“I am the Way the Truth and the Life”
By: Jake Kohl
By: Jake Kohl
John is the only gospel
that uses the I AM statements. In John 14:6, Jesus makes
the sixth statement out of the seven I AM’s in John and states, “I am the Way the Truth and the Life”. Twenty-three
times in the Gospel of John Jesus uses the phrase I Am´ to identify Himself as God
and as the Messiah. In seven of these instances, Christ joins His I Am with
tremendous metaphors which are expressive of His saving relationship toward the
world.[1]
Jesus, knowing that His death was only a
day away, completely withdraws from His ministry to the public and devotes
Himself to His disciples. On the night of His betrayal, Christ delivers a
farewell discourse in which He prepares His disciples for His coming death,
resurrection and departure from them. After hearing Jesus talk about His departure
from them and of Peters coming denial, the disciples are saddened and their
faith was a little stirred. Jesus’ love is revealed even further when He
supported them through their shaken faith, both spiritually and emotionally.
Jesus speaks to comfort their hearts.[2]
Jesus makes the statement, “Let not your hearts be troubled; you believe in
God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not
so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 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´
(John 1:14; 1-4).[3]
This particular passage is said to be
describing the rapture of the church. Christ’s coming to gather His sheep who
are alive and raise the bodies of those believers who have died and take them
all to heaven, which He was referencing His Father’s house. The disciples,
thinking in physical terms, and not spiritual, cannot understand or grasp the
true meaning of what Jesus was saying. In John 14:5, Thomas asks, Lord, we do
not know where You are going, and how can we know the way in which Jesus
responds in John 14:6 with, “ I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one
comes to the Father except through Me”. This statement in itself is a statement
of deity. This is a statement that is saying that there is only one way, and
not many to be saved. He is not saying that Jesus shows the way, but that he is
the way.[4]
The controversy surrounding this statement centers on the exclusivity of Jesus
as the only approach to God. World religions and non-Christian sects’ way of
salvation is about what humanity can do to save itself.[5]
Jesus declared that He is the way to God because He is the truth of God
(John1:14) and the life of God (John 1:4; 3:15-16; 11:25). Jesus identifies
Himself with both the truth and life, which are divine attributes. Since Christ
is the source of life and truth, He must also be the way to God Himself.[6]
After sin entered the world through Adam,
both he and Eve died spiritually and fell from their relationship with God as
with all of their descendents from them to us. Every human being is born
spiritually dead and separated from God (Psalm 51:5; Eph. 2:1-5). Jesus came to
rescue and infuse His life into spiritually dead people (Gal. 2:20; Eph. 2:1-5;
Col. 1:27). There is only one way for mankind to recover from the fall and
separation; that exclusive way is Jesus Christ, the God-man. He is 100 percent God and 100
percent man. As a man, Jesus lived a perfect, sinless life fulfilling God’s law
on behalf of all humanity (Matt. 5:17). He died a brutal death satisfying God’s
righteous anger against the sins of the world (1 John 2:2). And then to the
applause of heaven and the disappointment of hell, he miraculously rose
from the dead to proclaim His deity, to defeat Satan and death and to freely
provide man with resurrection life making it possible for man to unite
once again with God (John 11:25; Rom. 6:4-5; Col. 2:13-15).[7]
Jesus is fully God, only His
perfect, sinless life, offered as a sacrifice, is worthy to reconcile man to
God.[8] Jesus
is the mediator between God and man. Because He is fully man and fully God, He represents
all of mankind before God. In 1 Timothy 2:5-6 it states that for there is one
God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave
Himself ransom for all, to be testified in due time. Scripture teaches us in 2
Samuel 22:31 that God’s ways are perfect, and that our ways lead to death. Jesus
parallels these teachings in that He led a perfect, sinless life, and His way
is the only perfect way to the Father. Jesus is our salvation and only hope. Man’s
ways of trying to reach God by works are doomed to failure and death.
Deuteronomy 32:4 states that God
is a God of truth. If God is a God of truth, then God cannot lie. Since God is
a God of truth, then God Himself testifies to the identity of Jesus as God and as
the Messiah. 1 John 5:10 states, He who believes in the Son of God has the
witness in himself; he who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he
has not believed the testimony that God has given of His Son. If someone
refuses the testimony of God regarding His Son, such rejection is the ultimate
form of blasphemy for it is tantamount to calling God a liar.[9] Knowing
Christ also knows God.
Many in today’s culture
also claim that all religions are the same. However, the law of
non-contradiction states that two opposites cannot be true at the same time.[10]
Therefore due to the many differences in beliefs, all religions cannot be
the same, and all religions cannot lead to God. With that being said; Jesus
is the life. He is the source of natural life, the Creator of all things, in
which He is deity. The Lord God formed
man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath
of life; and man became a living being thus, things were made through Him, and
without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was
the light of men (John 1:3-4). In Galatians 2:20, Paul states that he has been
crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me;
and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son
of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. When a person puts their
trust in Christ for salvation, he spiritually participates with the Lord
in His crucifixion and His victory over sin and death. The believer’s old self
is dead, having been crucified with Christ. The point of all this is that when
Jesus used the “I AM” construction he was speaking in the style of deity.[11]
Jesus is the Way the
Truth and the Life!
Bibliography
Gray, Derwin L.The Popular Encyclopedia of Apologetics. Edited by Ed
Hindson and ErgunCaner. Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 2008.MacArthur, John.
Law of Non-Contradiction. CARM. http://carm.org/dictionary-law-of-non-contradiction .
Accessed on 02/27/2012
Leon Morris, The “I AM” Sayings: studies in the theology of
John (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1989),
107, 119.
The MacArthur Bible Commentary. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2005.
Towns, Elmer. The Gospel of John: Believe and Live. Chattanooga, TN: AMG,
2002
[1] John MacArthur, The MacArthur Bible
Commentary (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2005), 1591
[2]
Ibid 1403
[3]
John 1:14: 1-4 Holy Bible
[4]
Leon Morris, The “I AM” Sayings: studies in the theology of
John (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1989),
119.
[5] Derwin L. Gray, The Popular
Encyclopedia of Apologetics, Edited by Ed Hindson and Ergun Caner, (Eugene, OR:
Harvest House, 2008), 124
[7] Derwin
L. Gray, The Popular Encyclopedia of Apologetics, Edited by Ed Hindson and Ergun
Caner, (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 2008), 124
[8]
Ibid 125
[9] The MacArthur Bible
Commentary. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2005
[10] Law of non-contradiction. CARM. http://carm.org/dictionary-law-of-non-contradiction . Accessed on 02/27/2012
[11]
Leon Morris, The “I AM” Sayings: studies in the theology of
John (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1989),
107.
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