Do all roads lead to God?

To go somewhere, you need the right directions. This is especially true in a place like New York City, a tangled sprawl of highways and exits, roads and intersections, bridges and ferries, subway lines and trains, buses, taxis, Lyfts, and Ubers in every direction. Without the right directions or a functioning GPS, you will easily lose your way, lose time, and arrive at a wrong or dangerous place. Do you know the feeling?

More important than having the right directions to a physical destination in this life is having the right directions to God forever. Do you know how to get to him? Are you on the right road? Do you have a peaceful and permanent relationship with God?

Two-thousand years ago, when Roman Caesars ruled the world, the empire engineered a vast network of paved roads, like the road system in the United States today. These roads would lead travelers to the city of Rome inspiring the famous expression, “All roads lead to Rome.” Today, we use this phrase to celebrate diversity, believing that all religions lead to God. But is this true? Do all religions lead to God? Or do they lead you to a wrong and dangerous place instead? God tells us that “there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Prov 14:12).

You are going away from God, not towards him.

In the beginning, God created the first man and woman. From the outset, they shared a close relationship with him. Unlike you, they did not need to know how to get to God because they were already in a close relationship with him. This changed tragically when they turned away from him by committing the first sin (Gen 3:8).

Sin is anything – whether thought, word or deed – which violates God’s good purpose for your life (Gal 5:19-21; 1 John 3:4). He made you to care for the world on his behalf and to do only good things with it and in it, according to his good 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 and loving instructions, the first man and woman turned away from God’s good purpose for their lives. From then on, every person has continued to do the same thing – we sin (Rom 5:12). We all do things that are evil, wicked, and bad (Rom 3:23). We think, say, and do things which violate God’s good reason for making us (Rom 3:12). There are no exceptions. “There is none who seeks after God” (Rom 3:11).

The outcome of your sin is death (Rom 6:23). Along the pathway of life, you experience this death in many forms: a decaying world, violence and warfare, pain and sorrow, broken relationships, sickness and disease, and physical death. You experience these things because your sin has separated you from God. Because of sin, you are traveling away from God, not towards him. Ultimately, the end of this dark and tragic journey will lead you to the Lake of Fire, which is a place of permanent separation from everything that is good and, more importantly, from God himself (Rev 20:14-15, 21:8).

Doing good things does not take you closer to God.

Many people like you are traveling on a very big road, like a major multi-lane highway, which they think will somehow take them to a peaceful and permanent relationship with God (Matt 7:13-14). This is the highway of good works and perhaps you are traveling on this road today. When you travel on this road, you set out to do good things to take away, cover up, or counteract the bad things which you have done. But doing good things will never solve your sin problem. God tells you that any “works of righteousness” which you have done are unable to save you (Tit 3:5). Even if you try this approach, the Bible says that “there is none who does good, no, not one” (Rom 3:10).

No matter how hard you try, you cannot do what is right. Even when you do things that seem to be right, even those things are wrong and sinful before God (Jer 17:10). He says, “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 and contaminated by the filthiness of your sin, just as a dirty rag contaminates a clean one (and not the other way around). Your sinful thoughts, motives, and desires infect and contaminate everything you say and do, even when those things appear to be good (Matt 15:18-19). That is why the road of doing good things takes you farther from God, not closer.

World religions and their leaders do not take you closer to God.

This road of good works offers a variety of alternative religions, each offering to lead you back to God. Did you know there are about 4,200 religions in the world? That’s a lot of options! Yet none of these religions nor their leaders will lead you to a peaceful and permanent relationship with God. They are empty, meaningless pursuits which lead you to destruction instead (Mark 7:7).

• Buddha and the Eight-fold Path cannot do it.
• Hinduism and its many gods cannot do it.
• Judaism and its many rabbis and rituals cannot do it.
• Muhammad and the Five Pillars of Islam cannot do it.
• The gods of any culture cannot do it.
• The ancestors of any family cannot do it.
• The Roman Catholic Church, the Pope, and the seven Sacraments cannot do it.
• Mormonism and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints cannot do it.
• The Watchtower Organization and a Jehovah’s Witness lifestyle cannot do it.

No religion or religious leader can give you a peaceful, permanent relationship with God, no matter how sincerely you practice or follow any one of them. 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). According to him, the majority of people are following these wrong directions on the road of false, traditional religion. They are chasing fanciful myths (2 Tim 4:3-4). In fact, these false religions and teachers often pretend to be a form of the one, true way to God when they are not the true way at all (2 Cor 11:13-15).

