Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of John 14:6

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

6. I am the way ] The pronoun is emphatic; I and no other: Ego sum Via, Veritas, Vita. S. Thomas had wished rather to know about the goal; Christ shews that for him, and therefore for us, it is more important to know the way. Hence the order; although Christ is the Truth and the Life before He is the Way. The Word is the Truth and the Life from all eternity with the Father: He becomes the Way for us by taking our nature. He is the Way to the many abodes in His Father’s home, the Way to the Father Himself; and that by His doctrine and example, by His Death and Resurrection. In harmony with this passage ‘the Way’ soon became a recognised name for Christianity; Act 9:2; Act 19:9; Act 19:23; Act 22:4; Act 24:22 (comp. Act 24:14; 2Pe 2:2). But this is obscured in our version by the common inaccuracy ‘ this way’ or ‘ that way’ for ‘ the Way.’ (See on Joh 1:21; Joh 1:25, Joh 6:48.)

the truth ] Better, and the Truth, being from all eternity in the form of God, Who cannot lie (Php 2:6; Heb 6:18), and being the representative on earth of a Sender Who is true (Joh 8:26). To know the Truth is also to know the Way to God, Who must be approached and worshipped in truth (Joh 4:23). Comp. Heb 11:6 ; 1Jn 5:20.

and the life ] Comp. Joh 11:25. He is the Life, being one with the living Father and being sent by Him (Joh 6:57, Joh 10:30). See on Joh 1:4, Joh 6:50-51, and comp. 1Jn 5:12; Gal 2:20. Here again to know the Life is to know the Way to God.

no man cometh unto the Father, but by me ] Christ continues to insist that the Way is of the first importance to know. ‘Through Him we have access unto the Father’ (Eph 2:18). Comp. Heb 10:19-22; 1Pe 3:18.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

I am the way – See Isa 35:8. By this is meant, doubtless, that they and all others were to have access to God only by obeying the instructions, imitating the example, and depending on the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was the leader in the road, the guide to the wandering, the teacher of the ignorant, and the example to all. See Joh 6:68; Thou hast the words of eternal life; 1Pe 2:21; Christ – suffered for us, leaving us an example that ye should follow his steps; Heb 9:8-9.

The truth – The source of truth, or he who originates and communicates truth for the salvation of men. Truth is a representation of things as they are. The life, the purity, and the teaching of Jesus Christ was the most complete and perfect representation of the things of the eternal world that has been or can be presented to man. The ceremonies of the Jews were shadows; the life of Jesus was the truth. The opinions of men are fancy, but the doctrines of Jesus were nothing more than a representation of facts as they exist in the government of God. It is implied in this, also, that Jesus was the fountain of all truth; that by his inspiration the prophets spoke, and that by him all truth is communicated to men. See the notes at Joh 1:17.

The life – See Joh 11:25, and the notes at Joh 1:4.

No man cometh to the Father but by me – To come to the Father is to obtain his favor, to have access to his throne by prayer, and finally to enter his kingdom. No man can obtain any of these things except by the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. By coming by him is meant coming in his name and depending on his merits. We are ignorant, and he alone can guide us. We are sinful, and it is only by his merits that we can be pardoned. We are blind, and he only can enlighten us. God has appointed him as the Mediator, and has ordained that all blessings shall descend to this world through him. Hence he has put the world under his control; has given the affairs of men into his hand, and has appointed him to dispense whatever may be necessary for our peace, pardon, and salvation, Act 4:12; Act 5:31.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Joh 14:6

Jesus said unto him, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life

Brief expositions

The way of a holy conversation; the truth of a heavenly doctrine; the life of a bliss everlasting (Leo)

.

The way to beginners, the truth to the progressing (chap. 8:32), the life to the perfect (Ferus)

. I am the Way, leading to the truth; I am the Truth, promising life; I am the Life, which I give (St. Augustine)

. I am the Way and the Life; the way on earth, the life in heaven: I am He, to whom you go; I am He, by whom you go (St. Augustine)

. The way, in which we walk by charity; the truth, to which we cling by faith; the life, to which we aspire by hope. The life in His example, the truth in His promise, the life in His reward (St. Bernard)

. Truth lies between way and life, as if the way to life were through truth (Leigh)

. The true way to eternal life (Dr. Whichcote)

. Without the Way there is no going; without the Truth there is no knowing; without the Life there is no living. I am the Way which thou oughtest to follow; the Truth which thou oughtest to trust; the Life which thou oughtest to hope for. I am the inviolable Way, the infallible Truth, the Godless Life. If thou remain in My way thou shalt know the truth, and the truth shall make thee free and thou shalt lay hold on eternal life. (Thomas a Kempis.)

The Way, the Truth, and the Life

Mistakes have been made the occasion of profoundest utterances. It was so here

I. I AM THE WAY. Mans primal communion with God in Eden was broken by his fall. Henceforth humanity became as an islet in mid-ocean, without material for bridge or boat. And the Eternal Word became flesh in order that He himself might become the causeway which should reconnect the island man and the continent God. He not only shows the way, as our Teacher, He is the way itself, the true ladder connecting earth and heaven. He is alike the portal, the line of direction, the true Scala Santa, The great worlds altar stairs that slope through darkness up to God. His Via Dolorosa is our Via Gloriosa. His valley of Achor is our door of hope.

II. I AM THE TRUTH.

1. In distinction from what is symbolic. He is the fulfiller and realizer of all prophetic hints. Thus He is said to be the True Light, the True Bread, the True Tabernacle, etc.

2. In distinction from what is phenomenal. For truths are ever greater than facts. There is no necessary morality in mere facts as such, e.g., in the fact that every particle of matter attracts every other particle in the direct ratio of its mass, and in the inverse ratio of the square of its distance. Truth is moral, and can exist only in connection with person, i.e., a person who shall somehow stand as its end or representation. Such a person is Christ. He not only has truth, He is the Truth–Himself its eternal embodiment; its source, means, and end. He is the meaning of facts. All things have been created through Him and for Him. He is creations definition or final cause.

III. I AM THE LIFE.

1. Of all animate existence; all things are also subsisting in Him.

2. Particularly is this true of man.

(1) Jesus Christ is the life of our bodily nature. Poor Marthas and Marys may weep by the tombs of dead brothers; but Jesus Christ shall say, I am the Resurrection and the Life.

(2) Of our spiritual nature, God hath given unto us eternal life and this life, is in His Son. Conclusion: Christ is the only way, No man cometh, etc. Other voices indeed proclaim the contrary; but they are the voices of false prophets. Liberalism says: There are many ways to the Father; for instance, nature, aesthetics, charity, etc. Materialism says: It is through the uplifting of environment. Ecclesiasticism says: It is through the Church, the sacraments. But all who undertake to climb over into the fold by any other way are thieves and robbers. (G. D. Boardman, D. D.)

The Way, the Truth, and the Life

Science tells us that there are three elements in light–the illuminating, the chemical, and the heat power. So in Him who is the Light of the World there is a threefold perfection.

I. THE TRUTHS SEPARATELY.

1. Christ the Way. One of the deepest feelings in mans nature is that of a want of something which this world is found not to supply. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing, nor the ambition with success, nor the lust with gratification. It arises from the terrible disruptions with the intervening chasms which sin has produced. Despite our downward tendencies, man is led by what he feels within, and sees around, to look up to a Divine Power. That Being we would fondly claim as a Father. But where is that Father? There is a way, but somehow we have lost it, and the difficulty is to find it. Conceive a planet wandering from its sphere. Now it is hindered by bodies attracting it or attracted by it, and forthwith it dashes through space, threatening to strike and break in fragments, or to kindle into a conflagration, all the other planets and suns it meets with. It is a picture of a wandering man loosened from the Central Power that stays him, and from the Central Light that should illuminate him. Neither wanderer will right itself till made to move in its old path. But how can we know the way? The flaming sword, turned every way to keep the sinner from the tree of life, has entered into him who is Gods fellow, and hath now power against us, and there is a way opened by which the sinner can come into the very presence of God. I am the Way.

2. Christ the Truth. By truth, in this passage, we are not to understand abstract or general doctrine. Systematized truth may serve most important purposes; but it is not to such that our Lord refers. Truth is defined by philosophers as the agreement of our ideas with things. If we know God as He really is, then have we truth in religion. But how can we know God as He really is? Do we not feel as if He were at an infinite distance, as if we could no more rise to Him with our spirits than our frail bodies could mount from earth to heaven? Who will give us wings that we may ascend to Him? Alas! the attraction of earth is too powerful to admit of our rising to Him. The approach must be on His part. Plato was obliged to say: The Father of the world is hard to discover, and when discovered cannot be communicated. But when we go on by Christ as the Way, He introduces us to the Father, and we have the truth. God is no longer at a distance; Emmanuel, God with us. Aristotle has said that the mind as it came from its Maker is organized for truth, as the eye is to perceive light and the ear to hear sounds. He who has found Christ knows that he has found the truth. With the truth there is assurance; the eye has found the light, the ear is listening to the sound. This, this is the reality of things.

3. Christ the Life. It is of vast moment that we know the way, all good that we reach the truth; but we must have more. The well-formed statue is an interesting object, but none of us would exchange our living condition for that of the chiselled marble. Along with the truth we must have life. There are few or no sinners so dead that they do not wish at times to have life. And yet when they would excite and stimulate it, they find that they have only the cold and the clamminess of death. Feeling never will be excited by a mere determination to raise it. There must be a something to call it forth. Nor will it be evoked by an abstract statement or general doctrine. It is called forth by a living person. Christ so lovely and so loving. Apprehended as the truth He becomes the life.

II. THE TRUTHS IN THEIR CONNECTION. The full truth is to be found in the union of these various truths. If we would have a true religion, and a proper theology founded upon it, we must give Christ the supreme place. Displace Christ the head from this His proper position and the whole form becomes disproportioned.

1. There are some who would have men first to find the way, and then in the way to find Christ. Who would have, e.g., inquirers first to find the true Church, and then through it to find Christ. But this is to reverse the Scriptural order.

2. Some would have us first seek the truth, and then seek Christ. Seekers of truth deserve all the honour that has been paid to them, but they will never find truth in religion till they find Christ. So Justin Martyr acknowledged, and Augustine, and Luther. Let us not go out with the tapers of earth to seek the sun. Any other light can at best be merely like the star to guide the wise men, serving a good end only so far as it guides us to where Christ as the truth is to be found.

3. Again, some would find life without Christ. Their appeal is to inward feelings, sentiments, and intuitions. But what, I ask, is to evoke such sentiments from our dead and sinful hearts? They tell us by such grand and generous ideas as the infinite and the eternal. But these ideas call forth love only when they are associated with a living being whose love is infinite and eternal. And such is Christ.

4. There are some who would seek for Christ under one of these aspects or in one of these characters, but who do not care for the others.

(1) Thus, there are some who are anxious to have Christ as the way, but who stop at the entrance, instead of going on in the path. They are most anxious to have Christ for salvation; but they do not go on to establish themselves in the truth.

(2) Some are contented with the truth without the life, with their orthodox creed, their reverence for the Bible, their attendance at religious meetings. Such a formal religion is offensive to man, even as it is displeasing to God.

(3) Another class seek the life without the truth, led into this by a reaction against a stiff formalism or a frigid orthodoxy, or by an unwillingness to submit to any restraints. Persons are calling for a life which is to be independent of all the old forms of orthodoxy and of the letter of the Word of God. Of this I am sure, that the life which is not supported by Scriptural truth will be of a very uncertain and wavering and transient character. (J. Mc Cosh, D. D.)

The Way, the Truth, and the Life

1. Christ is the Way, for He recovers man from his godless wandering. The metaphor views man in the light of his practical obliquities. He is estranged by wicked works from the filial fellowship in which the life of Jesus Christ was unchangeably centred. A way is that which connects the distant and inaccessible. Traversed as is our land in every possible direction by the highways of commerce and civilization, we perhaps scarcely feel the force of this figure. Poor Livingstone, who waded waist deep through pestilential marshes for weeks, to die at last in a miserable hut by the lake shore; the traveller, who has to cut his way for hundreds of miles through tangled forest and jungle at the rate of half a mile a day; the emigrant, who has to cross the trackless alkali plain, and who may perish midway; the military commander, who had to carry his forces over mountains, some sections of which are almost perpendicular,–know how a well engineered path is the first condition of successful movement. A way is that which makes movement in some specific direction possible. Movement towards God is impossible without the work of Jesus Christ the Mediator. Jesus Christ brings together in His own person the two most distant objects the whole circle of the universe can contain, God dwelling in unapproachable light, and man wallowing in guilt, worldliness, transgression. Christ subverts and destroys the work of sin in human nature, and makes progress towards God possible to us once more. In Him the alienated are brought back into relations of gentleness, endearment, and obedience.

2. Christ is the truth, for He recovers man from his godless error. The metaphor looks upon man from his intellectual side. Men are estranged from God in their thinkings, alienated from the life of God by reason of the ignorance that is in them. Christ answers our intellectual need. He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. Scientific truth puts us into intelligent relation with the world of established scientific fact. Historic truth puts us into intelligent relation with the facts that have determined the growth of particular types of government and civilization. Sociological truths puts us into intelligent relation with the facts that have moulded the social life of mankind. Jesus Christ puts us into intelligent relation with all the vital facts of Gods being and nature and government. He is the only possible word by which God can address Himself to a world of sinners. No intellectual activity, no induction of reason, no range of research can fill up this chasm in the mind of man. We can only know God as we give ourselves up to Jesus Christ, and suffer the energy of His spirit and presence to rule us. He is made unto us the wisdom by which we come to the saving knowledge of God. All knowledge that lies outside this sphere of contract with Christ is at the very best but adroit guess work.

3. Christ is the Life, inasmuch as He raises men from their godless insensibility and death. The ideas deepen as they succeed each other. Knowledge passes into life. This is life eternal, to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent. He stands forth in the midst of the universe to counterwork the disintegration and decay that set in when the tie binding all life to its first Centre was ruptured by transgression. Union with Christ, our everlasting Life, will guard against the shock and sting and disability of death. The man who is sailing under trustworthy captainship, and in company with genial friends, cut of one zone into another, is scarcely conscious of the lines of demarcation over which the ship glides. So with the man who lives and dies in fellowship with Christ. Throughout the months of summer, darkness is unknown in the latitudes of the far north. The rising and the setting suns blend their light without the hairbreadth of a shadow between. Tourists are all eager to visit the Land of the Midnight Sun. It seems to me that for the man who is vitally united to Christ, the event of death is very much like that. He sails through the quiet, solemn seas of the midnight sun, and before the light of the earthly life has quite gone the light of a nobler sunrise has come to blend with it. In the solemn crisis of transition, for the man who has become one with Christ his Life no darkness deepens, and the shadow of the grave marks the dayspring.

4. Christs words present a corrective to all distracted faith. He asks from His followers concentrated thought and attachment and expectation. They had sought a way outside Christ, though a way through whose mazes He was to guide them; a truth outside Christ, though a truth the exposition of which was to come from His lips; a life outside Christ, though a life of which His immortal reign was to be the seal and the defence. The purport of these words is, that they must seek their all in Christ. They must let their eye rest upon His person as the one centre from which all saving power, all teaching light, all quickening inspiration must come. Mark how in these words the Master leads on His disciples to faith in a Saviour unseen. The love of the disciples had been very apt to glide into an idolatry of Christs human form. But all this is to be corrected by the fresh events that are at hand. The text suggests a warning against all low and dishonouring views of the Saviours work and person. (T. G. Selby.)

The Way, the Truth, and the Life

I. I AM THE WAY. To what? To our eternal destiny. There are ends closer at hand than this which man, if left to himself, seeks before all other things–pleasure, fortune, glory, science. That is what the heathens ardentlydemanded of their gods; but never by a single word did Jesus Christ offer to lavish them upon men.

1. I know that when we speak of the higher aim of life, worldlings shrug their shoulders and smile; and a certain school, now in high favour, gravely affirms that we can neither attain it nor even so much as understand it. But I needs must know whither I go, and if I deem foolish the man who would fling himself in a railway train or embark upon a vessel without asking where the steam power or the breath of the wind is taking him, by what appellation shall I characterize those who allow themselves to be borne away in the voyage of life without knowing whether their destination is death or life?

2. But, says the sceptic, supposing a higher life is indeed reserved for man, how shall he know it? So many ways are open before us! How find out the right path? Not much science is required to discover which is the path to be preferred, of pleasure or duty, iniquity or justice, selfishness or sacrifice, pride or devotion, purity or corruption. And heathens themselves have understood this well. But how much more simple, and solemn has the question become since Christ said, I am the Way! To know if He speaks true, I have only to consider whither He means to lead me. What then is the end which He sets before me? It is the one, holy, just and good Being reigning over all beings: it is harmony governing the world, man loving man. Well, if that is the end towards which Christ would lead me, what need have I to argue further? Were I the most ignorant of men, I would instinctively understand that I must indeed tend towards this aim. Were I the most learned, what could I add to this ideal?

II. I AM THE TRUTH.

1. That is what greatly astonishes many of those who hear Him. They are willing to accept Christ as the instructor of souls. But if Jesus Christ had been nothing more than this, we instinctively feel that, after having guided men to the true God, He should have retired in the background and re echoed the words of the Forerunner: God must increase, and I must decrease. Others, and among these many of the noblest benefactors of mankind, have been compelled to speak thus. Aristotle, Copernicus, Newton, Bacon, Descartes might be unknown to us without this fact depriving their works of aught of their value. And in the religious order, knew we nothing whatever of Moses, David, or St. Paul, we would none the less be in possession of the genesis of the world, of the most heart-thrilling hymns and of the grand doctrine of grace. These men were the witnesses of the truth. This Jesus Christ has also been; but more than all this, and that is why He utters these words, which in the lips of Moses, David, or St. Paul, had been blasphemy: I am the Truth.

2. What is truth? It is the exact relation between two things. Thus a word is true when it corresponds perfectly with the fact or the idea it expresses; and arithmetical calculation is true when it gives accurately the results of a relation between two different quantities. Every truth, therefore, supposes a relation. Well, truth in religion will be the harmonious, and perfect relation between man and God. Now Jesus Christ has not only taught us what this relation is, but that He has realized it in His person. You ask what is the true religion. We point to Jesus Christ and answer: Behold it.

III. I AM THE LIFE.

1. Life, which is the most habitual and common of phenomena, is the most unfathomable of mysteries. Materialism, which triumphs today in so many schools, is stopped by this problem as before a brazen door forever sealed. The Eternal God alone calls forth life; I know the terrible objection, if God alone is the Author of all life, wherefore evil? To this the gospel answers that the world is not in a state of order, that evil has, from the origin, been the consequence of the improper use of liberty. But have you observed how closely the notion of sin and that of death are bound up together; have you remarked that the sublime promise of life is essentially reserved for that alone which is in harmony with the will of God? Consequently, strong is our faith, we are able to say to all the powers of evil: You shall not live forever. The gospel is the doctrine of life; earth has been visited by the perfect Being, and according to His own words: As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself. Alone the Son of God hath life in Himself. Therefore can He say: I am the Life.

2. As Christ possesses life in Himself, He also brings life. Life alone can bring forth life. Christ came into a world which was literally dried up. What He did in Judea He has done in Rome, in the uncivilized world; what He did in olden time He is doing today; and whilst it remains a fatal law for these nations that civilization alone leads them to destruction, it also remains a certain and striking fact that civilization with Jesus Christ is able to transform and save them. But if Christ brings life to nations, it is by imparting it to souls individually. (E. Bersier.)

The movement of the ages

May it not be said that the movement of our age is towards life? I sometimes fancy that I can discern three epochs in the Reformed Churches corresponding in the main to those three mighty words, via, veritas, vita. The Reformers themselves no doubt laid the stress chiefly upon this first. It was on this Popery had gone most astray, obscuring the doctrine of justification by faith alone. The epoch following was essentially dogmatic when the doctors drew up systems of the truth. It was now indeed Christ as veritas! but the dogma taken alone led to coldness, dogmatism, sectarianism and formality. Happy will it be for the Church if, not forgetting the other two, she shall now be found moving on to the third development of Christ as the Life, which well regulate the two former aspects, while it consummates and informs them. The life must develop the individual, and on individuals the Church depends; for in Gods sight it is no abstraction. (J. Mackintosh.)

I am the Way

The Way

The most precious things lie in the smallest compass. Diamonds have much value in little space. Those Scriptural sayings which are fullest of meaning are many of them couched in the fewest words.

I. HOW JESUS CHRIST IS THE WAY AND HOW HE COMES TO BE SO. A way supposes two points–from which and to which.

1. Christ is the Way

(1) From the guilt of sin. The great difficulty was–How is sin to be put away? Some have hoped for pardon from future good conduct, but the payment of a future debt can by no means discharge a past debt. Some hope much from the mercy of God, but the law knows nothing of clearing the sinner of guilt by a sovereign act of mercy. Here is the way for the sinner to approach the Father. His sin is laid upon Christ, who became his substitute.

(2) The text is true concerning the wrath of God on account of sin. The way to escape from wrath is to escape from the sin which causes the wrath.

Now, when the sin of Gods people was moved from them to Christ, the wrath of God went where the sin went.

(3) There comes upon us, in consequence of sin, a deep and terrible depression of spirit. Christ is the way out of the sense of the wrath of God.

(4) But more, Christ is the way to escape from the power of sin. A man may break off some of his sins by his own unaided efforts. Still, sin dwells in fallen creatures. Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? But there is power which can deliver from the power of sin and make holy; it is found in Christ Jesus. The saints in glory overcame through the blood of the Lamb, and there is no other way of overcoming. The precious blood of atonement wherever sprinkled kills sin.

2. Christ is the Way

(1) To the Father. We hear talk of getting to God the Father by nature, but it is a ladder too short to reach the Infinite. It is only by Christ that we realize the Fatherhood of God. We are Gods children when we are created anew in Christ Jesus.

(2) To conscious acceptance with the Father. Made nigh by the blood of Christ.

(3) To communion with the Father. You do talk with God when you draw near in Jesus Christ. Truly, our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.

(4) To resemble the Father. You imitate Christ, and so become like the Father.

II. WHAT SORT OF WAY IS CHRIST AND FOR WHAT SORT OF PEOPLE?

1. What sort of way. He is

(1) The Kings highway, the Divinely-appointed way from sin to the Father.

(2) An open way. If I am treading the kings highway I cannot be a trespasser there.

(3) A perfect way. It would not be complete unless it came down where you are. Where are you? Defiled by evil living? There is a road from where you are right up to the immaculate perfection of the blessed at Gods right hand, and that road is Christ. You think you have some preparations to make, some feelings to pass through, something or other to perform; but all you can do to make yourself fit for Christ is to make yourself unfit; all your preparations are but foul lumber–put them all away. Thou must come as thou art.

(4) A free way. There is not a toll bar all along the road. Whosoever wills to have Christ may have Him for the taking. He that will pay for Christ cannot have Him at all. If faith be in one respect a condition, it is in another respect a gift of God, and though we are commanded to repent, yet Jesus is exalted on high to give repentance.

(5) A permanent way. Not a way for Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, only, but for you; not for the apostles, and martyrs, and early saints, only, but for you. It is a way that never has been broken up, and never will be.

(6) A joyful way.

(7) The only way.

2. For what sort of people. For all sorts

(1) For wanderers.

(2) For backsliders.

(3) For captives.

(4) For the poorest of the poor.

III. HOW WE MAKE CHRIST OUR WAY.

1. How do we make Christ our way? As we make any other way our way: by getting into it.

2. In order to keep the way your own, all you do is to continue in it. The just shall live by faith, not by any other means. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Jesus the Way

This word way may mean either one of two things–the road along which you must go to reach a certain place; or the thing that must be done in order to secure any particular end. When we think of heaven, Jesus is the way in both these senses. He is the road along which we must walk. He has done all that is necessary, in order that we may get there. The way of salvation through Jesus is

I. A PLAIN WAY. A paved street or a turnpike road, is a plain way. But if we are travelling over a sandy desert, or through a rocky country where there is nothing to mark the path, then we are in a way that is not plain. It is hard to find the way, and at every step, we are liable to get off the right track. The way of salvation in Jesus is easy to find and easy to keep, if we only ask God to help us in finding and keeping it. (Isa 35:8; Hab 2:2). The father of a little girl was once in great trouble on account of his sins. He lay awake, after going to bed one night, in fear and dread. His little daughter was sleeping in her crib beside his bed. Presently she began to move about uneasily. Papa, papa! she called. What is it, my darling? he asked. Oh, papa, its so dark! Take Nellies hand. He reached out and took her tiny little hand, clasping it firmly in his own. A sigh of relief came from her little heart. At once she was quieted and comforted. That father felt that his little child had taught him a valuable lesson. Oh, my Father, my Saviour, he cried, it is dark, very dark in my soul. Take my hand. So he turned to Jesus and trusted in Him. A minister had a son in the army. Tidings came that his son had been wounded and was not expected to live. On arriving there, the doctor said, He may die any moment. With a sad heart, the father went in. Oh, father, said the wounded man, the doctor says I must die, and I am not prepared for it. Tell me how I can be ready. Make it so plain that I can get hold of it. My son, said the father, do you remember one day, years ago, I had occasion to rebuke you for something you had done? You became very angry and abused me. Yes, father. Do you remember, after your anger had passed off, how you came in and threw your arms round my neck and said: My dear father, I am so sorry, wont you forgive me? Yes, I remember it very distinctly. Do you remember what I said? Oh, yes. You said: I forgive you with all my heart, and you kissed me. Did you believe me? Certainly. And then did you feel happy again? Yes, perfectly happy, and since that time I have loved you better than ever before. Well, now, my son, this is the way to come to Jesus. Tell Him, I am so sorry, just as you told me: and He will forgive you a thousand times quicker than I did. Father, is this the way. Why, I can get hold of this. And he did get hold of it and was soon happy. After awhile, the doctor came in. He felt the pulse of the wounded man, and said with surprise: Why, Colonel, you look better. I am better, doctor. Im going to get well. He got well; and he is living now, the joy and comfort of that father who made the way of salvation so plain that he could get hold of it.

II. A BROAD WAY (Mat 9:28; Rev 22:17). There was a poor sailor who had lived a very wicked life. Once, while far off at sea, it pleased God to awaken his conscience. Then he was in great distress. There was no one on board to tell him what to do. One night he lay in his berth, and in the dim light of the feeble lamp, he was reading the Bible. He came to Joh 3:16. He put his finger on the word whosoever,Whosoever, said he, that means anybody; that means everybody! Why, that means me! Then he turned in faith to Jesus, and He received him. He got into the broad way of salvation through this sweet word. One day a minister was visiting with a friend among some of the poorest of the population. He entered a wretched looking house. A rickety bedstead, a couple of broken chairs, the remains of a table, and a few pieces of earthenware on the shelf, made up all the furniture. In the middle of the room a miserable looking woman lay on the floor drunk. The minister said to his friend: Let us pray for her. They kneeled down and prayed that God would have mercy on this poor woman. She lay there still and stupid, and seemed to take no notice. They went away. Some months after the minister was going again through that part of the city. A well-dressed, respectable-looking woman came up and spoke to him. Do you not remember some months since praying over a woman who lay drunk on the floor? I do. Well, sir, I am that woman. I was respectably brought up by Christian parents. I married; but after awhile my husband died, and left me with three children in utter poverty. I saw no way of support but by my own shame. Then I took to drinking to drown my sorrow. I was at the lowest point of sin and misery when you stopped and offered that prayer. It saved me. It made me think of my dear mother, now in heaven. And, by Gods help, I hope yet to loin her there. Oh, it is a broad way of salvation that can take in such poor wretched creatures as this! A gentleman was sent for once to visit one of his class, a newsboy, named Billy, who was very ill. As he entered the room, Billy said: Oh, captain, Im mighty glad to see yer. What can I do for you, my dear fellow? I wanted to ax yer two questions. Did you tell us the other night as how Jesus Christ died for every feller? Yes, Jesus Christ tasted death for every man. Good! said Billy: I thought so. Now did you tell us as how Jesus Christ saves every feller that axes Him? Yes, said his friend; Everyone that asketh receiveth. Then I know, said Billy, with a feeble but happy voice, That He saves me because I axes Him. The teacher paused to wipe away a tear from his eye. Then he stooped down to speak to the boy. But Billys head had dropped back on his pillow of rags, and his happy spirit had gone to Jesus.

III. A NARROW WAY. It is a broad way, because the greatest sinners may come into it, and any number. It is a narrow way, because when sinners come into it they must leave all their sins behind (Mat 7:13).

1. There is a vessel lying at anchor, It can make no progress while the anchor holds it. It may rise and fall, as the tide rises or falls; but it cannot move away. And just what the anchor does to the vessel, one sin, one wrong thought or feeling indulged or allowed, will do for the Soul. It will keep it from going on in the way of salvation.

2. A lady once was led to see that she was a sinner. The thought of her sins made her feel very unhappy. The difficulty was just here. She had been a very charitable woman, and wanted to trust in part to good works. One night, after weeping and praying in great distress, she went to bed. In her sleep she dreamed that she fell over a dreadful precipice. In falling, she caught hold of the branch of a tree. In her terror she cried out: Oh, save me, save me! She heard the voice of Jesus saying: Let go that branch, and I will save you. But she was unwilling to loose her hold. Again she cried: Oh, save me! The same voice said: I cannot help you while you cling there. At last she let go, expecting to be dashed to pieces. But, instead of this, she found herself caught in the strong arms of her Saviour. In the joy of feeling herself safe, she awoke. And so in her dream she had learned the lesson which she had failed to learn in her waking hours. She saw that the way of salvation was too narrow for her to carry any of her good works into it.

IV. THE ONLY WAY. Some people think that there are a great many ways to heaven, and that one of these is as good as any of the others. What does God say about it? (Isa 43:11; Act 4:12). No one can ever get to heaven who does not go there through Jesus Christ. Many will go to heaven without knowing how they get there. But they will find it was Jesus alone who brought them there. A little girl was very ill. She asked: Papa, does the doctor think I shall die? With a very sad heart, her father said: My darling, the doctor is afraid you cannot live. Then her pale face grew very sad. She thought about the dark graves, and her eyes filled with tears as she said: Papa, the grave is very dark. Wont you go down with me into it? With a bursting heart, her father told her he could not go with her, till the Lord called him. Papa, wont you let mamma go with me? It almost broke that fathers heart to tell her that, much as her mother loved her, she could not go with her either. The poor dear child turned her face to the wall and wept. But she had been taught about Jesus, as the Friend and Saviour of sinners. She poured out her little heart to Him with a childs full faith, and found comfort in Him. Soon she turned again to her father, with her face all lighted up with joy, and said: Papa, the grave is not dark now. Jesus will go with me. But Jesus is the only one who can do this Psa 23:4). Some years ago there was a distinguished lawyer, who had an only daughter, the light and joy of her fathers life. The mother of this young girl was an earnest Christian woman. She had tried to teach her child that Jesus was the only way of salvation. But her husband was an infidel. He had told his daughter that we could get to heaven without the help of Jesus. This daughter loved and honoured both her parents; but as her father told her of one way and her mother of another way, she could not make up her mind which of these two ways was the right one. At the age of sixteen she was taken very ill. One day, she said to her father with great earnestness: Father, I am going to die. What must I do to be saved? My mother has taught me that the only way of salvation is in Jesus Christ. You have taught me that we can be saved without Jesus. Shall I take my mothers advice or yours? The strong man was deeply moved. After a while, he came to the bedside of his daughter. He took her pale, thin hand in his, and said slowly but solemnly: My darling daughter, take your mothers way. Here is a ship at sea. She has been overtaken by a dreadful storm. Her masts are broken, her sails are rent. She has sprung a leak, and now the pumps are choked, and can no longer be worked. The water is rising. It is very evident that she cannot be kept afloat much longer. There is only one way left to the poor sailors for saving their lives? What is that? It is to take to the lifeboat. And we, as sinners, are just in the position of such a storm-tossed wreck at sea. Jesus is the lifeboat. (R. Newton, D. D.)

Christ the Way

We could never rejoice in this His way, if He merely stood in the way as a sign post, or went before us as a Guide. God be praised, our Jesus is not only Counsellor, but mighty as well; and not mighty only, but Mighty God! (Isa 9:6). If He is as a sign post, He is one with living arms; for He receives us to Himself, from His Cross He draws us up to Himself, He lifts us upon His shoulders; in short, He is Himself the way, the new living way, which, like a full flowing river, bears along our little hark, and brings it to the ocean of a blissful eternity. Conrad Rieger sets before us Jesus as the way, thus: Where is the man who will give himself to another to be his way? If the king could not cross over a dyke, and were to say to one of you, Lay thyself in this dyke to make a bridge that I may cross over upon thee, where is the meanest subject in the land who would consent to do it? But what no man would like to do for another, that Jesus does for us all. (R. Besser, D. D.)

Christ the way to God

I. IN WHAT RESPECTS IS CHRIST THE WAY?

1. As a Teacher. He came into a world that was filled with error and falsehood. Everywhere men were groping in the dark, following blind leaders. And the Saviour affirmed, I am the Light of the World. I am the Truth. All spiritual truth is associated with Christ, because it proceeds from Him and terminates in Him.

2. As a Mediator. Many can see that Christ is the Way as a Teacher, but not as a Mediator. But if Christ be a Teacher, and nothing more, then He rather shows the Way, than is the Way. Between man and God there stretches a wide gulf which sin has opened. Amidst the many expedients which man vainly devises, the Saviour interposes and becomes the one Mediator between God and man.

3. As such

(1) He intercedes with us, and beseeches us to be reconciled to God.

(2) He intercedes with God. For this the Saviour is fitted because of His atoning work. He entered into the holy place, neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood. Having, therefore, brethren, boldness to enter, etc.

(3) He receives and bestows upon us the Holy Spirit. If man is to come to God it must be as a new creature that he comes.

II. Some of THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THIS WAY.

1. Truth. Immediately our Lord adds, I am the Truth. From the Fall until now the human mind has been in matters of religion avaricious of error. Now, amidst the many ways which men have invented, Christ presents Himself as the true Way–the Way which God provides, and which Scripture reveals. What other way so commends itself to an enlightened reason as this.

2. Purity. False systems of religion must accommodate themselves to mans frailties, and enable him to compound for his sins; it is only the gospel that presents a pure and perfect standard.

3. Happiness and security. Emphatically may it be said that it is a way of peace. But can you affirm this of those methods of salvation which man has invented? Blessed is the man whose sins are forgiven. Safe as well as happy!–for as this is allying way, all who walk in it participate in that eternal life which it bestows (Isa 35:8-10). I think of every imagethat can suggest this security, but they all fail adequately to shadow it forth. I think of Noah sheltered in the ark; of Lot, plucked as a brand from the burning; of the criminal pursued by the officers of justice reaching the Temple; of the man slayer in the city of refuge. There is no condemnation, etc.

4. Simplicity. What can be plainer than this promise, He that believeth, shall be saved; or than this invitation, Come unto Me, all ye that labour, etc.; or than this assurance, Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out; or than this command, Look unto Me, all ye ends of the earth, and be ye saved?

