I AM The Way, The Truth and The Life
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I AM The Way, The Truth and The Life
— Sharon Edmundson
The passage of the Bible we're gonna look at today is from the book of John chapter 14, verses 1 to 14.
To give you some context for this passage, Jesus is with his friends celebrating the Passover meal, which is a meal that the Jews celebrate every year, remembering how God delivered the Jewish people from Egypt. Even though he's their leader, Jesus has washed his friends' feet, which is the role of a servant, and one of the group has just left in order to betray Jesus.
And Jesus knew that he was being betrayed and was about to face a brutal death and that those still present at the meal were about to abandon him to save their own necks, even though they thought they were brave and up to everything and giving it all the talk. Talk about trauma. They were in for a really bad week where everything they thought they knew would appear to fall apart.
Have you ever felt like that?
It's in this context that in today's passage and the passage just before it, Jesus is preparing his close friends, his followers, for the dark time that they're about to go through. Although his words were originally meant for that specific group of people, they also speak to us today about handling our own difficult situations.
We'll also look briefly at a couple of questions. Firstly, is Christianity exclusive or inclusive? And secondly is the Christian faith a blind faith, a faith that believes despite evidence to the contrary?
So how did Jesus prepare his followers for the horror to come? He said,
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”
He's basically telling them not to let their circumstances or their troubled feelings have the last say in the situation because there's a bigger picture.
Now, there are plenty of verses in the Bible that talk about how God's concern with the details of our lives. The Bible says that God cares so much for us that even the hairs on our heads are numbered! That is a lot of care, especially in our house where the vacuum cleaner has a really hard time keeping up with the hairs that keep falling out of our heads.
The Bible also says that we can learn about God's character through the world that he's made.
Now our eldest son Josh is studying theoretical physics at university, and I was talking with him one day about the different branches of physics. One of them is quantum physics and it deals with the smallest components of the universe. And then there's astrophysics, which looks at the bigger picture of the universe. In quantum physics, we see God's care for the minute details in the structure of molecules and atoms and in astrophysics, we see his care for the big picture in the awesomeness of our galaxy and beyond and how everything is fine-tuned to work together.
So what's God's big picture in terms of our lives?
It's this, that there's more to life than what we see now. And there's life after death. That all the things that are wrong in the world will be put right. That we will be able to live with God in an amazing place that he's prepared for us. Have you ever felt like the moment you're in is an eternity? I certainly have.
Maybe you've been waiting for your perfect job or your perfect partner and nothing's happening. Maybe you're going through cancer treatment or you've got another long-term illness, or you've lost someone that you love. God says, although things on earth can be really tough, a better day is coming. Even if we get better days on earth, that won't compare to what God has waiting for us in eternity. But back to our passage in John.
How do we get to this place that Jesus is preparing for us? In fact, Thomas, one of the lot asked Jesus the same question.
“Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.””
Jesus is making three claims about himself here:
That he is the way, the only way to God,
That he is the truth, and
That he is the life.
Let's look at those three things, one at a time.
#1 - The Way
Jesus says he is the way and that no one comes to the Father except through him. But hang on a minute. Isn't that a bit narrow-minded? Don't all religions lead to God? Not according to Jesus. Jesus says he is the only way to God because he's the only one with the real solution to the real problem. In this Christianity is exclusive. It excludes all other possible ways to God.
So what is the problem with the world? How would you answer that question?
Jesus' disciples might have answered that question by saying, the problem was that they were an oppressed nation as they were being ruled by the Romans and that that was the issue that Jesus should be sorting out.
There are many people today who would say the same thing, not about the Romans, but that the problem with the world today is oppression. That one group is oppressing another, that men are oppressing women, or that one ethnic group is oppressing another, or that parents are oppressing children and so on.
We all know that oppression is a reality. I think of a lady I know who came to this country thinking that she had this great new job opportunity only to find out that when she arrived in this country, she had her ID papers taken off her by her host family who made her work for long hours for them. She wasn't allowed out. She wasn't allowed to learn the language. Her new job opportunity was in fact, modern-day slavery. Or we hear about the men who abuse their wives and control everything that they do or the other way around, and people are discriminated against because of the colour of their skin.