Jesus is the only road that takes you back to God.

Jesus said, “I am the way” (John 14:6). He did not say, “I am a way,” or, “I am one of the ways.” He said, “I am the way.” This means that he is the only way to God, not one of many options. All other roads and all other religions lead to destruction. No religious leader but Jesus is qualified or capable of giving you the peaceful and permanent relationship with God that you know you need. 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 why does he qualify to be the way to God? First, Jesus is much more than a good teacher, a good prophet, or the best person who ever lived. He is all these things and more because he is also God. He is your Creator, the God who made you and 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 Almighty God whom you must worship and follow (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), things which no other person or religious figure can do. That is why he said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

Knowing that Jesus is God, you should also know that he 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 a human. He was born like you, becoming a real human being with a body, soul, and spirit, 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 as you live yours 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 the temptation to disobey God, they failed and sinned, just as you, me, and every other person fails (Rom 5:12); but Jesus responded differently (Rom 5:18-19; cf. Matt 4:1-11; Luke 4:1-13).

Jesus always responded to the challenges of human life as God himself would respond (John 8:29). He thought, spoke, and acted in the good way that God intended for you. You have failed to be the good person that God designed you to be, just as every other person has failed – whether they are a criminal, a religious leader, or an ordinary person. That’s why Jesus became a human being, so that he could live as the good person God designed all people to be and more, a person who revealed the goodness of God in every way. 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, and knowing that people only die as the consequence for their sin, then why did Jesus die (Ezek 18:20; Rom 5:12; 6:23)? He died to do what no other religious leader or so-called god has ever done – he died to take your place (Rom 5:8; 1 Pet 2:24). He exchanged his goodness for your badness and his righteousness for your sin (2 Cor 5:21). 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 both your guilt and the guilt of the entire human race as his own (1 John 2:2).

As a result, he experienced the wrath and judgment that you deserve for the full scope of your sins and the sins of the entire human race (John 3:16). Thankfully, Jesus returned alive from his suffering and death, which was your suffering and death (1 Cor 15:3-8). In a way that you could never accomplish, he fully satisfied the divine judgment for your sin (Rom 5:9). He righted your wrongs in a complete and perfect way.

Will you believe on Jesus as your God and Savior today?

If you die in your sins without Jesus as your Savior, then you will suffer God’s judgment forever in separation from him (John 8:24). You will never be able to satisfy the wrath of God for your sin. That is why Jesus – who is both a human being like you and the eternal God who made you – suffered for your sins himself and fully satisfied this wrath which should fall on you forever (1 Thess 1:9-10; 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 every person – including you – based upon whether they have believed on him or not (Matt 7:22-23; John 5:22, 27; Acts 10:42; 17:31; Rom 2:16; Phil 2:9-11).

That is why you must believe on Jesus today. 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 do what he has done. To receive forgiveness of sin and his goodness in place of your sin (Acts 10:43; Rom 3:22; 5:21-25; 10:4), you must turn away from your sins, your religion, your gods, your traditions, and whatever else you are hoping will get you to God (Luke 13:5; Acts 16:30-31; 17:30; Rom 1:16).

When you trust in him alone as your God and Savior, he will not only place you on the road to God, but he guarantees that you will arrive safely at your destination forever (2 Tim 4:18; 1 Pet 3:18). You will enjoy both a peaceful relationship with God now and a permanent relationship with him forever in the new world that he will make, free from the influence of sin and the effects of death in every way (John 8:36; 10:28).

What’s more, he will place his Spirit within you – immediately and permanently – enabling you to think, speak, and act according to his good and original purpose for your life (Rom 8:9; Gal 4:6; 5:22-24; Eph 1:13). You will be able to show others at last, through your present life, what he is like (Matt 5:16; John 15:8; 1 Cor 10:31; Eph 2:10; Phil 1:11; Tit 2:11-14).

To receive this salvation that God provides through Jesus and you must admit that you have sinned against God and ask for his forgiveness (Acts 3:19; 10:43; 16:31). You must turn away from any other gods or religion and believe that Jesus alone is your God and Savior who died for your sins and rose again in your place (1 Cor 15:1-4; 1 Thess 1:9). You must call upon Jesus to save you (Rom 10:13). Will you do this today?

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Thomas Overmiller serves as pastor for Faith Baptist Church in Corona, NY and blogs at Shepherd Thoughts. This article first appeared at Shepherd Thoughts, used here with permission.

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Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash