Jesus: the Only Way

John 6:67-68

So Jesus said to the Twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

Jesus asks if the disciples would rather be doing something else instead - to go back to their old jobs as fishermen and tax collectors, etc., back to their families and old friends. 

Their response: “Then who would we follow? Where would we go? We believe you and have left everything in order to follow you. There is no going back.”
Friend, the same is true for you. “For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14) 

Commitment to Christ means that we die with Him. We experience death to self and death to the world. 

Commitment to Christ means that we live with Him. Just as He was raised, so also are we raised. We are finally alive, free to live unto God, free to have life in the midst of a dead and dying world. "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2:20). Our returning to the world, or to the flesh, or to Satan is just as likely as Jesus returning to the grave...it's impossible...He is God. 

Psalm 73:25-26

Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. 

If Jesus really is who He says He is, nothing else matters…nothing…

This life offers nothing that satisfies us, it merely points to the next life where there is eternal satisfaction. The gospel is the means to that. Once we are looking toward that which truly and finally satisfies our needs, we can have joy, real joy, even here in a fallen world. Counterintuitively, The fulfilled life is one that is emptied of self and absolutely surrendered to the Creator. 

The gospel is the means. God is the end. God came down to earth so that He might be the means and the end, the “just and the justifier” (Romans 3:26). Through Christ (means), we spend eternity with God (end). And that end is sweet.  That is the end for which human souls were designed. “In [His] presence there is fullness of joy; at [His] right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).