The Way the Truth, and the Life

What does it mean that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life? If you don’t know the answer, you’re in good company. The disciples who walked with Jesus didn’t immediately know it either (John 14:6-9), and it is very likely that we don’t completely understand the answer today, even though we have mountains of bibles, commentaries, and wise teachers literally at our fingertips 24 hours a day, seven days per week. Still, there are some challenging things that we can understand about his statement.  Jesus’s statement is nested within a discussion he has with his followers in which he tells them of his impending death. He tells them that he is going to his father’s house and that he is preparing a place for them there, and that he is going to return and take them back with him so that they can be where he is. His message is profoundly reassuring and comforting. Then, he curiously tells them that they know the way to that place. Thomas challenges Jesus by asking, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” To which Jesus responds, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:1-6).”  The first major thing to note is that Jesus is not “a” way, but “the” way. He is not “a” truth, but “the” truth, and he is not “a” life, but “the” life. The second major thing to notice is that whatever else Jesus means by being the way, the truth, and the life, those things take you to a destination in which you are totally integrated with God the Father in the same way that Jesus is. He isn’t talking about a geographic location necessarily, but rather an eternal condition. He tells them quite plainly he is in his father, and that they are in Jesus, and that Jesus is in them so that they make a completely integrated whole (John 14:20). When we truly know Jesus, we truly know the Father, and we live in them, and they live in us.

So what exactly might he mean about being the way to that kind of integration?  In one significant sense, he means that his death frees them from the bondage of their sin so that they can be remade.  But in another sense, it means that as they follow him by walking in a hostile world in the same way he walked, they will increasingly take on his character, and also glorify God as the highest possible good (John 14:12-13). The way is a call to sacrifice all other ways by following Jesus’s example (Matthew 26:39).  Jesus repeatedly identified himself as The Truth throughout scripture. In his Sermon on the Mount he characterized himself as having the same authority as the law each time he referenced it, and then continued with, “but I say unto you . . . (Matthew 5).” He also said that he came to fulfill or embody the law (Matthew 5:17).  The psalmist proclaims both God’s law as truth (Psalm 119:42), as well as God’s word as truth (Psalm 119:60). John equates Jesus with God’s word (John 1:1-5). So when Jesus says that he is the truth, he is giving us a living example of how we should integrate ourselves with the truth of God’s law, and the power of his word. To be that kind of embodiment we must love God with everything (even death on a cross if need be), and love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:30-31). Finally, Jesus is the only true life. He creates it, he resurrects it, and he has power over it. Most importantly, he is the source of it (John 15:1-11). To live in that source is to be alive to everything that is truly good. To be outside of that source is to be dead to everything good (Ephesians 2:1-3).

So to go where Jesus is, you must abandon the way of the world and assume the sacrificial way of Jesus. You must embody the truth of the law by fully loving God, and by genuinely loving your neighbor. When God leads you in his way, and shapes you into his truth, then you will have real life, and be a source of real life to others. When fully mature, you will live completely in the house and kingdom of God. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.