5. Exclusiveness. There is no other name, etc. (H. J. Gamble.)

Make sure that you are in the right way

When I was at Fall River, I was obliged to rise at four oclock in the morning to take the train. I took my carpet bag in my hand, and ran, but was in trouble lest I might be running directly from the cars, instead of towards them. There was not a person in sight; but I saw a light in one upper window. A watcher was there. I rang the bell, and asked information as to my way. It was given. I was about right–only needed a little help, and now, knowing that I was in the right way, I did run. A bird might have counted it doing well to keep up with me; for I expected every moment to hear the bell, and the rushing off of the train, and then I should be there, and my people without a sermon on Sunday. Only let me be sure that I was in the right way, and I was willing to run. So says the Christian, Only let me be sure that I am on my way to heaven, and there is nothing that I am not willing to do or to bear. Well, if you are so earnest, know that Christ is the Way; and if you are desirous to cast away all that shall hinder your race, I think that you need not doubt that you are already in it. (H. W. Beecher.)

Christ the only way

Mrs. Bennet, wife of John Bennet, minister of an Independent Church in Cheshire, the day before she died, raised herself into a very solemn attitude, and with most striking emphasis, delivered, in the following language her dying testimony to the truth as it is in Jesus: I here declare it before you that I have looked on the right hand and on the left–I have cast my eyes before and behind–to see if there was any possible way of salvation but by the Son of God; and I am fully satisfied there is not. No! none on earth, nor all the angels in heaven, could have wrought out salvation for such a sinner. None but God Himself, taking our nature upon Him, and doing all that the holy law required, could have procured pardon for me, a sinner. He has wrought out salvation for me, and I know that I shall enjoy it forever.

The way to our wishes

Thomas was the spokesman of the disciples for the moment. The Saviour speaks to them and to us as if we were anxious to get a glimpse of a particular person, and to go to a particular place. Are not these longings strong and deep in the heart of humanity? Is not science itself in search of the Father? Is it not trying by every means in its power to get up to the Great First Cause? And does not superstition unite its sighs with those of science? When it makes its idol and falls down before it, is it not trying to bring God within the bounds of visibility? And is not Pantheism in pursuit of the same object? God everything, and everything God. Deeper still is the desire in the heart of the Church. Now Christ says, I am the Way. Would it not be wonderful if it were otherwise, if there were no way? We see on all sides provision made for the wants of our nature, for the gratification of the wishes of our hearts. Are we to believe that the desires which we have for the highest and noblest and holiest of all things are to be made exceptions to the rule?

I. CHRIST IS THE WAY BY WHICH THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE, THE FATHER OF ALL, HAS BEEN BROUGHT WITHIN THE RANGE OF HUMAN VISION IN A REAL PERSONAL FORM. His attributes are evident from His works. Holy men of old were permitted to hear His voice sometimes, and to behold symbols of His presence. But the Lord Jesus made the eternal God visible to the eye of man in human form–In Him dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And that was the only way in which He could be manifested personally to the eye of flesh. Mortal man could not go up to God where He is. The only alternative was, that God should come down in the fashion of a man. In no other nature could He convey a complete conception of His character to the mind.

II. CHRIST IS THE WAY BY WHICH MAN GETS UP TO GOD, AND DWELLS WITH HIM AT LAST IN HIS HOUSE. When we were bearing our own sins, we dreaded Him; when He is placed before us bearing our sins, we are attracted to Him, and take hold of Him with our whole heart, as His heart took hold of us when we were perishing. When we are drawn to Him we partake of His nature as really as He partook of ours. His Spirit flows into us, and all that is good is quickened and strengthened in us, so that an affinity is established between us and Him, just as an affinity had been previously established between Him and us. If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto Me. His people seek the things which are above, etc. Our citizenship is in heaven. When the souls of His people are loosed from their bodies at death they go up to Him. And the bodies of believers, as well as their spirits, will be drawn up to Him at last. And so we shall be ever with the Lord. (W. Simpson.)

The way to the Father

We hear much of the Fatherhood of God, and cannot hear too much if the doctrine be truly stated. It is not a new doctrine. The heathen knew something of it; it is in the Old Testament, while it is the very substance of the New. Only in the latter, what heathenism never knew, and what the Law and the Prophets only taught imperfectly, God is our Father in the Eternal Son. This distinctly Christian doctrine is declared in our text

I. POLEMICALLY. It protests against certain religious teachings which contravene it. Throughout His ministry Christ was in conflict with men who held a false doctrine of the Fatherhood of God.

1. There were those who represented God as though He looked on His human offspring with a complacency which winked at all moral distinctions. The Supreme Father looked upon all with equal indifference. In opposition to this Christ taught that man was estranged from God through sin. He had lost the knowledge of God and was spiritually dark; the favour of God and was guilty; the image of God and was corrupt; the life of God and was dead in trespasses and sins; and that men could only secure the prerogatives of sonship by intervention from without. There are those today who teach the old doctrines of a philosophical Sadduceeism. Christianity challenges them. Appealing to Christs credentials as a Teacher sent from God, it proclaims to the world that God hath given unto us eternal life, and that this life is by a Mediator whom He hath ordained. There is no absurdity in the doctrine. Who but God can determine how we may most fitly come to Him? And as the Mediatorship is actually constituted, what lessons touching Divine love and holiness, and human helplessness and dignity, does it not pour into our ears.

2. But Christs ministry did battle even more keenly with those who held that God was their Father through mediatorship. Angels, Abraham, Moses, saintly pedigree, holy observances, etc., were their mouthpieces with God, and stepping stones to immortality. Christ told them they carried a lie in their right hand; that there was but one Mediator–Himself. Alas! we have the doctrine of the Pharisees too. Men are heard proclaiming that the prayer of a disembodied saint, the magic of a Christian rite, etc., have the stupendous power to join heaven and earth together. The New Testament pronounces all this to be falsehood. Our alms, deeds, lastings, communions, baptisms, etc.

these bridge the gulf between us and God I

What does a man think of himself, what does he think of God, who takes up with such a hypothesis?

II. DOCTRINALLY. Taken with its context, the text is the summary and index of a most large and precious Scripture teaching. How do men come to the Father through Christ? Necessarily the Person, character, and history of the Mediator will have much to do with the nature and method of His mediation. Who the Mediator was let John tell us (chap. 1), and His character and history let him and his brethren tell. With these facts in view men have held that the value of Christs mediation consists in the energy of the truth He taught, and the force of His example. Others explain that by His perfect fulfilment of the will of God as our representative, He became so acceptable to God, that by reason of what He did God is now the loving Father of us all, and in Him all men are already virtually, and will be by and by actually justified and glorified. Now both these theories mistake the entire basis, method and scope of Christs Mediatorship, which is essentially an economy of holy law, in which God and man sustain not simply the relations of Father and Son, but those of moral Governor and rational and responsible creature. According to Scripture

1. Christs blood has made satisfaction in law to Divine justice for the sins of all mankind, by virtue of which sin is expiated, and all men through personal faith may find mercy and acceptance.

2. As the recompense of the Redeemers passion. God gives to the world by Christs hands His Holy Spirit, by whom assurance of pardon is given, and new birth to righteousness.

3. Under the reign of Christ believers are protected from the evil that is in the world; subjected to providential discipline, and furnished with strength to do the will of God and make their way to everlasting life.

III. EVANGELICALLY AND PROMISSORY. Men can only come to God by Christ; but by Him there is free access for every soul. To come to the Father is

1. To know God.

2. To be the object of the love of God.

3. To be with God forever.

Conclusion:

1. The words illuminate the widest possible area of religious truth. God is and always has been, whether as Creator, Preserver, Redeemer, the Father of men through a Mediator.

2. Within a narrower circle, Christs doctrine lays down broad lines of duty and privilege for the Church of God. Let no false charity presume to enlarge what God has straitened. It is at the Churchs peril that it dares to cripple mans evangelical liberty.

3. The text speaks with a gracious but authoritative voice to every hearer of the gospel.

(1) Do not hope to find God without Christ.

(2) Do not treat Christ as though His Mediatorship was inadequate.

(3) Let no man despise or neglect the Mediator, How shall we escape, etc. (J. D. Geden, D. D.)

Christ the only way to the Father

Not long ago, two little children rambling from home over a wild and dangerous part of Dartmoor, lost their way. Utterly unable to find the right path, they sat down, and cried bitterly. And what did you do next? was the question put to them afterwards. I said, Our Father, answered the boy, and sister said, Gentle Jesus. Then they made another attempt, and discovered a moorland road which led them safely home. Surely the conduct of those little ones, lost on the moor, has a lesson for us. If any of us have wandered from the right way, and lost sight of our Fathers House, and fallen among the dangers of a sinful world, what can we do better than shed tears of sorrowful repentance; what can we do better than cry to Our Father and Gentle Jesus? (H. J. W. Buxton, M. A.)

Christ the only way of approach to the Father

I. To come UNTO THE FATHER MUST BE REGARDED AS THE CHIEF CONCERN OF MAN.

1. The nature of this coming to the Father. It is

(1) To obtain an accurate acquaintance of His character and His will. We are said to be distant from an object when we are ignorant of it. In the Sacred Writings, on the one hand, ignorance of God is mentioned as being a crime; and, on the other, to attain an accurate acquaintance with Jehovah is the highest human blessing. It is, therefore, desired for men that they may have the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of God and His Son.

(2) The enjoyment of reconciliation with Him. Reconciliation was the grand theme which Christ preached, as well as the grand work which He came to accomplish.

2. The importance of thus coming to the Father. Adopting the most general assumption that God is the Governor, and that man is a subject, and that the sanction by which the government of God is vindicated, over the retribution of eternity, then it must follow that nothing can be of importance at all compared to the attainment of a state by which the infliction of the Divine anger may be avoided, and by which the enjoyment of the Divine favour may be secured.

II. THE WORK OF THE LORD JESUS AFFORDS A METHOD BY WHICH MEN MAY COME UNTO THE FATHER. In the whole of the series of verses, with which the text is connected, our Saviour speaks of Himself as being one who had been introduced for the purpose of accomplishing a work, through the agency of which man might be made possessor of all that is desirable in the state we have endeavoured to describe. Let us notice

1. The nature of the work which our Lord Jesus has accomplished.

(1) Christ is invested with the office of a teacher. One object of His incarnation was to remove those awful shades of ignorance which had overshadowed the nations of the earth; and to inculcate all those principles of spiritual truth which were necessary for man to know and believe.

(2) But we must contemplate the work of our Lord as that which also furnishes a positive atonement for sin.

2. The extent to which this work is intended to be applied. The merit of the work of the Saviour is intrinsically sufficient for the world. The means of access and acceptance with God, under the Levitical dispensation, were restricted to a small nation; but under that dispensation of grace and truth, which came by Jesus Christ, it announced that the party walls were to be broken down, and the distinction of Jew and Gentile known no more; and that whomsoever, of any age, nation, rank, or character, would come unto the Father through the work of the Son, should find in the work of the Son a ready plenitude of Almighty energy and grace. There is no limit to that promise–He that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out.

III. TO COME UNTO THE FATHER, EXCEPT THROUGH THE WORK OF JESUS, IS PERFECTLY AND ETERNALLY IMPOSSIBLE.

1. No other being possesses the characteristics which are possessed by our Lord Jesus, and which are necessary to constitute a sufficient mode of access to the Father. For, what is Christ? He is God, and He is Man. The way to God would be shut if it were not for the humanity of Christ; the way to God would be imperfect if it were not for the Divinity of Christ. Humanity is what gives to the work of the Saviour adaptation; Divinity is what gives to the work of Christ efficacy, plenitude, and power.

