"No One Comes to the Father Except Through Me."

This saying of Jesus from John 14:6 is often used as an example of the nasty, self-righteous  “exclusivism” of Christianity.  Some imagine that Jesus is saying here that “Christianity is the only way, all other religions are false.  Join our religion or die.”  Certainly, this is the way the passage has too often been used by both people in the Church, and some outside who want to discredit Christianity.  

But Jesus is not talking about a religious institution here.  

He is talking about himself.  

He is himself the One through Whom it is necessary to pass in order to have union with God.  

As he says in John 10:7, 9, “I am the gate for the sheep….  Whoever enters by me will be saved.”  

When Jesus refers to himself, he speaks as the Divine-Human One, 

that is, the One who is both true God and true human being, 

as in the “Son of Man” (ie. the Human One) (Mark 2:10, etc.) 

who nevertheless says “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).  

Jesus Christ is therefore the intersection, the inter-being, 

the union of God and humanity in one person.    

To come “through” him to the Father means understanding that 

he, as the divine/human One, is the “gate” (John 10:1-10), 

that is, the Way, the interface uniting God and humanity.  

Identifying with him in his true humanity,

we also realize his divinity in ourselves. 

“Coming through” him is thus a process of theosis, or deification.  

It is the fulfillment of the saying of both Irenaeus and Athanasius: 

“God became human so that humans might become God.”  

He is the gate: 

We enter him as human beings, 

emerging as participants in God’s nature (2 Peter 1:4).  

We “come through” him by believing in him, 

which means trusting in him, 

which means obeying him,

which means doing the works that he does (John 14:12) 

by keeping his commandments (John 14:15), 

and loving others as he loves us and all (John 13:34-35),

in humility, compassion, generosity, and sacrifice (Eg. Romans 12; Matthew 5-7).  

It therefore means denying the cravings of our ego-self, the “flesh,”

which is a false version of our humanity, 

and taking up our cross (Mark 8:34//),

which is to confront and confess our complicity in the world’s mindless violence, 

and repenting, 

which is functioning out of a radically different Mind (Mark 1:15//),

the Mind of Christ, the divine/human One,

and following him by doing what he does and teaches.  

It even means asceticism and witnessing/martyrdom, 

that is, the death of the egocentric, self of “flesh,”

symbolically accomplished in Baptism (Romans 6:3-11).

Having released our ego-centric self and its distinctions and divisions,

we emerge into unity with God and all (Galatians 3:28).  

This is the whole mystical point of the Gospel of John.  

Jesus Christ reveals our oneness with God.

What he is by nature he makes us by grace.  

He is the Way to the realization of that oneness, which is eternal life.

When we see ourselves in him, letting go of all in us that separates us from him,

we see God in ourselves and in all that God has made.

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