One Good Reason to Believe in Jesus's Authority

By: Tony Williams | January 30, 2022

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6

Introduction

While there are some things in the Bible that are debatable, there is a repeated idea that Jesus Himself mentions over and over. The verse above (and many like it) clearly state that faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to go to Heaven, and to be saved from eternal damnation. With statements attributed to Jesus Himself like, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:16), and “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he dies, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:25), there can be no doubt in any unclosed mind that Jesus claims to be the only way to God. All others faith is not only futile, but leads to things like death and eternal torment.

Objection

This is where many who investigate Christianity, or grow up in Christianity, are forced to part ways with Christianity. The objections are varied, but generally consist of the following:

Intellectual: Jesus was just a man-who is He to make such a claim?
Emotional: How could a good God allow those who aren’t Christians to be punished?
Volitional: I would never worship a God who would force His creation to worship Him.

Correction/Response

The first question is what we might say is an intellectual question that is asking, who does Jesus (and His followers) think He is? This is a justified objection. One would need to show cause for having such authority to make claims like that. You don’t just get to say you are the only way to achieve success, unless you are the very measure of success. That is the very point Jesus seems to be making with every statement He makes that indicates that He is God. The root of the word authority is author, and Jesus claims to have been with the author of all existence when the book of life was written. How do we test that?

If Jesus fulfilled all the prophecies of the Old Testament, that would be more than remarkable. The odds have been calculated for one man to fulfill just 48 of the identified hundreds of Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah as 1 chance in 10¹⁵⁷. That is a 10 with 157 zeros behind it (1). If the Old Testament and the New Testament and history came together to split time around one man, it may be a clue we should pay attention to Him. Also, rising from the dead is not something we see every day. The testimony of the lives, and especially the deaths, of those who claimed to see Jesus after He was dead and buried has convinced generations of people for the last 2,000 years that Jesus was who He said He was, not to mention the impact of that faith in society.

Analogy

Worms have a tendency to crawl onto concrete at night, and then find themselves stranded when the sun comes up as they dry out and die, often only inches away from the ground they were designed to live in. I did not invent worms, and I don’t know much about them. But if I see a worm crawling on the concrete, and I have no plans to fish that day, I often put them back on the earth they crawled out of because I know if they get stuck they will die.

Now imagine the inventor of worms, who knows each and every one. He designed them to be in the ground so they would survive, yet they insist on exploring the concrete at night, only to be burned up during the day. This grieves the inventor of the worms terribly, but he invented them with free will so they could experience giving and receiving true worm love. Is it so wrong that the inventor would tell the worms not to crawl on the concrete because he knows it is certain death, and further, the inventor knows it because he designed the worms for the ground, and has himself experienced the sensation of dying in the hot sun?

Application

In case you couldn’t read through my silly analogy, we are the worms, Christ is the inventor, the ground is living in God’s will for our survival and thriving and the concrete is sin. Like the inventor of worms (also Christ in reality), Jesus knows what will keep us safe and what will kill us. He has the authority to make that truth known because He is the author of our lives and knows what is harmful to us because He designed us for His good pleasure. He is better than us because He made us. He has every hair on our head counted, and has known us since before we were born. In fact, he died for us so that we could be reconciled to Him-if we are willing to stay off the concrete.

The fact that there is only one way makes perfect sense if there was a particular creator who designed us for a particular purpose, and Jesus is the only person in history who makes the claims He made and had the well attested miracles in life and after life as evidence that He is the way, the truth and the life-He has the authority. Stay tuned for responses to the other objections and more analogies about worms!

About the Author

Tony Williams is currently serving in his 20th year as a police officer in a city in Southern Illinois. He has been studying apologetics in his spare time for two decades, since a crisis of faith led him to the discovery of vast and ever-increasing evidence for his faith. Tony received a bachelor’s degree in University Studies from Southern Illinois University in 2019. His career in law enforcement has provided valuable insight into the concepts of truth, evidence, confession, testimony, cultural competency, morality, and most of all, the compelling need for Christ in the lives of the lost. Tony plans to pursue postgraduate studies in apologetics in the near future to sharpen his understanding of the various facets of Christian apologetics.