of the ways.” He said, “I am the way,” which means that he is the only way to God, not one of many options. He is not one of many roads which lead to a peaceful, permanent relationship with God. He is the only option and the only road. All other roads and all other religions lead to destruction. Will you believe him? Will you follow what he said? He said, “He who believes in him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:18).So whether you have a peaceful, permanent relationship with God is determined by your answer to one very important question: “Have you believed on the name of Jesus?” To do this, you need to know who Jesus is and what he has done, then you need to trust in him alone to give you a peaceful and permanent relationship with God. When you know who Jesus is and what he has done, then you will also know that there is no other religious leader like him. No other religious leader except Jesus is qualified or capable of giving you a peaceful and permanent relationship with God. God says, “There [is no] salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
So who is Jesus and what has he done which qualifies him to be the only road to God?
First, you need to know that Jesus is much more than a good person, a good teacher, a good prophet, or the best person who ever lived. He is all these things and infinitely more because he is God. He is your Creator, the God who made you and the God who loves you. He is not just a good person who came into the world to help you find your way to God; he is the God whom you must worship and follow. He is all powerful and all knowing. He is the one, true, everlasting God, without beginning or end (John 8:58; Rev 1:8). This means that he is not just the way to God, but he is God (John 10:30; Tit 2:13). As God, he alone has the power to raise the dead (John 5:25-29) and forgive sins (John 5:25-29), something no other person can do.You also need to know that though he is God, Jesus became a human being just like you (Gal 4:4; Phil 2:6-8). He did not come into the world as a spirit-being who merely looked like human. He was born like you, a real human being with a body, soul, and spirit, just like you and me. He grew up like you, ate and drank like you, and worked and slept like you (Matt 21:18; Luke 2:52; John 19:28; Heb 5:8). He lived his life like you live yours, but with one important difference: when he faced temptations to make wrong choices, he never sinned (Heb 4:15; 1 Pet 2:22). When the first man and woman faced a temptation disobey God, they failed and sinned, just like you and me and every other person (Rom 5:12); but Jesus responded differently (Rom 5:18-19).Jesus always responded to the challenges of daily life the way that God himself would respond. He always thought, spoke, and acted in the good way that God intended for you to think, speak, and act. You – like every other person, whether a criminal, a religious leader, or someone in between – have failed to be the good person that God designed you to be. That’s why Jesus became a person, to be a person who would live as the good person that God designed all people to be, a person who genuinely showed the goodness of God in every way. He succeeded where Adam and Eve failed. You and I can never be that good, and that is why you need Jesus to take your place.Jesus lived the good, obedient, and sinless life that no one else can live. Knowing this, it is important to understand why he died. After all, people only die as consequence for their sin (Ezek 18:20; Rom 5:12; 6:23). So if Jesus never sinned, then why did he die? He died because he took your place (Rom 5:8; 1 Pet 2:24). He exchanged his goodness for your badness and his righteousness for your sin. When he died, he was suffering the consequences and punishment for your sin (Gal 3:13). He was dying the death that you deserve to die. As an innocent human being, he accepted your guilt and the guilt of the entire human race as his own (1 John 2:2). He died the death that you deserve to die. He was separated from God and judged by God for the full magnitude of your sins and the sins of the entire human race.Thankfully, Jesus returned alive from his suffering and death (which was your suffering and death) (1 Cor 15:3-8). In a way which you could never accomplish, he fully satisfied God’s judgment for your sin (Rom 5:9). He righted your wrongs in a complete and perfect way. If you die in your sins, separated from God, then you will suffer God’s judgment forever (John 8:24). You will never be able to satisfy the wrath of God for your sin. But Jesus – who is both a human being like you and the eternal God who made you – suffered for your sins himself and fully satisfied the wrath of God which should fall on you for eternity (Heb 9:28). Having resurrected from the dead, he will also sit as the judge of every person in the world, determining the eternal destiny of each one based upon whether or not they believed on him or not (John 5:22, 27; Acts 10:42; 17:31; Rom 2:16).
Jesus is the only way to a peaceful and permanent relationship with God.
That is why you must believe on Jesus. He is the only way to a peaceful and permanent relationship with God (Heb 2:14-16; 1 Pet 3:18). No other way, no other road, no other religion, no other religious leader, and none of your own attempts at good behavior can compare. To receive forgiveness of sin and his goodness in place of your sin (Act 10:43; Rom 3:22; 5:21-25; 10:4), you need to turn away from your sins, your religion, and whatever else you are trusting to get you to God (Luke 13:5; Acts 16:30-31; 17:30; Rom 1:16; 1 Thess 1:9). When you trust in him alone as your God and your Savior, he will not only place you on the road back to God, but he will guarantee that you will arrive safely at your destination forever (2 Tim 4:18; 1 Pet 3:18). You will enjoy a peaceful relationship with God now and a permanent relationship with him forever in the new world that he will make, free from sin in every way (John 8:36; 10:28). There is no other way. Will you believe on Jesus today?