Maybe you've experienced one of these forms of oppression. Jesus is against oppression. Psalm 9 says this,
“He rules the world in righteousness and judges the peoples with equity. The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.”
The Bible's definition of oppression is different to some of the definitions of oppression that are going around today.
We're not necessarily being oppressed if we're not allowed to do the things we want to do. For example, when our kids were younger, they had a limit on the amount of TV they could watch every day. This rule wasn't popular with them, and it did stop them from watching the amount of TV that they would've liked.
But the rule wasn't there to oppress them. It was there to help them to learn to have healthy boundaries, and it was there to help them have a life. It's one I think I probably need to relearn for myself. As I've gotten into bad habits during covid and I still haven't kicked the habit however long later, that is.
We're not also necessarily oppressed if someone tells us that our lifestyle is wrong and what they say makes us feel upset. If a friend of yours was convinced that they'd just met the perfect man for them, but you knew he was an abusive man, the loving thing to do would be to warn your friend, even if they didn't like what you had to say and thought you were interfering.
Love isn't just one-dimensional. It's not just about being patient and kind and all those nice, fluffy things. It's also about courage and justice and confronting what is wrong. Proverbs 27 verse 6 says,
“Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.”
But although oppression is a problem in the world, and as we've seen, God is against genuine oppression, Jesus could see a deeper problem, not just in one group of people, but in all of us. That is the fact that we're all lost, we're all spiritually dead, and we're all disconnected from God, and in that Christianity is very inclusive.
We're all part of the problem. We're all included in that. We may not necessarily be oppressing other people or be what we would consider the worst people on the planet, but we've all missed God's standard. We all owe God a debt we can't pay.
I've heard it said many times, how can a loving God send anyone to hell? But how can a holy God and a just God allow anyone who is unholy into heaven? C.S. Lewis, the writer and theologian said,
God in his mercy doesn't thrust an eternity with him onto people who've actively chosen to live without him in this life.
— C. S. Lewis
He passionately wants all of us, but he lets us choose. The Bible tells us that God himself came down to earth in a human body as Jesus to pay the debt we owe so that he can be both loving and just, and that anyone who allows him to pay their debt for them is able to stand in God's presence now and be with him for eternity. In this, Christianity is also inclusive. The Bible says,
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
#2 - The Truth
The second claim that Jesus made about himself here is that he is the truth.
A popular phrase we hear nowadays is you live your truth and I'll live mine, and there are some good things about that statement.
For example, when our son Josh first went to university, on the very first night, his flatmates decided to play a drinking game that involved drinking lots of alcohol after various rounds of something. Josh didn't want to drink loads of alcohol, so he said he'd play the game with water. The others thought it was a little bit unusual, but they were fine about it. In this case, "live your own truth" is a helpful thing, and living your own truth also allows people not to have to conform to the ever-changing beauty standards.
But there is a negative side to "live your truth". The implication of this statement is often that truth isn't knowable, and it's whatever you decide, and that can change from person to person and from day to day, and from emotion to emotion.
That's okay if it's talking about food preferences or study styles, but if it's talking about anything deeper than that, Jesus says not only is the truth knowable, but it's knowable not just on an intellectual level, but on a relational level. He defines what is true and what is good and what is right. And I've already done a talk about Truth for Crowd, which you can listen to on our website. So I'm not gonna go into any more detail about that subject now.
But there've been times in my life when I wasn't doing well mentally or emotionally, and I felt like there was this mist where I couldn't see anything around me and didn't know which way was up and which way was down. And I felt like a pilot in a cloud who couldn't see anything out of the windows because of all the fog and had to rely on the instruments in front of them to tell them what was what. God's word was like that for me, telling me what's true and showing me the step each way.
#3 - The Life
The third claim that Jesus made about himself is that he is the life. He's not about a dead, boring religion, but when we follow Jesus, it brings life into every area of our lives.
For example, the Bible says that I'm made in God's image. That automatically gives me value and significance just by existing, regardless of what I've done. And God says he's got a good plan for my life, that I'm part of his body, carrying out his plans on Earth. That gives me purpose. He tells me to take ownership of the things I do and say that are wrong. He shows me how to forgive. But not to facilitate anyone's bad behaviour. That gives me peace with people, but it also gives me good boundaries. And all of these things are great for my mental health, which is a big thing at the moment.