2. The Sacred Writings distinctly and solemnly declare that the work of Christ, as the Medium of access to the Father, stands exclusive and alone. Neither is there salvation in any other, etc. Other foundation can no man lay, etc. Conclusion:

1. Have you come to the Father?

2. Will you come unto the Father? (J. Parsons.)

Christ the only means of access to the Father

The passage implies

I. THAT IT IS A PRIMARY DUTY OF ALL INTELLIGENT BEINGS TO COME TO GOD. God is the Father of all spirits, of all beings, to whom He has given an intelligent nature, on whom He has conferred moral capacities. From that very circumstance it is their first and positive obligation, and will constitute their happiness to come to Him, i.e., to have constant intercourse with Him. There is something solemn and impressive about it. To come into contact with the eternal and infinite mind! We feel strongly when we have a prospect of coming into contact with some eminent person. But everything falls short of the idea of coming into the presence of God. And then to have a proper idea of our responsibility, and our being constantly under His eye–and yet it is our primary duty to delight in this, and to do it.

II. THAT THERE IS A VERY REMARKABLE SINGULARITY ABOUT THE WAY IN WHICH MAN IS TO COME TO GOD. No man cometh unto the Father but by Me. Anything like that was never uttered in heaven. It never was uttered, and never will be, in any world in which the beings continue to be just as they proceeded from the hands of God. They delight in constant intercourse with God. Why is this? Worlds that have never fallen are in a state of natural religion. With respect to us who have fallen, if we come to God we must come in a particular manner. And the singularity of this arises from our guilt. God is to be viewed by us not merely as God, but as a God whom we have offended. And, therefore, there is some process required to mark our circumstances, both upon Gods part and upon ours. And the peculiarity of the thing as revealed in Scripture is, that we are to come to God, through a Mediator, and to plead the work and sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, and to ask the forgiveness of sin, in the consideration of that reason. Now all just wows of religion rest upon this foundation. The Deist rejects revelation and a mediator altogether, because he looks abroad on the face of the world, and he thinks that nothing more is necessary to come to God but some prayer and some expression of penitence. Then, again, some men reject the idea of the Divinity and sacrifice of Christ, and think it is enough to come to God, as professing to receive the truth of Christ. These views result from very inadequate impressions of the holiness and majesty of God and of the nature of sin, and of that kind of medium which is represented in the New Testament as the way into the presence of the holiest of all.

III. THAT IN COMING TO GOD IT BECOMES US TO HAVE RESPECT TO THE MEDIATOR, AND TO COME ON THE SPECIFIC BUSINESS FOR WHICH HE IS APPOINTED. Only imagine that one of your children, or several of them, had deeply and grievously offended you. Or imagine the case of a monarch, against whom a certain portion of his subjects had rebelled. Imagine, in either of these cases, that some kind and gracious and affectionate declaration of readiness to forgive on certain conditions and in a certain way. And just imagine that either the child, or the subject should dare to come into the presence of the parent or of the sovereign, unconcerned about the matter wherein they had offended. Imagine that your child, without adverting to the circumstances of his actual offence, and of your displeasure, and to the plan which you had designed by which reconciliation might be effected between you–that your child came and praised the properties of your character, and rejoiced in the genuine affections of your nature, and the principles of your behaviour, and praising your heart, or your hands, or your head. Or conceive of the subjects entering the presence chamber of their monarch, and that without adverting to the proclamation that had been made, they should come and unite together in some manifestation of their feelings with regard to his government and his reign, and the happiness of his subjects; never once referring to the business on which they were supposed to come. Would there not be something monstrous in all this? And do you not perceive that the child would increase his offence, and that the subjects would add something like ingratitude and contempt to their rebellion? There are many who just treat God in this way.

IV. THAT IN COMING IN THE WAY THAT HAS BEEN POINTED OUT WE HAVE EVERY ENCOURAGEMENT; AND WE SHALL FIND IT TO BE SUFFICIENT. We shall have a welcome, and shall surely receive whatever is requisite to ensure for us happiness and satisfaction. No man cometh unto the Father but by Me. But whoever cometh I will in no wise cast out. And the reason why you do not enjoy all this is, because you will not.

V. THAT THOSE WHO COME TO GOD BY THE MEDIATOR, AND THEY ONLY, ARE PREPARED FOR DWELLING WITH GOD HEREAFTER. It is not enough to die, and be happy, as some people seem to imagine; you may die and be damned–the Bible says so.

VI. THAT THIS SUBJECT IS EXCEEDINGLY FORGOTTEN AND NEGLECTED BY MEN.

1. There are many men who never come to God at all. They never come in any way; they never think of it.

2. There are others who come to God, professedly, but in the wrong way. They do not come to the Father by the Son.

3. There are others who neglect the spirit of this declaration. They profess to come in the right way; but the particular exercises, and the positive enjoyments of religion, are to them an end of itself. (T. Binney.)

Truth

The Truth

Christ is the Truth

I. IN THE HIGHEST SENSE of that word. Some by the word mean literal accuracy of speech, some a restricted class of theological truths; others some philosophical theories. We use the word to denote the whole sum of Christianity as revealed in the person, teaching, and life, of Jesus; the final test and appeal to which all religious and moral truth must be referred; eclipsing all by its glory, overtopping all by its majesty, swaying all by its authority, and determining all by its decision.

II. THE SAVING TRUTH. A few simple facts and doctrines constitute the main features of our religion. They exhibit the Divine law broken by mans transgression. They proclaim the eternal justice condemning man. Man is guilty, and therefore condemned; depraved, therefore impotent; hopeless, therefore wretched. This, then, is the mystery of godliness: the Christ, who is the sinless one, became the representative and the surety of the sinful, obeyed the law we had broken, endured the penalty we had deserved, is gone to heaven to shed down on our hearts the influence which alone can renew and sanctify. By faith we are united to Him. Thus we are cleansed from our transgression, justified from all condemnation, made partakers of the Saviours Spirit, destined to the Saviours glory.

III. INCOMPARABLY THE MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL TRUTH. No error can be harmless; every truth must have its use; yet it is equally evident that all truth is not of the same importance; but this is the central, all-pervading truth. If we diverge here, we can only go further and further astray. It is in spiritual science what the law of gravitation is in physical science. Other truth will affect your intelligence, your conscience, your luxuries, your civilization your personal freedom; but this affects your soul, your conscience, your character, your eternity.

IV. TO CONTRADICT AND REFUTE THE WORLDS FALSEHOOD. The first temptation was a lie; and ever after that time men were deceived. Thus it came to pass that history, with a slight substratum of fact, became little else than a tissue of fables; philosophy, notwithstanding its high pretensions, became for the most part a mere logomachy or imposing sophism; poetry was employed to dazzle the imagination, to blind the understanding, to decorate the vices; while religion, which, above all things, ought to be the unadulterated truth, became the most complicated and abandoned lie; till Christ stood in the deluded world, and confronted all its delusions, and said, I am the Truth. But since then even the gospel has been perverted. We have need incessantly, therefore, to refer to the first principle; to correct everything by this, I am the Truth.

V. NOTWITHSTANDING THE INDIFFERENCE THAT MEN GENERALLY MANIFEST IN RELATION TO IT. I know of nothing which men are so reluctant to honour. If, indeed, you will lower its tone and destroy its vitality; if you will represent it as a philosophy amenable at the bar of man, and class it as a speculation with all other speculations it will be tolerated.

VI. NOTWITHSTANDING THE WORLDS HOSTILITY. Thus hostility has put the seal to the declaration. Had it not been mighty, it would never have awakened that hostility; had it not been right-hearted, it would never have dared it; had it not been immortal, it would never have survived it; but having awakened, dared, and survived it, in the person of Christ, and in His truth we see it, as if it came direct from heaven, bearing this testimony before all unequivocally and unshakingly, I am the Truth.

VII. AS THE POWER ULTIMATELY TO SUBDUE THE WORLD. Great is the truth, and shall prevail. The thoughtful of all parties assent to that; the mistake is that men should so hastily conclude that the truth is with them. Even they who are engaged in the worst of enterprises wish to have the truth on their side, and labour to have it appear that it is so. And why? Because truth is of God; the man who knowingly goes against it feels he is struggling with Omnipotence. When men see error with their eyes open the spirit shrinks away from it. And if Christs doctrine be not true it must perish; all the learning, and power, and skill, and genius, of the universe cannot save it from the perdition it deserves; but Christ cannot be defeated so long as this text is true. Christs people cannot be defeated so long as they can say, We are in Him that is true. Living in Him; the Church is founded upon a rock, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. Remember

1. That though this truth is set before you, it will never be yours but in the exercise of deep humility.

2. That fully to enter into this truth you must possess the spirit of Him from whom it comes.

3. That this truth is Divine in its origin, and intends to be saving in its result.

4. Take it with you as at once your defence and your law. (J. Aldis.)

Jesus, the Truth

It is a truth in arithmetic that two and two make four. It is a truth in geometry that the shortest distance between any two points is a straight line. Certain facts are truths of history. And what we are taught about God or heaven are truths in religion. But Jesus has so much to do with our religion, that we sometimes put His name in place of the word religion, and say of a certain doctrine that it is a truth in Jesus. And this is what Jesus means when He says: I am the Truth. The truth in Jesus is the best of all truth, because it

I. SANCTIFIES OR MAKES US GOOD. The model of goodness is the example of Jesus. There is node like Him in heaven, in the earth, in any other world. He is the chief among ten thousand, and altogether lovely. And that which helps to make us like Jesus is the very best thing in the world for us. It is the truth the Bible teaches us about Jesus, which makes us Christians in the beginning. And then it is only by knowing more of this truth that we grow in grace, or become better Christians.

II. SATISFIES AND MAKES US HAPPY. When you are hungry you have a very disagreeable feeling, and nothing will take it away and make us feel comfortable, but substantial food. But the hunger of the soul is harder to bear than the hunger of the body. Suppose you go to a person, whose soul is in trouble on account of some great sorrow or sin, and try to comfort him by telling him one of the truths in arithmetic or geography. You say to him: Dont be troubled; two and two make four; or the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Do you think that would satisfy him, or do him any good? None whatever. But suppose that, instead of this, you tell him, and he believes, about the truth as it is in Jesus. This is the food that this hungry soul craves. The Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Charles I, lies buried in Newport Church, in the Isle of Wight. A marble monument erected by Queen Victoria shows, in a very touching way, what her feelings were about the matter of which we are now speaking, at the time of death. During the time of her fathers troubles, she was a prisoner in Carisbrook Castle. She was alone, separated from all the friends and companions of her youth, and lingered on in her sorrows, till death came and set her free. She was found one day dead in her bed, with her Bible open before her, and her finger resting on these words: Come unto Me, all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And this is what the monument in Newport is intended to show. What a sermon in stone that monument preaches! To everyone who looks at it, it seems to say: Riches and rank cannot make you happy. Jesus only can satisfy the soul.

III. SAVES US. But this is what no other kind of knowledge will or can do. You may know all about arithmetic, geography, history, etc., and this knowledge may be very useful to you in the business of this life, but it will not be of the least use to you in trying to get to heaven. If some poor soul, distressed about his sins, should come to you and ask the question: What must I do to be saved? you would find nothing in all those studies that would be the least help to you in answering that question. But, if you only know what the Bible teaches about Jesus, you will be able to answer this question in a moment. It is the truth in Jesus alone which shows us the way to heaven. Some years since, a respectable-looking person said to two collectors for the Bible Society, I belonged to a company of pickpockets. About a year since, two of my companions and myself were passing by a church. It was the anniversary of the Bible Society. Seeing so many there, we thought it would be a good chance for us to carry on our wicked business. The Ten Commandments, in large gilt letters, were on the wall behind the pulpit. The first words that caught my eye were: Thou shalt not steal. In a moment, my attention was arrested. I felt as if God were speaking to me. My conscience troubled me, and my tears began to flow. As soon as the meeting was over, I hurried away to a distant part of the city, where no one knew me. I got a Bible, and began to read it. It showed me what a great sinner I was; but it showed me also what a great Saviour Jesus is. I prayed to Jesus with all my heart. He heard my prayer. Please accept five guineas, and may God bless you in the good work you are doing. The late Dr. Corrie, bishop of Madras, in India, was a chaplain there for some time before he was made bishop. At that time, no translation of the Bible had been made into the language of that country. To help in scattering a little light, he was in the habit of translating striking passages of Scripture on little scraps of paper, and having his servant distribute them at his door every morning. Twenty years afterwards a missionary at Allahabad wrote to him: I have lately visited a Hindoo, who came to this place in ill health. I was surprised to find that he was not only a Christian, but a Christian with a very clear knowledge of Jesus, and of the way in which he saves the souls of His people. How is it, my friend, I said to him, that you understand so much about the Scriptures? You told me you never saw a missionary in your life, and never had anyone to speak to you about the way of salvation? He answered this question by putting his hand under his pillow, and drawing out a parcel of well-worn ragged bits of paper, and saying: From these bits of paper, which Sahib Corrie used to distribute by a servant at his door every day, I have learned all I know about the religion of Jesus. I have read them till, as you see, they are almost worn out. All I know about Jesus they have taught me; but what I do know of Him is worth more than all the world to me. It has saved my soul. (R. Newton, D. D.)

