Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6, NIV)
Jesus saith to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life, no one doth come unto the Father, if not through me” (John 14:6, YLT)
In John 14 Jesus is having a conversation with his disciples. He starts by comforting and reassuring them and I would say that the whole tone of the conversation is comfort and reassurance. He perhaps mildly remonstrates with Philip after Philip’s question but if he does, given the rest of the conversation, I think he probably is doing it with a smile.
In the middle of the conversation, as part of an answer to a specific question, that is intended primarily to comfort and reassure Jesus’ own disciples, Jesus says “No one comes to the Father except through me.”
The context is not ‘what you should say to people who aren’t my followers’. Yet for some reason, in my experience, Christians often do take that half-verse and make it a litmus test for ‘who is a follower of Jesus’? To me, that is inappropriate because it is taking the verse entirely out of context.
I think it’s unwise to take something out of context and apply it where it was never meant to be applied. I wrote a story about that which was here, but I’ve moved it to its own post now in case it was too distracting.
I also added some thoughts about John 14:6a in a separate post.