John 14:6 has been widely debated in Christian circles, often used to argue that Jesus is the exclusive path to salvation after death. It is often cited to argue against pluralism or universalism, emphasizing that Christianity provides the sole path to God. This is how it was first taught to me as a teenager. However, over time, my understanding of this verse has grown.

Well before planting a church in Missoula, I was with many theologians and scholars who saw this as an inaccurate interpretation. Some other passages, like the Roman’s Road, are used to bolster the strict, literal, and unilateral theological underpinning that Evangelicalism needs to fuel its mindset. It isn’t grounded in the biblical narrative.

There is so much assumed theology behind John 14:6 that people also assume this is a Gotcha! problem – it isn’t. Sometimes, the answer undermines and exposes the questioner.

Jesus as the Way, Truth, and Life

The Catholic Church has interpreted John 14:6 in official documents like Dominus Iesus, emphasizing that this verse underpins the belief in Jesus as the fullness of God’s revelation, beyond which there is no other way to reach the Father. Similarly, evangelical theologians like R.C. Sproul have taken John 14:6 at face value, interpreting it as an absolute claim of Jesus’ exclusive role in salvation. Sproul and others argue that this statement affirms not only Jesus’ unique relationship with the Father but also the finality of his role as the mediator between humanity and God, suggesting that access to God can only be achieved through Jesus.

While Evangelicals like R.C. Sproul emphasize the exclusivity of Jesus’ role in salvation, others, like Meister Eckhart, offer a more relational interpretation. Meister Eckhart viewed John 14:6 as a call for inner transformation, interpreting it not as a literal exclusionary statement but as a spiritual journey toward unity with God. Eckhart saw “the way” less as a boundary and more as an intimate path for believers to experience God’s presence personally and internally. It was a matter of discipline.

Modern theologians, such as Hans Urs von Balthasar, bring yet another perspective, interpreting the verse through the lens of divine love and Christ’s redemptive mission, focusing on Jesus’ relational approach rather than strict doctrinal exclusivity. This diversity in interpretation illustrates how John 14:6 resonates within Catholicism’s philosophical, mystical, and relational traditions, each offering unique insights into Christ’s role as “the way.”

Reconsidering John 14:6 Through a Broader Lens

It’s clear from a simple theological overview that there is a lot more being debated in the history of Christendom than just whether or not this passage preaches an exclusive systematic methodology by which humans may escape hell. Concepts like salvation, heaven, and the afterlife are not new theological discussions and their definitions have long historical debates still ongoing today. Wrestling with John for over a decade, silently I’ve been listening to the debate.

On this side of my journey, let’s break John 14:6 down and get a recovering pastor’s take:

Examining John’s Theological World

Let’s start with the actual premise when people bring this up and ask a rather direct and simple question: do they think John, when he penned Jesus’ words here, actually only taught Penal Substitutionary Atonement? Sidenote: Penal Substitutionary Atonement refers to the belief that Jesus died to bear a criminal punishment for human sin, a view that’s particularly emphasized within branches of Protestantism.

If someone would like to answer “Yes,” we’ll need to have another much longer conversation. For now, just look at the context – the whole story. John 14:6 was a little bit into the Upper Room Discourse. Jesus has just washed His apostles’ feet, told them one of them would betray Him, and gave them the “new” command to love one another. The verses just before chapter 14 are Peter learning he’ll deny Jesus three times. At the beginning of chapter 14, Jesus then reassures them he is “preparing a place for them” in His Father’s house. His very last statement, before answering Thomas’ question in John 14:6, is “And you know the way to where I am going.”

Here is where Thomas says, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?“. To which Jesus answers, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him” (6-7). Notice Jesus reiterated His apostles already knew the “way” because they knew Him. This will be useful later.

Jesus did not make a literal claim about much, if anything, here, while still saying plenty. He did not make an oddly specific point about the mechanics of salvation from eternal conscious torment. John didn’t have most of the assumptions of today’s post-Scripture allegiance to Penal Substitutionary Atonement. Jesus did not say, literally, that He is the only way to “salvation.” He did not, literally, claim that he is the only way to reach God and get into Heaven. He did say He is “the way, the truth, and the life,” and that if we know Him we also already both know the Way and the Father.

John 14:6 is not about Penal Substitutionary Atonement. John was not writing a systematic theology. For now, this just isn’t how John or ancient writers worked. “Theology” and philosophical debates were there, you bet – it just wasn’t from the same worldview as ours. First-century people were not thinking in the same terms Martin Luther was 1500 years later, and certainly not in our modern Western terms. Neither was Christianity, or human history, a linear, homogenous path; something easily reduced to old textbooks studied decades ago.

Without the assumptions of Protestant theology, the complexity of this passage melts away. Jesus’ message, rather than a head-scratcher of a doctrinal issue, is an invitation to follow Him after he washed their feet and as He was about to face the cross. This is less about a heavenly afterlife and, again, about living in the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. When we understand John and his audience, when we look at his Gospel as a whole and the context of John 14:6, we don’t see Penal Substitutionary Atonement (in a future post, we’ll discuss how PSA is not biblical).