Christ, the Truth

We do not wonder to find Truth made the centre bit of the arch. For truth, wherever it is, holds everything together. It is the integrity of a man which gathers up the man, and gives a unity to his character. Take away truthfulness, and all his virtues, if he have any, fall to the ground. In like manner, the Truth of Christ is the cardinal point of all the strength of Scripture. Therefore, Christ placed it in the middle. For the same reason, in the figurative dress, both of Christ (Isa 11:1-16), and of the Christian (Eph 6:1-24), Truth is the girdle–that which binds up and knits the power of the man. Consider

I. TRUTH WAS AN ATTRIBUTE ABOVE ALL OTHERS, ESSENTIAL TO THE OFFICES WHICH CHRIST UNDERTOOK TO FULFIL.

1. As Witness. In this character, He came from heaven to reveal and testify to men the invisible things of another world. But what is a witness without truth?

2. As the Substance of that of which the whole of the Old Testament was the shadow. But the substance of anything is the truth of anything. Therefore Christ is Truth.

3. As the Founder of a faith very different from all others which ever appeared upon this earth, Its precepts are the strictest–its doctrines are the loftiest–its consolations are the strongest. Now what intense veracity did all that require in Him who propounded such a thing! If one iota or any word of His should ever fail, what would become of the whole gospel, of which He was the Author?

4. As His peoples Righteousness. Truth had died out of the earth, when Christ came to re-make truth, to be Truth. But what must be the truth of Him who was to be the Truth of all the whole world?

5. As Judge.

II. HOW DOES CHRIST BECOME TRUTH?

1. He is natures truth. The earliest record that we have of Him is, that He was that Wisdom which dwelt with God when He made the worlds–that Word by which all things were made. Therefore, all things whichare now in the world were first ideas in the mind of Christ. And there they lay, until His willing it gave those ideas their form, and they took the material substances with which we are conversant. That is the only idea we can form of creation.

2. He is the Truth of God. God is a Being of perfect love. And yet, God has announced, that every soul that sins shall perish. Can you reconcile it? And yet, if two attributes of God cannot be reconciled, where is Gods truth? In Christ the justice is satisfied that the love may be free.

3. He is mans Truth. There are three empires of truth.

(1) The intellectual. I doubt whether any mind ever attains the highest order of intellect without an acquaintance with Jesus Christ. For if everything took its rise, as we have seen, in the mind of Christ, then the true science of every subject must revert to Christ.

(2) Moral. It is very certain that in proportion as nations have departed from Christ, they have wandered out of the orbit of truth. And every man–as he dwells more with Christ–grows in rectitude of conduct andintegrity of practice.

(3) Spiritual. Every undertaking of God to His people owes its strength to Christ, when it says that all the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him amen. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

Christ, the Truth

Christ is the Truth, because He came to

I. REVEAL TRUTH, and, but for Christs revelation of it, we should be utterly ignorant of it. He is Himself the substance of all revealed truth.

1. Christ came to teach us about God. And how? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. What could we have known of God, of His mercy, His faithfulness, His truth, His justice, but for the revelation of them that is made in Christ?

2. Christ is Truth substantially in relation to the types and shadows of the Old Testament. These all pointed to Him. Under the New Testament we are referred for all truth to Jesus Christ, let who will be the teacher. Every man that hath learned of the Father cometh unto Me. The office of the Holy Spirit is to take of the things of Christ, and show them unto us. And why is this? Because it hath pleased the Father that in Him should be hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

II. CONFIRM THE TRUTH. Christ came

1. To confirm the promises made unto the fathers, that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercies. God graciously sustained the faith of the Old Testament saints by a succession of prophecies, and the truth of them was confirmed by the life, and death, and resurrection of Christ.

2. To confirm the threatenings. He had said in Eden that He would punish the breach of His law, at the same time that He promised to spare the offender. Christ confirmed this truth, for in Him we see how the threatenings of the law and the promises of the gospel harmonize.

3. In confirming the Word of God, Christ shows how impossible it is for God to lie. However great the difficulty may be in fulfilling a promise in our estimation, it is impossible for God to lie; and while the infallibility of Gods promises should afford strong consolation to all that trust them, it should be a terror to them that will not obey; for the threatenings will as infallibly he fulfilled as the promises.

III. ESTABLISH THE TRUTH, and to set up a kingdom in which truth reigns, and the subjects of which have truth in their inward parts. Now, in establishing truth in a mans heart, Christ not only sets up the principle of obedience to the Word of God, but He establishes that principle by the power of His own life. It is not so much that they live, as Christ that liveth in them. Whatever knowledge men may have of the truth, if it do not lead to the establishing of Christs kingdom in their hearts, it is lifeless, unprofitable, condemning knowledge.

IV. USE THE TRUTH?

1. He converts men by the convincing evidence of truth. Christ does not deal with us as machines, but as reasonable beings. He brings truth to bear on our understanding, reason, and judgment; and He makes men exercise them upon the truth. Thus the full responsibility of man is maintained, while the power of God comes in all its sovereign force upon their hearts and consciences. For this purpose He sends forth the Spirit; who makes men feel that they are sinners, and then He leads them to desire the salvation of Him who is the Truth. And the same Holy Spirit who reproves of sin also goes on to display the perfect righteousness of Christ, in which the sinner is accepted.

2. He rules in a converted heart by the commanding power of the truth. This power extends to all parts of Gods holy Word. His right to command is as extensive in one thing as another; His least command is as important as His greatest. (J. W. Reeve, M. A.)

The Life

Jesus, the Life

He is

I. THE GIVER OF LIFE. We cannot go anywhere without finding living things. Heaven is full of life; for the angels live there. This world is full of life; for, wherever we go, we find people living. And, when we go outside of the homes, in the fields, on the hills, in the ponds, and rivers, and seas, far down to its lowest depths, something or other is found living. And the air is full of life. And it is Jesus who gives life to all these things (Act 3:15). But it is particularly because He gives life to souls dead in sins, and makes it possible for them to live forever, that Jesus is called the Life. I say, Charlie, said Willie to his brother, isnt it nice to be alive! Why, only see how I can toss my arms about, and use my legs, and feet, and hands. And, then, I can see, and hear, and feel. Its real nice to be alive, especially when you are all alive and have no part of you dead. No part of you dead! said Willie. Who ever heard of such a thing as being part alive and part dead? I have, Willie. It was myself. The best part of me was quite dead; and what made it still worse was that I didnt know it. But what part of you was dead, Charlie? My soul was dead towards God. When God spoke to me, I didnt hear His voice; when He called me to look to Him, I couldnt see Him; and when He told me to love Him, I didnt do it. Well, how did it ever come alive? Well, Willie, it was Jesus who did it all for me. He sent His blessed Spirit into my heart, to show me that my soul was dead; and that I never could be happy, and never go to heaven unless my soul was made alive. Then I prayed to Him, and He heard me, and ever since He has made me feel so happy!

II. THE SUPPORTER OF LIFE. We have no power to make ourselves alive, and when life is given we have no power to keep or preserve it, and therefore we need such a one as Jesus. Nothing could continue to live, if it were left entirely to itself. Some things, when they begin to live, need a great deal more care and support than others. Look, for instance, at a babe that is just born, and a chicken that is just hatched. How very different they are in the care they require! But there is nothing that requires more care than our souls, after Jesus has made them alive. We are in a position of great danger. If left to ourselves, we must perish. If we have a servant working for us, we can show him the work we want him to do; but we cannot give him the strength to do it. Jesus can do both. He is like a great mountain that can support everything that rests upon it, whether an army or a fly. And He is like the ocean, too. When men launch their huge iron steamers, by scores and by hundreds, the ocean supports them as easily as though they were light as a piece of cork. And so Jesus can support all His people.

III. THE EXAMPLE OF LIFE (1Pe 2:21). When Jesus makes our souls alive, then the one thing we have to do is to try to be like Jesus. A little girl went to a writing school. When she saw the copy set before her, she said; I can never write like that. But she took up her pen, and put it timidly on the paper. I can but try, she said. Ill do the best I can. She wrote half a page. The letters were crooked. She feared to have the teacher look at her book. But when the teacher came, he looked and smiled. I see you are trying, my little girl, he said kindly, and that is all I expect. She took courage. Again and again she studied the beautiful copy. She wrote very carefully, but the letters straggled here, were crowded there, and some of them seemed to look every way. She trembled when she heard the step of the teacher. Im afraid youll find fault with me, she said. I do not find fault with you, said the teacher, because you are only a beginner. Keep on trying. In this way, you will do better every day, and soon get to be a very good writer. And this is the way we are to try to be like Jesus. But when we read about Jesus and learn how holy, and good, and perfect He was, we must not be discouraged if we do not become like Him at once. But, if we keep on trying, and ask God to help us, we shall learn of Him to be meek and lowly in heart; and we shall become daily more and more like Him.

IV. THE REWARDER OF LIFE. Those who love Jesus are the happiest in this world, and will be the only happy people in the world to come. (R. Newton, D. D.)

Christ, our Life

Life includes

1. Appropriate activity.

2. Happiness. The life here intended is not natural and intellectual, but spiritual and eternal. Christ is the Life, as He is

I. ITS AUTHOR.

1. He saves us from death

(1) By His atonement, which satisfies the law.

(2) By delivering us from the power of Satan.

2. He gives inward spiritual life, because

(1) He procures for us the gift of the life-giving Spirit.

(2) He not only merits, but sends that Spirit.

II. ITS OBJECT.

1. The exercises in which the Spiritual life consists terminate in Him.

2. The happiness involved consists in fellowship with Him. He is our life, as He is our joy, our portion, our everlasting inheritance.

III. ITS END. It is Christ for us to live. While others live for themselves, their country, mankind, the believer lives for Christ. It is the great design of His life to promote Christs glory, and to advance His kingdom. Inferences

1. Test of character. The difference between the true and the nominal Christian lies here. The one seeks and regards Christ as his life only, as He delivers from death; the other as the object of his life.

2. The true way to grow in grace, and in vigorous spiritual life, is to get more of Christ.

3. The happiness and duty of thus making Christ our life. (C. Hodge, D. D.)

Christ, the Life

A well-known modern scientist has hazarded the speculation that the origin of life on this planet has been the falling upon it of the fragment of a meteor or an aerolite, from some other system, with a speck of organic life upon it, from which all has developed. Whatever may be the case in regard to the physical life, that is absolutely true in the case of spiritual life. It all comes because this heaven-descended Christ has come down the long staircase of Incarnation, and has brought with Him into the clouds and oppressions of our terrestrial atmosphere a germ of life which He has planted in the heart of the race, there to spread forever. (Homiletic Monthly.)

