Jesus Christ Is the Way
Brian J. Holmes, of the Seventy
Elder Holmes teaches that binding ourselves to Christ through covenants and prophets leads home.
Open talk in Gospel LibraryContents
Topics
Recognize your need for the Savior’s guidance
Elder Holmes compares life to a difficult mountain marathon and teaches that every person needs help beyond their own strength. Like the blind runner who depended on his guide, we need Jesus Christ to help us reach our eternal destination.
Like that marathon, our journey through life has moments of beauty and joy but is no walk in the park.
We all want to cross the heavenly finish line and gain eternal life.
We all face trials. Without a power greater than our own, no one successfully finishes this race.
At some point, we are all like the blind runner. We all need a guide.Key Points:
- Life includes both beauty and difficulty.
- Our goal is to gain eternal life.
- Mortal challenges cannot be overcome by human strength alone.
- Every person eventually reaches moments of dependence and spiritual need.
- Jesus Christ is the guide we all need.
- When have you felt that a challenge in life was beyond your own ability to handle?
- What experience has taught you that you truly need the Savior’s help?
- When have you felt guided by the Lord during a confusing or difficult season?
- How has a trial helped you become more humble and willing to rely on Jesus Christ?
Trust Jesus Christ as the only way to the Father
The talk teaches that Jesus Christ alone made salvation possible through His perfect life, Atonement, and Resurrection. He is not merely one guide among many; He is the only path that leads to eternal life.
As President Dallin H. Oaks taught, the strongest help God has given us is a Savior, Jesus Christ.
Through His Atonement, Jesus Christ “has done everything that is essential for our journey through mortality toward the destiny outlined in the plan of our Heavenly Father.”
Because He lived a perfect life, because He bore every sin and every sorrow, because He broke the bands of death, Jesus Christ alone can stand before the world and declare, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”
In that simple declaration, the Savior taught that He is not only our guide; He is the path.
His way is the only path that leads to eternal life.Key Points:
- God’s greatest help to His children is the gift of a Savior.
- Jesus Christ accomplished everything essential for salvation.
- His perfect life, Atonement, and Resurrection qualify Him uniquely to save.
- Jesus Christ is not just a teacher or example; He is the only way back to the Father.
- Eternal life comes only through Him.
- When have you felt peace or hope through the Atonement of Jesus Christ?
- How have you come to know that Jesus Christ is more than a moral teacher—that He is the Savior?
- What personal experience has strengthened your testimony that Christ is the only way to lasting peace and salvation?
- When have you felt the Savior help you carry sorrow, weakness, or sin?
Walk the covenant path with the Savior
Elder Holmes teaches that the Savior invites us to walk with Him on the covenant path. We enter that path through faith, repentance, and sacred ordinances, and those ordinances are essential to entering the kingdom of God.
Our Savior invites us to walk with Him.
His way is the covenant path, the one path that leads to our celestial finish line.
We choose to walk the covenant path by exercising faith in Jesus Christ unto repentance, receiving the ordinances of His gospel, and enduring to the end.
These ordinances are essential.
Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.Key Points:
- The covenant path is the Savior’s path.
- We begin and continue on that path through faith in Jesus Christ and repentance.
- Receiving gospel ordinances is necessary, not optional.
- Enduring to the end is part of covenant discipleship.
- The covenant path leads to our celestial destination.
- How has baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, or temple covenants changed your life?
- When have you felt that repentance brought you closer to Jesus Christ?
- What experiences have helped you appreciate the importance of ordinances?
- How have you seen the covenant path bring direction and purpose to your life?
Stay bound to Christ through faithful covenants
Covenants connect us to Jesus Christ the way the tether connected the blind runner to his guide. As we remain faithful, we receive strength, hope, peace, and joy, especially during life’s steep stretches.
Just as the band tethered the blind runner to his guide, covenants bind us to our guide—Jesus Christ.
The covenant connection we have with our Heavenly Father and His resurrected and living Son is the supernal source of perspective, hope, power, peace, and enduring joy.
Once we bind ourselves to our Savior through covenant, only we can sever the tie. Jesus never will.
As we remain tightly bound to Him, He is bound to us.
We can expect His power to bless us with strength and joy even when we are experiencing a steep stretch of life.
But if we turn away, we have no such promise.
Covenant blessings flow from ongoing faithfulness, not merely from past participation.Key Points:
- Covenants create a binding relationship with Jesus Christ.
- The Savior is always faithful to His covenant relationship.
- Covenant connection brings divine power, peace, and joy.
- Blessings come through continued faithfulness, not just past covenant making.
- Turning away from Christ cuts us off from promised covenant blessings.
- When have you felt covenant strength during a hard time?
- How has sacrament worship helped you stay bound to the Savior?
- What experience has shown you that the Lord keeps His promises?
- When have you noticed a difference between merely participating in the gospel and living it faithfully?
- How have temple or baptismal covenants brought you peace or perspective?
Choose to remain with Christ when discipleship feels hard
The talk uses Peter’s response to Jesus to teach that when doubts arise or discipleship becomes demanding, the answer is not to leave Christ but to stay with Him. Only He has the words of eternal life.
When our path gets hard—and it will—we can remember the Apostle Peter.
When the road of discipleship became steep and many “walked no more” with Jesus, He turned to the Twelve and asked, “Will ye also go away?”
Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.
And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.
When we have doubts, when discipleship feels demanding, when others turn back, that is the moment to stay bound to Christ just as Peter did.
There is nowhere else to go; only Christ has the words of eternal life.Key Points:
- Discipleship will include difficult and stretching moments.
- Some people choose to turn away when following Christ becomes hard.
- Jesus invites each disciple to decide whether they will remain with Him.
- Peter’s example shows faithful loyalty rooted in testimony.
- In moments of doubt, Christ remains the only true source of eternal life.
- When have you chosen to stay faithful even without having every answer?
- What experience has helped you say, like Peter, "Lord, to whom shall we go?"
- How has the Lord strengthened you during a season of doubt or discouragement?
- When have you seen blessings come from staying committed during a spiritually difficult time?
Follow the living prophet to walk with Jesus
Elder Holmes teaches that following Jesus Christ includes following His prophet. The Savior reveals Himself through prophets and governs His Church through them, so prophetic guidance is essential to true discipleship.
As we walk with our Savior along the covenant path, we come to know an essential truth: To walk with Jesus is to follow His prophet.
The Savior Himself calls prophets, speaks through them, and governs His Church by them.
None of us could know the true and living Christ without prophetic witness.
From Adam to Noah, Moses to Peter, and Joseph Smith to our day, God has chosen to reveal His Son to His children through a prophet.Key Points:
- Jesus Christ calls prophets and works through them.
- Prophets testify of the true and living Christ.
- God has consistently used prophets throughout history.
- Following the prophet is part of following Jesus Christ.
- Modern prophetic leadership is evidence of the restored Church.
- When has counsel from the living prophet helped you come closer to Jesus Christ?
- What conference message or prophetic invitation has blessed your life?
- How has your testimony of prophets grown over time?
- What experience has shown you that the Lord leads His Church through living prophets?
Reject spiritual self-direction and heed prophetic voices
The talk warns against the idea that a person can fully follow Jesus while rejecting His prophets and Church. Without prophetic guidance, people reshape Christ and doctrine according to personal preference, leading to confusion and instability.
Some say, “I don’t need a prophet or a church to follow Jesus.”
But Jesus Himself said to His chosen Apostles, “He that heareth you heareth me; and he that despiseth you despiseth me.”
To knowingly reject His prophets is, by His own definition, to reject Him.
The Lord warned of a time when “every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god.”
Without apostles and prophets, our perception of Christ gradually becomes whatever we want Him to be.
Our understanding of doctrine shifts. Our commitment to standards erodes. Unity dissolves.Key Points:
- Jesus identifies hearing His servants with hearing Him.
- Rejecting authorized prophetic voices is rejecting Christ’s order.
- Self-directed religion leads people to create God in their own image.
- Without prophets, doctrine and standards become unstable.
- Prophetic leadership protects unity and truth.
- When have you seen the danger of relying only on personal opinion in spiritual matters?
- How has prophetic counsel protected you from confusion or drift?
- What experience has taught you the value of belonging to Christ’s Church, not just admiring Christ from a distance?
- When have you had to choose between popular ideas and prophetic counsel?
Build your life on apostles, prophets, and Jesus Christ
The Church is established on apostles and prophets with Jesus Christ as the chief cornerstone. This divine pattern gives stability, protects against false doctrine, and helps the Saints remain spiritually grounded and unmoved.
That is why Paul taught that the Church is “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone.”
Not so that we would be controlled but so that we would be established, “that we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine.”
Our Savior promised, “If my people will hearken unto my voice, and unto the voice of my servants whom I have appointed to lead my people, … they shall not be moved out of their place.”Key Points:
- Christ is the chief cornerstone of His Church.
- Apostles and prophets form the foundation He has established.
- This structure is meant to establish and protect disciples, not control them.
- Prophetic guidance helps members avoid spiritual instability and false doctrine.
- Those who heed the Lord and His appointed servants will not be moved out of their place.
- When has the structure of the Church brought stability to your life?
- How have apostles’ and prophets’ teachings helped you avoid confusion?
- What experience has shown you that the Lord’s way establishes rather than restricts?
- When have you felt spiritually anchored by Christ and His Church?
Trust Christ to lead you safely home
Elder Holmes concludes by testifying that Heavenly Father wants all His children to return home and that Jesus Christ is the only way back. Because the Savior has already climbed the greatest mountain, we do not face our own mountains alone.
Brothers and sisters, our Father in Heaven desires all His children to come home.
His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ, is the only way back.
I testify that because Jesus Christ climbed the steepest mountain of all as He bore the weight of our salvation, we never have to face our mountains alone.
As we bind ourselves to Him through covenant and follow His living prophet, we walk the one path that leads us safely home.Key Points:
- Heavenly Father’s desire is to bring His children home.
- Jesus Christ is the only way to return to the Father.
- The Savior has already overcome the greatest burden through His Atonement.
- Because of Him, we do not climb life’s mountains alone.
- Covenants and prophetic guidance help us stay on the path home.
- When have you felt that the Savior was with you in your personal mountains?
- How has your hope in returning to Heavenly Father grown through Jesus Christ?
- What experience has helped you trust that the Lord can lead you safely home?
- How have covenants and prophetic counsel helped you keep an eternal perspective?
