THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE

Thursday 19 December

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know.” Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way? Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. John 14:3-6 (NKJV)

Not many people realise the significance of this familiar passage that holds deeper truths than what can been seen on the surface. Let’s unpack verse 6 together and dig for what lies below. ‘Orthotomeo’ is a Greek word that means to cut straight or make a straight cut. This is why the Apostle Paul tells Timothy to Rightly ‘Divide’ the word of truth in 2 Timothy 2:15b. We excavate the word to find the treasure. We never innovate the word. What it meant when the author wrote it is what it still means today. It’s our job to find out exactly what it was.

If you read your Bible and interpret it using English only you will miss the full import of what Jesus was communicating here. The original text of John 14:6 reads as follows: ‘I am the way, the truth, which is the life. The ‘and’ is ‘kai’ in the Greek which means ‘that is’ or ‘which is.

Jesus said to His disciples ‘and the way you know’ meaning the way is Himself, but Thomas didn’t understand what He was saying to them.

Earlier in the gospel of John, Jesus made this statement in John 10:9 ‘I am the gate/door. If anyone enters through Me, he will be saved. He will come in and go out and find pasture.’

So we’ve established the way was Jesus Christ Himself. What about His claim of being the truth? Here are two scriptures that confirm this fact.

John 1:14b says ‘We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.’ ‘And’ here again means which is or that is. In other words, Jesus was ‘full of grace which is truth.’

John 1:17 says ‘For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.’ The word truth is ‘aletheia’ in the Greek means ‘reality’ so we can now say ‘grace that is reality came by Jesus Christ.’

Let’s come back to John 14:6 with this new understanding. ‘I am the way, the reality, that is the life.’ Notice Jesus didn’t say I am a way, a truth, that is a life. He used ‘the’ as the definite article to convey to us that He is the only way, the only reality and that in Him only is life. That’s because there is no way, no truth and no life outside of Christ.

Can we prove this biblically?

John 1:4 says ‘in Him was life and the life was the light of men’

The word for life is Zoe in the Greek and it means in essence eternal life which is everlasting life with a beginning.

In Jesus prayer in John 17:3, He makes this remarkable statement:

‘And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.’ Did you see it? Jesus calls Himself eternal life.

‘I am the way, the reality, that is eternal life’

It’s important to remember that existence is not eternal life. When God told Adam ‘you shall surely die’ which meant ‘in dying you shall die,’ He was talking about spiritual seperation not physical death. This is the ‘first death’ that came upon all men through the fall. The ‘second death’ is when those who have only existed and never received eternal life will be resurrected to be destroyed which includes physical destruction.

No wonder the Bible says to be without Christ is to be without hope.

Acts 4:12 says ‘Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven, given among men by which we must be saved.’

There is only one way, one reality, which is the personification of eternal life Himself: Jesus Christ.

APPLICATION

Walk everyday with the revelation that Jesus is the only one who can bring direction, reality and eternal life to all those who are separated from the love of God which is in Christ.