Christ, the Christians life

I. LIFE IN CHRIST. As the life of the mother is imparted to the child, so Christs life is imparted to the Christian. Baptism symbolizes our being born in Christ, and the Lords Supper symbolizes our being fed by Him. Both exhibit a common life between the believer and Christ. In this lies the security of the Christian. If you saw a rill running down a mountain side, you might wonder if that stream would not soon cease to run; but if you found out that a fountain fed it, then you could readily believe that it would keep on running, and that, whatever obstacles might cross its course, it would go on and on toward the ocean. Christ is the eternal fountain–the life of the soul (Rom 8:38-39).

II. LIFE ON CHRIST Some plants grow on that on which they lean. So the life of Christ is to the Christian a support and a supply. This life is given to us through

1. The Word. The words of the Bible are life. Christ is in them. There is not a word here in which, if you go down deep enough, you will not find Christ, as there is not a spot of ground where, if you go down deep enough, you cannot find water.

2. The Sacraments. We do not value these as highly as we ought. In the sixth chapter we read that if we partake of Christ we shall live. This, of course, is but the outward expression of the infinite truth. There is an inward oneness with Christ revealed in the sacraments. We can never understand this union unless we have experienced it.

III. LIFE FOR CHRIST. No one can realize Christs worth to his soul until He works for Him, until he consecrates his life to Him. In consecration Christ is revealed.

IV. LIFE WITH CHRIST. The entire life of the Saviour, from Bethlehem to Calvary, is, I may say, an allegory, a mould in which the Christians life is cast. Christ was born: the Christian is born in Him, etc. We have no trial that Christ did not experience. We can roll all our burdens on Christ, who is by our side. (J. A. M. Chapman.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 6. I am the WAY] That leads so the Father: – the TRUTH that teaches the knowledge of God, and directs in the way: – the LIFE that animates all those who seek and serve him, and which is to be enjoyed eternally at the end of the way.

Christ is the WAY:

1. By his doctrine, Joh 6:68.

2. By his example, 1Pe 2:21.

3. By his sacrifice, He 9:8-9.

4. By his Spirit, Joh 16:13.

He is the TRUTH:

1. In opposition to all false religions.

2. To the Mosaic law, which was only the shadow, not the truth or substance, of the good things which were to come. And

3. In respect to all the promises of God, 2Co 1:20.

He is the LIFE, both in grace and glory; the life that not only saves from death, but destroys it.

No man cometh unto the Father] By any other doctrine, by any other merit, or by any other intercession than mine.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

Christ was his own way to his Father; By his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, Heb 9:12. See Luk 24:26; Phi 2:8. But both the former words, where the apostle spake of the way they should go, and the following words, hint to us, that Christ is here speaking of their way, not his own.

As to them, he saith,

I am the way; that is, the way by which those must get to heaven who will ever come there. Christ is our way to heaven by the doctrine which he taught; by his death, by which he purchased this heavenly inheritance for us; by his holy life and conversation, setting us an example that we should follow his steps; by the influence of his Spirit, guiding us to, and assisting us in, those holy actions by which we must come unto glory.

He is

the truth; that is, say some, the true way to life eternal: but he is the truth as to His doctrine, the gospel being the word of truth, Eph 1:13; and as truth signifies reality and accomplishment, in opposition to the prophecies and promises, all being but words till they were in him fulfilled; in which sense we read of the true tabernacle, and the true holy places, Heb 8:2; Heb 9:24 ;or as truth is opposed to falsehood, as truth is taken Joh 8:44; Rom 3:7.

And he is

the life, the Author and Giver of eternal life, Joh 11:25; 1Jo 5:11; and the purchaser of it by his death; he who by his doctrine showeth the way to it, and by his Holy Spirit begins it, and carrieth it on to perfection. The Jews thought the way to it was by the law of Moses; but our Saviour beateth his disciples out of that opinion: for if the law could have given life, Christ had died in vain, as the apostle argues. Therefore (saith he) there is no coming to the Father

but by me; no way for you or any other, to come to heaven, but by receiving, and embracing, and believing in me.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way,…. Our Lord takes the opportunity of this discourse about the place he was going to, and the way unto it, more fully to instruct his disciples concerning himself, saying, “I am the way”; Christ is not merely the way, as he goes before his people as an example; or merely as a prophet, pointing out unto them by his doctrine the way of salvation; but he is the way of salvation itself by his obedience and sacrifice; nor is there any other; he is the way of his Father’s appointing, and which is entirely agreeable to the perfections of God, and suitable to the case and condition of sinners; he is the way to all the blessings of the covenant of grace; and he is the right way into a Gospel church state here; no one comes rightly into a church of Christ but by faith in him; and he is the way to heaven: he is entered into it himself by his own blood, and has opened the way to it through himself for his people: he adds,

the truth he is not only true, but truth itself: this may regard his person and character; he is the true God, and eternal life; truly and really man; as a prophet he taught the way of God in truth; as a priest, he is a faithful, as well as a merciful one, true and faithful to him that appointed him; and as a King, just and true are all his ways and administrations: he is the sum and substance of all the truths of the Gospel; they are all full of him, and centre in him; and he is the truth of all the types and shadows, promises and prophecies of the Old Testament; they have all their accomplishment in him; and he is the true way, in opposition to all false ones of man’s devising. And this phrase seems to be opposed to a notion of the Jews, that the law was the true way of life, and who confined truth to the law. They have a saying r, that , “Moses and his law are the truth”; this they make Korah and his company say in hell. That the law of Moses was truth, is certain; but it is too strong an expression to say of Moses himself, that he was truth; but well agrees with Christ, by whom grace and truth came in opposition to Moses, by whom came the law: but when they say s, , “there is no truth but the law”, they do not speak truth. More truly do they speak, when, in answer to that question, , “what is truth?” it is said, that he is the living God, and King of the world t, characters that well agree with Christ.

And the life: Christ is the author and giver of life, natural, spiritual, and eternal; or he is the way of life, or “the living way”; in opposition to the law, which was so far from being the way of life, that it was the ministration of condemnation and death: he always, and ever will be the way; all in this way live, none ever die; and it is a way that leads to eternal life: and to conclude all the epithets in one sentence, Christ is the true way to eternal life It is added by way of explanation of him, as the way,

no man cometh unto the Father but by me; Christ is the only way of access unto the Father; there is no coming to God as an absolute God, not upon the foot of the covenant of works, nor without a Mediator; and the only Mediator between God and man is Christ: he introduces and presents the persons and services of his people to his Father, and gives them acceptance with him.

r T. Bab. Bava Bathra. fol. 74. 1. Bemidbar Rabba, fol. 223. 2. s Hieros. Roshhashanah, fol. 59. 1. Praefat. Echa Rabbati, fol. 36. 2. t Ib. Sanhedrin, fol. 18. 1.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

I am the way, and the truth, and the life ( ). Either of these statements is profound enough to stagger any one, but here all three together overwhelm Thomas. Jesus had called himself “the life” to Martha (11:25) and “the door” to the Pharisees (10:7) and “the light of the world” (8:12). He spoke “the way of God in truth” (Mr 12:14). He is the way to God and the only way (verse 6), the personification of truth, the centre of life.

Except by me ( ‘ ). There is no use for the Christian to wince at these words of Jesus. If he is really the Incarnate Son of God (John 1:1; John 1:14; John 1:18, they are necessarily true.

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

I am the way. The disciples are engrossed with the thought of separation from Jesus. To Thomas, ignorance of whither Jesus is going involves ignorance of the way. “Therefore, with loving condescension the figure is taken up, and they are assured that He is Himself, if we may so speak, this distance to be traversed” (Milligan and Moulton). All along the course to the Father ‘s house they are still with Him.

The truth. As being the perfect revelation of God the Father : combining in Himself and manifesting all divine reality, whether in the being, the law, or the character of God. He embodies what men ought to know and believe of God; what they should do as children of God, and what they should be.

The life. Not only life in the future world. He is “the principle and source of life in its temporal development and future consummation, so that whoever has not received Him into himself by faith, has become a prey to spiritual and eternal death” (Meyer). “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.” Compare Col 3:4; Joh 6:50, 51; Joh 11:25, 26. “I am the way, the truth, and the life. Without the way there is no going; without the truth there is no knowing; without the life there is no living. I am the way which thou shouldst pursue; the truth which thou shouldst believe; the life which thou shouldst hope for” (Thomas a Kempis, “Imitation of Christ,” 3 56). On zwh, life, see on 1 4.

Unto the Father. The end of the way.

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

1 ) “Jesus saith unto him,” (legei auto lesous) “Jesus said personally to him,” to dispel doubt or any clouded uncertainty concerning the way to the Father’s house.

2) “I am the way, the truth, and the life: (ego eimi he hodos kai he aletheia kai he zoe) “I am (exist as) the way, and the truth, and the life;” Joh 1:4-5, He is the way, the restricted way, not a way, to salvation, remission of sins, and the Father’s House, Act 4:12; Act 10:43. He is the truth, who sets men free or liberates them from the slave chains of sin, Joh 8:32; Joh 8:36. He is the Life, without which men are dead in trespasses and in sin, Eph 2:1-2; Joh 8:12; Joh 10:27-28.

3) “No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (oudes erchetai pros tou patera ei me de’ emou) “No one comes of his own choice to the Father, except through me,” as drawn by the Father, by the Spirit, who has been sent from the Father, to reprove and convict, Pro 1:20-32; Joh 16:7-11; Rev 22:17.

Jesus is the way of access to God by the atonement, Isa 25:8-9; Joh 10:9; Heb 10:19-20. And He is the fountain of all truth, so that both He and His word are true, genuine, real from the beginning, Psa 119:160; Joh 8:32; Joh 8:36; Joh 17:17. And He is the life to which the way leads, and the life points to Him, Joh 1:17; Joh 10:27-28.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

6. I am the way. Though Christ does not give a direct reply to the question put to him, yet he passes by nothing that is useful to be known. It was proper that Thomas’ curiosity should be checked; and, therefore, Christ does not explain what would be his condition when he should have departed out of this world to go to the Father, (62) but dwells on a subject far more necessary. Thomas would gladly have heard what Christ intended to do in heaven, as we never become weary of those intricate speculations; but it is of greater importance to us to employ our study and labor in another inquiry, how we may become partakers of the blessed resurrection. The statement amounts to this, that whoever obtains Christ is ill want of nothing; and, therefore, that whoever is not satisfied with Christ alone, strives after something beyond absolute perfection.

The way, the truth, and the life. He lays down three degrees, as if he had said, that he is the beginning, and the middle, and the end; and hence it follows that we ought to begin with him, to continue in him, and to end in him. We certainly ought not to seek for higher wisdom than that which leads us to eternal life, and he testifies that this life is to be found in him. Now the method of obtaining life is, to become new creatures. He declares, that we ought not to seek it anywhere else, and, at the same time, reminds us, that he is the way, by which alone we can arrive at it. That he may not fail us in any respect, he stretches out the hand to those who are going astray, and stoops so low as to guide sucking infants. Presenting himself as a leader, he does not leave his people in the middle of the course, but makes them partakers of the truth. At length he makes them enjoy the fruit of it, which is the most excellent and delightful thing that can be imagined.

As Christ is the way, the weak and ignorant have no reason to complain that they are forsaken by him; and as he is the truth and the life, he has in himself also what is fitted to satisfy the most perfect. In short, Christ now affirms, concerning happiness, what I have lately said concerning the object of faith. All believe and acknowledge that the happiness of man lies in God alone: but they afterwards go wrong in this respect, that, seeking God elsewhere than in Christ, they tear him — so to speak — from his true and solid Dignity.

The truth is supposed by some to denote here the saving light of heavenly wisdom, and by others to denote the substance of life and of all spiritual blessings, which is contrasted with shadows and figures; as it is said, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ, (Joh 1:17.) My opinion is, that the truth means here the perfection of faith as the way means its beginning and first elements. The whole may be summed up thus: “If any man turn aside from Christ, he will do nothing but go astray; if any man do not rest on him, he will feed elsewhere on nothing but wind and vanity; if any man, not satisfied with him alone, wishes to go farther, (63) he will find death instead of life.”

