I get stuck sometimes when I talk about Jesus to people who don’t know Him. Well, let me back that up a little and be frank. I get stuck sometimes when I think about talking about Jesus to people who don’t know Him. When I’m standing on the sidewalk in front of my house and talking to a new neighbor, when I’m in the grocery store catching up with the clerk who always asks about my boys, when I’m talking about the weather or quirky coffee orders with the barista—what I’m always thinking in the back of my mind is this: get to Jesus.
Not out of duty but because I have been so completely transformed by Him.
He’s always there, really. Pressing into the back of my thoughts while I talk about the snow that’s coming or how I’ve had too much caffeine and should really settle for herbal tea today. It shouldn’t be that hard. My whole life is built around Jesus. The joists and studs of my existence in this town in this time with these people—it’s all because of Him. I’ve known Him since I was small. I felt the gentle tug of His purpose as a teen when I spent my summers in Central America in an orphanage, trying to justify a one-way ticket back to the land of poverty and brown-skinned children in place of a college education. Instead, I went to college, studied writing, and yearned to hear His voice as I deciphered what was next. I married an almost-pastor and enjoyed two years of wedded bliss before he graduated from seminary and we moved to the farmland of Missouri where we’ve lived and loved and labored for almost sixteen years in pastoral ministry. In the years I’ve lived in this house on this street in this town, I’ve learned that the voice of Jesus calls me every morning when I roll out of bed and stumble to the coffee pot before opening my Bible. Before long, you hear Him pressing into the mundane conversations. The words you circled, underlined, jotted down in your notebook: they work their way into the chats of weather and coffee and kids. It’s not that hard to mention Him if you listen to Him every day. At least, it shouldn’t be, right?
In my mind, He is everything, and I am nothing without Him. But when you speak those words to someone who doesn’t know Him like that (or perhaps only knows the televangelist version of Him), it sounds weird to say aloud that it’s Him and only Him. Aren’t there many ways to heaven? Isn’t good living sufficient in this broken world?
My pastors have been preaching through the book of John the past couple of months, and the point they return to over and over with John the Baptist and Nicodemus and the disciples is this: it’s only Jesus. He is the only way to heaven, the only Son of God, the only one who shows us what the Father is like. There is nowhere else to go, for no one else has the words of life. Good works will never be enough to outweigh the bad; we just can’t tip the scales far enough to pay for our own sins. Even when we’re piling up good deeds, the scale keeps tipping to the other side with pride and self-sufficiency. It will never be enough. So, the Father sent the Son He loves, the Son who willingly came for us when we didn’t believe we needed saving. His perfect life and His sacrificial death set us free. His resurrection is our guarantee that eternity waits for us with all the unimaginable joy that comes from being with God forever. It’s easy to type it for a small contingent of readers who generally agree with me. But to say it out loud to someone who doesn’t believe it is a little different.
What are we afraid of? What seals our lips shut when the voice of the Lord echoes in our minds while we talk of snow and coffee and the kids? Why do we press Him back to the corner when we know He is the only way for our friends and acquaintances to be saved?
We fear giving offense, I think. The exclusivity of the gospel is an offense to people who think they don’t need anything to be saved from, who think they are fine without Jesus and His cross. It’s a tough pill to swallow that we cannot save ourselves or even need saving at all. But the exclusivity of the gospel is also indescribably beautiful because in every other setting we have to fruitlessly attempt to fix ourselves. The gospel is good news for us because God doesn’t need us to fix ourselves. Jesus came to us, became one of us, lived perfectly, died sacrificially, and rose victoriously to do what we could never do for ourselves: make us righteous. When we respond to this news with repentance and faith, He gives us His righteousness.
There is no other way. And we should never shrink back from sharing the truth and freedom of the gospel of Jesus.
But we do.
Yesterday at church, one of our members closed the service in prayer after the sermon on John 3. In his southeastern Missouri accent, he proclaimed that “the onliest way to back to God is through Jesus Christ.” I was reminded of the way Scripture repeats words for emphasis. God isn’t just holy. He’s holy, holy, holy. Sometimes we need a superlative that doesn’t quite translate, and I felt the words of my brother-in-Christ yesterday as he prayed and proclaimed: Jesus is the onliest way. Not just the only way, but the onliest.
When I hear His voice as I’m standing in the grocery store or the backyard, at the public library or the coffee shop counter, I can say out loud what I know is true and have always believed is true and what I’m staking my present and forever future on to be true: Jesus is the onliest way to everlasting life, and I want you to know it, too. You can know it and believe it and be utterly changed by it. Perhaps I start with the weather or the book I just read or my preference for coffee over tea, but every conversational path can lead us back to Jesus. When the ruts of daily living are gloriously and mundanely mired down in the Word and prayer and proclamation of Christ crucified, we can always steer our small talks and catch-ups back down the road to Jesus.
What could matter more?
When the ruts of daily living are gloriously and mundanely mired down in the Word and prayer and proclamation of Christ crucified, we can always steer our small talks and catch-ups back down the road to Jesus. Share on X
Photo by Oliver Roos on Unsplash
Glenna Marshall is married to her pastor, William, and lives in rural Southeast Missouri where she tries and fails to keep up with her two energetic sons. She is the author of The Promise is His Presence (P&R) and Everyday Faithfulness (Crossway), and Memorizing Scripture (Moody). Connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.