I could go on with every area of life it impacts. But back to today's passage, where we were talking about going through tough times. Have you ever thought, if only I could just see God and hear his voice audibly, that will get me through any tough time? That would be enough for me. I certainly have.
Philip, one of the group with Jesus, thought this too.
“Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.”
If you've ever wondered what God looks like, look at Jesus in the Bible. He claims that He is God, come in human form. We can read about him, but we can also experience God through His Holy Spirit. The next verses say this,
“Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. ”
Jesus tells us to believe him. And contrary to what many people think, Christianity isn't a case of believing despite the facts. Jesus says, if you can't believe in me just because of my words alone, look at the evidence of all the things that I've done. So he is saying, you can look at the evidence to support the claims that he's made.
You might think, well, how can I look at the evidence when all this stuff happened so long ago? Well, I'd like to recommend a book called Forensic Faith that looks at those sorts of questions.
It's written by a guy called Jay Warner Wallace, and he's a homicide detective in the States. He specializes in cold cases, in other words, murder cases that are old and unsolved. He was an atheist but decided to investigate the Christian faith as if it were one of his cold cases to prove that it was a load of rubbish, but he actually found the evidence really compelling and ended up committing his life to Jesus.
One of the things he says is that in any of his cases, he gathers all the evidence, but he's never a hundred per cent sure, but you can come to a conclusion where you are beyond a reasonable doubt. There'll always be unanswered questions and things we're not sure about, but it's the same for any worldview.
It's the same if you are an atheist or a Hindu or a Buddhist or whatever, and that's where faith comes in. With Christianity, evidence takes us so far and faith takes us the rest of the way.
“Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it. “If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth.”
There are loads of things in here that I don't have time to pick up on, but the one thing I will pick up on is that a friend from a Muslim background once asked me,
"If God just forgives you for all this bad stuff you do, what is there to stop you from carrying on doing all the bad stuff?"
The suggestion of the question is that we only do good things so that God won't punish us. Verse 15 that we just read tells us the answer. It's love.
Love is a much healthier motivator than fear in relationships. And when we give our lives to God, he makes us new on the inside. So that we can do things out of love.
For example, when our kids were small, they often did the right thing to avoid the consequences of doing the wrong thing. And we made sure there were consequences. So it means so much more. The times when they've offered to help me with something, not because they have to, but because they love me and they want to help, they've chosen to do it out of their own free will.
And as Christians, when we remember who God is and how much he loves us, we don't do stuff to get him to love us. We already have His love. We do good things because he loved us first and we love him back. So we have hope for the future, but we also have a relationship with God himself in the present. And that is good news!
CONVERSATION STREET
With: Matt Edmundson & Anna Kettle
What is Conversation Street?
Conversation Street is part of our live stream, where the hosts (in this case, Matt & Anna) chat through Sharon's talk and answer questions that were sent in through the live stream. You can watch the conversation in the video, it starts 32 mins 18 s into the live stream, or you can go straight there by clicking here. This week’s questions and topics of conversation are:
What did you think about Sharon's talk?
Is it fair to say that you need to know life fully to find comfort in Jesus?
How is the Christian faith inclusive and in what way is it exclusive?
How is the Bible's definition of oppression different to what we might define it as today?
"You live your truth and I'll live mine." How is that modern-day statement self-contradicting?
How is Jesus' statement, "I am the way, the truth and the life" challenging?
Can there be such a thing as absolute truth? And is that what Jesus meant when he said that He was the Truth?
More Bible verses on The Way, the Truth and The Life
John 10:9 - I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.
1 Timothy 2:5 - For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
Hebrews 10:19,20 - Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh,
Acts 4:12 - And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.
1 John 1:8 - If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
1 John 3:18 - Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
1 John 4:6 - We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.
2 Timothy 2:15 - Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.
Ephesians 6:14 - Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place,
Psalms 119:160 - All your words are true; all your righteous laws are eternal.
Psalms 145:18 - The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.
Jeremiah 10:10 - But the Lord is the true God; he is the living God and the everlasting King. At his wrath the earth quakes, and the nations cannot endure his indignation.
1 Thessalonians 1:9 - for they keep talking about the wonderful welcome you gave us and how you turned away from idols to serve the living and true God.
Acts 20:28 - Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.
John 14:6 - Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.
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