Without spending 1000 words pastorizing about the context of John, we’ll settle for a few paragraphs:

John’s Gospel Context and Intent

John was a Jewish man and a personal disciple of Jesus. He grew up in an oppressed and divided Israel, and then Jesus messed up his whole worldview. John became an Apostle and was taking Jesus’ message to other less-Jewish cities. As this Jewish Apostle continued his work, it brought him to places he never expected.

In particular, it brought him to Anatolia, modern Western Turkey. Anatolia was a major mixing pot where the Eastern cultures of the Roman Empire blended with Western. Emperor worship and cult membership were not just common but assumed. Every person, guild, organization, and society had some kind of religious allegiance to some divinity. And everyone had to be a loyal fan of Caesar.

Christians came in and undermined this. Consider by everyone as a Jewish sect, they also were branded as atheists because they only worshiped one God, unlike the rest of the world forced to adopt Rome’s political strategy of assimilating gods so everyone would bend their knee to Caesar. Early Christians did interact with other spirits, beings, and entities, but that wasn’t the issue. They didn’t see them as God and Caesar was just a man. Christians didn’t worship him or buy into Roman nationalistic propaganda. That was a problem.

It was to these people John wrote his gospel. This is why Jesus’s Kingdom wasn’t of this world (John 18:36) and why the “Gospel” (a word used by Rome for proclamations of an emporer) was a direct threat to Caesar. Even the title “Lord” (kurios) was stripped off the boy king and placed on a crucified Jewish rabbi. John’s Gospel is an intentional narrative, a polemic philosophical tragedy that pulls deep from Jewish and Greco-Roman traditions.

John’s Gospel was meant to be a text for local communities to use, study, and personally practice. They may or may not have had the other Gospels and may or may not have had the some of the Old Testament. Practically, no one had personal copies as literacy rates were dramatically lower. These texts became centerpieces, things a community would store and care for. They were read out loud in rituals, ceremonies, and community gatherings. Disciples would memorize sections and would have some spiritual practices to go along with it. A common practice was to create incipits: amulets containing Scriptures. We have examples of John 1:1-5 and Psalm 91. Paleo Christians would sometimes inscribe passages as charms and as incantations to carry them into their daily life.

Zooming Out on John 14:6’s Context

Skipping a lot, let’s jump to John 14 but keep our perspective zoomed out a bit than just one or two verses: stories and conversations don’t work that way.

First, this is a part of the Upper Room Discourse. This discourse is five chapters out of twenty-one, almost 25% of the gospel. The entirety of this chunk was a huge deal to John. Taking one verse, like John 14:6, and implying a whole systematic theology from it is lazy thinking, and there’s not much more to it than that. If we want to know what Jesus meant in John 14:6, we not only need to know the Gospel of John but also the content and narrative of these five chapters.

The Chiastic Structure of the Upper Room Discourse

The Upper Room Discourse (John 13–17) is notable for its detailed chiastic structure, which scholars analyze to reveal how it is organized around thematic parallels that emphasize key messages of Jesus’ teachings and His final moments with His disciples. A chiasm, or chiasmus, is a literary mirroring pattern, where themes or phrases are repeated in order to draw attention to central themes.

Wayne Brouwer proposes a macro-chiasm (there are other proposals) within John 13–17, centering on the theme of “abiding in Christ,” particularly highlighted in the “Vine and Branches” section of John 15, where Jesus speaks about the importance of remaining in His love and bearing fruit. In John, there is a direct connection between abiding in Christ (John 15:4-7) and following His command to love one another as He loved us (13:34-35, 14:15-24, 15:10).

The surrounding sections of this discourse contain mirrored elements, such as Jesus washing the disciples’ feet (John 13) and His high priestly prayer (John 17). These segments reflect Jesus’ call for humility, love, and unity within His followers (John 13:1–35) and His intercessory prayer for their future (John 17:1–26), both tying into the central message of abiding in Him and loving each other.

The Promises of the Holy Spirit

The chiastic structure of the discourse also connects specific sections within these chapters, such as the promise of the Holy Spirit (John 14:15–31 and John 16:5–15), underscoring how the Spirit will continue to guide and empower the disciples. This layered structure not only serves a literary purpose but also deepens the theological messages in these chapters, as each mirrored section reflects and reinforces the overarching call to individual faithfulness and unity with Christ, not a bulk obligation upon masses enforced by humans.

