One of Jesus’ best-known sayings is ‘No-one comes to the Father except through me’ (John 14.6). Christians sometimes assume this means no-one can be saved except by becoming a Christian in this life.

They forget that in John’s Gospel Jesus speaks as the eternal Word of God, the Logos. The Logos means the divine reason and conscience that God shares with every human being made in his image. John’s prologue tells us that, as Logos, Jesus is already ‘the light that enlightens everyone who comes into the world’ – including those who never even heard his name (John 1.9).

So when Jesus says ‘No-one comes to the Father except through me’ he doesn’t mean ‘No-one can be saved except by being a card-carrying Christian’, but rather ‘No-one comes to God except by the Logos that is in them’ – that is, by following the reason and conscience that belong to everyone.

We should recognise that God can work through other faiths and philosophies too. St Paul recognised that we are all the children of God, ‘in whom we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17.28).

That is not to say that all religions are the same. The unique claim of Christianity is that in Jesus God was actually born and died as one of us.

Jesus is therefore the ultimate revelation of God, and the safest way to Him. But that should never stop us respecting the measure of truth and wisdom that is already everyone's, as God’s image in them.