Follow Jesus Christ

Enoch is one of the Bible’s most mysterious figures. Remarkably little is said about him: “And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.” The New Testament adds that Enoch was translated so that he “did not see death,” and that before this he received the testimony that he had pleased God. Here is a man who had reached an extraordinary intimacy with God and who left earthly life without passing through the gate of natural death: united with the Spirit.

Centuries later Jesus spoke of the deep spiritual unity between human and God: “I in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” In his prayer he asked for his people, “That they may all be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You.” The word “fusion” can be used here to indicate the ultimate direction of such unity: the human will becomes ever more fully aligned with God’s will, and human life becomes an expression of His Spirit.

Enoch was not a Jew. He lived long before Abraham, Moses, the emergence of Israel and the Law, long before Christianity. He had no Bible and no New Testament. He did not know the Sermon on the Mount or the historical Jesus. The Bible does not even tell us which particular religious system he belonged to. How, then, did a man without all that religious information reach such closeness to God? How did this union happen?

Perhaps the answer lies in one simple phrase: Enoch “walked with God.” His relationship with God was less a matter of possessing the right system of knowledge than of living that relationship. What names he used for God, how he pictured the structure of the world, what rites he performed—we know almost nothing. His theology may have seemed primitive to a modern reader, yet his relationship with God was so deep that Scripture singles him out among the generations. Enoch did not use religion as a ladder to heaven. He responded to the God he found in his life. His example warns us against the idea that salvation depends first and foremost on having the correct religious information.

This raises a difficult question: how then should we understand Jesus’ words, “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me”? Christians rightly understand that knowing Christ and merely knowing information about Christ are not the same thing. The question can be sharpened further: does the right information about Jesus save a person, or the reality of God that Jesus revealed and embodied?

Enoch lived long before Jesus. Abraham did not read the Gospels. Moses did not know the Sermon on the Mount. Even Jesus’ disciples did not immediately grasp the full depth of their Teacher’s person. Yet Scripture speaks of their faith and their relationships with God. So the claim “Christ is the only Way” does not necessarily mean that every saved person must, in their earthly life, receive a certain body of historical information about Jesus and intellectually assent to a set of theological propositions.

The content of Jesus’ way is quite concrete. A person discovers God as Father, trusts Him, chooses His will, learns to live as His son or daughter, sees one’s neighbor in other people, and gradually becomes like the Father in love, mercy, truth, and goodness. Jesus did not merely speak about this—he made this Way his own life.

Enoch, “walking with God,” already lived this fundamental reality. Paradoxically: Enoch did not know the historical Jesus, but he knew the Way that Jesus later revealed to the world.

“Only” here refers less to the name of a religion than to the path itself. A person thousands of years ago could be warmed by sunlight without knowing why the sun shines. Ignorance of the mechanism does not destroy the light. Similarly, a person can respond to God without possessing later Christian terminology to describe what is happening.

Jesus himself warned against substituting life with correct profession: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven.” In the picture of the final judgment the righteous ask in surprise, “Lord, when did we see You?” They had done good to Christ without even realizing it. One can know Christ’s name and not walk Christ’s way; one can fail to recognize Christ and still respond to the love, goodness, and truth he represents.

Christ is not a password to be correctly pronounced at the gates of heaven. Knowledge of Jesus is immensely important because in it a person receives a clear and living revelation of God as Father. But revelation as knowledge must not be turned into a formal prerequisite of God’s love.

Enoch walked the Way. Elijah also enters biblical history as one taken by God in an extraordinary manner. But the Bible does not present these lives as a universal mission to reveal the Way to all humanity. They knew God, lived before God, and triumphantly completed their earthly course.

Jesus’ mission is different. He comes not only to live the perfect human life before God himself. He comes to reveal the Father to people: “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” He leaves behind not only memory and teaching, but he promises the Spirit of truth who will dwell with people and guide them.

Enoch can be compared to someone who independently crossed an unknown mountain pass. He really did reach the other side and could tell others about his road. Jesus comes from the other side of the pass, knowing both the beginning and the end of the route. He travels that road with people, points the way, and declares it open to anyone who wishes to go.

Therefore the words “I am the way and the truth and the life” say more than the example of a righteous person. Jesus asserts his unique relation to the Father: “I and the Father are one.” He does not merely seek God—he reveals God to human beings. He does not only speak the truth—he embodies it. He does not only promise life—he says, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Enoch knew God from the standpoint of a human walking toward Him. Jesus came from the Father and opened the road to humanity from the side the human could not see.

The way to God has always existed, and certain individuals have found it. Neither a religious name nor belonging to a tradition is, in itself, this Way. Law may point the direction, theology may try to explain it, the church may help a person walk it, but none of these can be fully identified with the Way of Life itself.

The very way Jesus lived becomes the clearest definition of this Way: his relation to the Father, prayer, trust, doing God’s will, love for people, mercy, inner freedom, and liberation from religious fear. The invisible road to God became visible in a human life.

Enoch, Elijah and other spiritual pioneers walked that road. Jesus did something unprecedented: in one human life he so perfectly expressed both sides of the relationship—God reaching out to humanity and humanity’s response to God—that he could say, “I am the way,” and mean more than a metaphor. Look at Jesus—and you simultaneously see what the Father is like and what a human becomes who lives fully with the Father. The Way always existed, because God always existed and has always been open to his creation. Jesus did not create the possibility for a person to come to God; rather, he fully revealed the nature of this Way in human life.