The promise of the Helper, the paraklyte, was associated with Jesus’ commissioning of his disciples. Jesus emphasized His mission will continue through the disciples, empowered by the Holy Spirit. After Jesus, it was their (our) turn to take His mantle and embody His mission:

1. John 14:16-17, 26: Jesus promises the “Helper,” the Holy Spirit, who will teach the disciples “all things” and remind them of everything He has taught. The Spirit’s role here is to ensure they can continue Jesus’ mission with a fuller understanding of God’s truth.
2. John 15:26-27: Jesus describes the Holy Spirit as the “Spirit of truth” who will “testify” about Him, and He adds that the disciples are also called to testify. This sets up a parallel mission: the Spirit empowers them to follow Jesus as He followed the Father.
3. John 16:13-15: Here, Jesus explains that the Holy Spirit will guide the disciples “into all truth” and reveal to them what is yet to come. The Spirit will glorify Jesus by taking what belongs to Him and making it known to them, deepening their understanding of Jesus’ teachings. He’s empathetic that his disciples are no longer slaves but friends since they’ve come to understand now what He’s about.
4. John 20:21-22: After His resurrection, Jesus appears to the disciples and says, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” This passes on the same incarnational redemptive mission Jesus had now to His disciples.
   
   He then breathes on them, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” This act symbolizes God’s breath in humanity during Creation and the continuation of Jesus’ mission in the disciples.

We are meant to be like Jesus, not just as a cliche or in some wishful delay for future glory, but even before the Gospel of John finishes. If not then, then at least by Acts 3 and well before Revelation 21.

These passages form a chain of thought where Jesus’ mission becomes the disciples’ mission, empowered by the Spirit to live out and spread His teachings. This extends to future generations of disciples, with an implied responsibility to carry forward Jesus’ work.

Early Theologians and Catholic Mystics on John 14:6

Early theologians and mystics, especially within Catholicism, took nuanced approaches to John 14:6, focusing not solely on exclusivity but on the relationship between Jesus and the divine pathway he represents. Meister Eckhart, that German mystic, emphasized that Christ’s “way” was not a rigid boundary but a guide to encountering divine union. He saw John 14:6 as a call to inner transformation, where Christ becomes a model for the mystical journey, inviting believers to seek the divine within themselves.

Even before Eckhart, other Christians were debating whether or not people are actually damned after death. For example, Theodore of Mopsuestia (c. 350–428 AD) said, “God created humanity for immortality and joy, not for eternal punishment, and he shall achieve his purpose. All will eventually submit to God’s will.” Evagrius Ponticus (c. 345–399 AD), disciple of Origen, said, “For I say that even the devil himself will be restored to his former rank.”

The point is that the social media posts of today don’t come close to capturing the actual conversation around this verse – it’s usually just more propaganda.

Modern Scholarship on John

David Wead’s analysis of John challenges a rigid, literal interpretation, particularly the connection to Penal Substitutionary Atonement. That becomes logically inconsistent with how many themes, tools, and tricks John was using. John’s Gospel employs double meanings, irony, metaphors, and layered meanings that go beyond a reductional view of Jesus. In John 14:6, Jesus’ declaration, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” should be seen not as a Western doctrinal statement, but as part of a broader narrative where Jesus reveals God’s truth through relational connection. This view is held by scholars like Raymond E. Brown and John Barclay, who emphasize that John uses symbolic language to illustrate a transformative relationship with Christ, rather than a transactional system of salvation.

Additionally, the mixed-use of “way” aligns with other Johannine images like the Vine (John 15) and the Bread of Life (John 6), which emphasize union with Christ and spiritual growth. The ongoing guidance of the Spirit (John 16:13) further supports this relational interpretation, reinforcing that Jesus is not just a transaction but “the path of life and truth” in an ongoing, dynamic relationship with God. An integrated reading reveals that John 14:6 is not a doctrinal statement—it reflects a deeper, relational theology.

Contemporary New Testament scholar, N.T. Wright, provides an alternative historical perspective, based on Scripture’s original cultural context, suggesting that John 14:6 highlights Jesus as the mediator of the new covenant for the world, not a narrow, exclusionary gate. Wright believes this verse underscores Jesus as a disciplined path that embodies God’s redemptive plan rather than a restriction against other beliefs or practices. John 14:6 is part of Jesus’s larger narrative to reveal God’s truth and life, guiding followers into an active relationship with the Creator.

These interpretations help provide a broader, more authentic perspective, interpreting John 14:6 within the context of a spiritual journey and union with God, rather than strictly as a literal exclusionary dogma. This isn’t about “doing” but “being.” If we want to understand John 14:6, we have to understand John, and John, like everyone, has some mysticism in him. To understand him, he’d expect us to understand ourselves.

So, what does John 14:6 mean then?

In response to Thomas’ question, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” It means a lot of things, as it ought to. Most of it is personal, where we live and how we approach the world. It is not the way most evangelical preachers and Christian social media zealots use it – their use of it highlights their misunderstanding of it.

The way Jesus did it – that’s the Way. The truth Jesus taught and lived – that’s the Truth. The life that Jesus had and came to give us -that’s the Life. Jesus is “the way and truth that is life.” It’s about discipleship and the way you view this world. It is not about getting people to say the Sinner’s Prayer. John 14:6 is that simple of a truth, but do not assume that it doesn’t have depth. Try it out first and watch it break you.

Please, keep it in this frame. Don’t fall for the temptation of Christian reductionism. John 14:6, like with everything else, is not about “them.”

Christians, are we living this way, this truth, and this life?

If not, we should shut up about John 14:6.