No man cometh to the Father. This is an explanation of the former statement’, for he is the way, because he leads us to the Father, and he is the truth and the life, because in him we perceive the Father. As to calling on God, it may indeed be said, with truth, that no prayers are heard but through the intercession of Christ; but as Christ does not now speak about prayer, we ought simply to understand the meaning to be, that men contrive for themselves true labyrinths, whenever, after having forsaken Christ, they attempt to come to God. For Christ proves that he is the life, because God, with whom is the fountain of life, (Psa 36:9,) cannot be enjoyed in any other way than in Christ. Wherefore all theology, when separated from Christ, is not only vain and confused, but is also mad, deceitful, and spurious; for, though the philosophers sometimes utter excellent sayings, yet they have nothing but what is short-lived, and even mixed up with wicked and erroneous sentiments.

(62) “ Quand il seroit parti hors de ce monde pour aller a son Pere.”

(63) “ Si quel qu’un ne se contentant point de luy seul, vent passer outre.”

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

(6) I am the way.The pronoun is emphatic. I, and none besides Me. The way is again made prominent, reversing the order which Thomas had used. He and He only is the means through which men can approach to the Father. (Comp. Notes on Joh. 1:18, and on 1Ti. 2:5.)

The truth, and the life.Better, and the Truth, and the Life. The thought of His being the Way through which men come to the Father is the reverse side of the thought, that in Him the Father is revealed to men, that He is Himself the Eternal Truth, that He is Himself the Source of eternal life. (Comp. Joh. 1:14; Joh. 1:17; Joh. 6:50-51; Joh. 11:25-26.) Had they known what His earlier words meant, they would have had other than temporal and local thoughts of the Fathers house, and would have known Him to be the Way.

No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.This was the answer to the doubt of Thomas. This was the true whither which they knew not. The thought of heaven is not of a place far above, or of a time far before, but of a state now and hereafter. To receive the Truth and the Life revealed in the presence of the Son is to come to the Father by the only Way. To be with the Father is home. (Comp. Notes on Joh. 1:18; Joh. 3:13.)

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

6. I am the way Our Lord at once, declining all topography, and refusing to lift the vail to the curiosity of his apostle, concentrates his attention and faith into himself. If Thomas wishes to know the way and the terminus, let him repose full, unquestioning faith in the Son of God. He is the way by which we go; the truth by which we learn the way; and the life in which the way finally merges.

Cometh Father by me He is the living way of access to the Father. He is the bridge from man to God. And, what is the same thing, he is the bridge from earth to heaven.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

‘Jesus says to him, “I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”.’

Jesus then explained more fully what He meant. These words of Jesus have filled a multitude of books, and rightly so, for they make Jesus totally central as the way to the Father. Compare Peter’s words, ‘neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other Name under Heaven given among men by which we must be saved’ (Act 4:12). This fact must not be under-emphasised. It is indicating that He is ‘THE Way’. He is the Way to the Father because through His offering of Himself He has opened up access to the Father (Eph 2:18; Eph 3:12), both as a result of His cleansing us and making us holy (1Co 6:11; Eph 5:26; Heb 10:14; 1Jn 1:7), and as a result of Him clothing us in His righteousness (2Co 5:21; Rom 5:17-19; Isa 61:10)’ It is through Him alone that we can be reconciled to God (2Co 5:18-19). But He is also the Way in that He has brought us truth and life. He is thus saying the Way, firstly as the One Who has fully revealed truth both through His being, and through His life and His teaching, and secondly as the One Who imparts eternal life through His Spirit. In other words He is the way because full response to Him, His words, His self-revelation, His offering of eternal life through Himself as the source of that life, is the way to the Father. They who thus receive Him become the children of God and are born of God (Joh 1:12-13). Indeed we may take it further. He is the way because once they are in Him they will be carried by Him to their new home.

We notice here Jesus’ claim to absolute uniqueness. It has been well said that He does not say, ‘I am one of many ways, I am an aspect of truth, I am a phase of life’. He tells us that He is uniquely THE way, the only way; He is uniquely THE truth, the fullness of truth; He is THE life, the source of life. All is centred in Him. He is pivotal. In the end it is He alone Who can make essentially real in us what truth is and Who can impart life to us. Others can be pointers and signposts. But they must point to Him. He is the final goal. Others can show the way, can impart truth, and can point to life outside of themselves. But He is the way to which they point, the truth imparted is summed up in Himself, He is the life to be received. All the emphasis is on Him.

That is why no one can come to the Father except through Him, for it is through what He is, and what He will do, that men are able to be forgiven, are enabled to be enlightened, and can receive eternal life. He is the complete and total solution. All other great teachers point away from themselves, aware of their own inadequacy. He points to Himself as the One Who is fully adequate. In this statement was a claim to a uniqueness that reveals true Godhood. To any but God such claims would have been both blasphemous and ridiculous.

It should be noted that ‘no one can come to the Father except by me’ applies to all ages from the beginning to the end. The Old Testament believers came to God through the way He revealed, through sacrifices. But these sacrifices looked forward to what was to come. It was because Jesus would come and offer Himself as a sacrifice that God could ‘pass over things done aforetime’ (Rom 3:25). If those who were not aware of the old revelation, yet responded to the revelation within their own consciences (Rom 2:14-16) and came to salvation, it was through Him that their salvation would come, even though they were unaware of it. If there are some relatively few who since Christ’s life on earth have responded to God in a saving way, without having heard the Good News fully, and there are probable examples of this, they too come through Him. For He is the source of all saving truth, whether revealed through nature or revealed through Scripture. And He is the source of all saving life. He is the One Who ministers it. Through Him alone comes salvation to the saved among mankind. (We can be so used to this idea that sometimes we fail to recognise just how all embracing it is).

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Joh 14:6. I am the way, and the truth, and the life: Our Lord, most probably, had here in view the metaphors which he formerly used, I am the door of the sheep, Ch. Joh 10:7. I am the bread of life, Ch. Joh 6:35. And therefore, it might well have been expected, that, having so lately delivered the same sentiments, the disciples would have understood him now. Some have supposed the form of expression before us to be a Hebraism, whose meaning is, I am the true and living way; as Dan 3:7 all the people, the nations, and the languages, signifies, people of all nations and languages. But in whatever manner we resolve the sentence, its meaning is the same; namely, “faith in me, and obedience to my commandments, will lead you to my Father’s house, where I am going. They are the only true road to the mansions of felicity.” See Ch. Joh 1:4; Joh 1:14; Joh 1:17 Joh 5:33.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Joh 14:6 . I (no other than I) am the way , on which men must go, in order to come to the Father in His heavenly house, Joh 14:2-3 , and the truth, and the life . But since no one, without going the prescribed way , without having appropriated the truth to himself, and without bearing in himself the life, can come to that goal, , . . ., is thus the exponent to all three particulars, not merely to the first. The three moments lay down the proposition that no other than Christ is the Mediator of eternal salvation with God in the Messianic kingdom, according to three several characteristic aspects which are co-ordinated, yet in such a way that the advance is made from the general to the particular. The characteristic of the mediation of salvation, in the first point, is not designated with reference to matter (as in and ), but as to form , in so far, namely, as the mediation of salvation itself is therein expressed in a specific figure (comp. Joh 10:9 ). On individual points, note: (1) Christ is the Way , not because He (Cyril. Melanchthon, and many others), whereby both the expression and the figure are departed from, and the relation of things is not sufficiently attended to, but because in His personal manifestation the mediation of salvation is objectively given, absolutely the sole mediation for all men, but which has to be made use of subjectively, that is, by faith on Him, like the man who is aiming at a goal, and for that purpose must take and pursue the given way which is the means of its attainment. (2) Christ is the Truth , because He is the self-revelation of God which has been manifested (Joh 14:7 ; Joh 14:9 ), the Light that is come into the world, without the appropriation of which salvation is not obtained. (3) He is the Life (Col 3:4 ), because He is the Principle and Source of eternal life (in its temporal development and future consummation); so that whoever has not received Him into himself by faith (Joh 6:50-51 , Joh 11:25-26 ), has become a prey to spiritual and eternal death; comp. Ignatius, ad Trall . 9 : ; ad Ephesians 3 : . These three points are not to be separated according to time (Luther: beginning, middle, end; so also Calvin), but Christ is all three at once , in that He is the one, He is also the second and the third, although this cannot justify an arbitrary fusion of the three predicates (as would be the Augustinian vera via vitae ).

, . . .] the Johannean sola fide . Note how Joh 14:6 is the summary of the most perfect self-confession of the Son regarding Himself and His work.

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

DISCOURSE: 1684
NO WAY TO GOD BUT THROUGH CHRIST

Joh 14:6. Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

THERE is in the Christian church a great diversity of character: some, like Nebuchadnezzars image, have heads of gold, while their feet are of materials as unstable as they are unsuitable, even of iron and clay. Others are upright in their conversation, while yet their views of divine truth are very imperfect. Such the Apostles shewed themselves all the time of our Lords sojourning on earth: nor could the plainest instructions wholly eradicate the errors in which they had been educated from their earliest years. Our Lord had just informed them, that he was about to die, and to go to his Father; and that he would soon come again and receive them to himself, that they might be with him for ever. And, knowing that, in general, they were acquainted with his intentions, he said, Whither I go, ye know; and the way ye know. But, alas! though this was true in the general, their minds were at present so engrossed with the notion of an earthly kingdom, that they supposed him to be speaking of some great palace, where he was about to erect his standard. Hence St. Thomas requested further information: to which our Lord replied in the explicit manner related in the text.

In discoursing on his words, it will be proper to consider,

I.

Our Lords description of himself

He speaks of himself as,

1.

The way

[The first way to heaven was, by the covenant of works. But, when man had sinned, that way was closed for ever [Note: Gen 3:24.]. From that time another way was opened, through the incarnation and sufferings of Gods only Son. This was announced to the unhappy pair, who were informed, that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpents head. To him therefore they were to look as their mediator and advocate, and through him they were to obtain reconciliation with God. There were two obstacles to their re-admission to the divine favour: these were, guilt and corruption. But both of these were to be removed by Jesus; the former by his blood, the latter by his Spirit. Thus is Christ our way also to the Father making atonement for us by his meritorious death, and renewing us by his all-sufficient grace [Note: Amidst a multitude of passages to this effect, see Eph 2:13; Eph 2:16; Eph 2:18 and Heb 10:19-20.].]

2.

The truth

[As the Disciples might not be able to reconcile this with the ceremonial law, which appeared to prescribe other means of access to God, our Lord informed them that the legal sacrifices were only shadows, of which he was the substance; and figurative representations, of which he was the truth. There had been many persons raised up as saviours and deliverers. Many different things also were intended to mark out the way of salvation: the manna from heaven; the water from the rock; the brazen serpent; the daily sacrifices, with innumerable others; but they all pointed at him as the one true source of reconciliation, of healing, of spiritual vigour, and of eternal salvation. He was the one scope and end of all, in whom all were united; from whom all derived their efficacy; and by whom they all were both accomplished and annulled.]

3.

The life

[It would have been to but little purpose to direct his Disciples in what way to go, if he had not told them how they might obtain life and strength to walk in that way. They, as well as all others, were by nature dead in trespasses and sins. Jesus therefore added yet further, that he was the life. By this we are not to understand merely that Jesus is the author and giver of life: but that he is really to the soul what the soul is to the body. Without the soul, the body is altogether motionless and senseless. It is the soul that animates, as it were, the different members, and enables them to perform their proper functions. So, without Christ, the soul has no spiritual motion or perception: it is from its union with Christ that it has a sufficiency for any thing that is good [Note: Joh 15:5. 2Co 3:5.]. Christ must live in the soul, as the soul does in the body. If we live, it is not we that live, but Christ that liveth in us [Note: Gal 2:20.]. Hence He both calls himself [Note: Joh 11:25.], and is called by others [Note: Col 3:4.], our life.]

This description will appear of the greatest importance, if we consider,

II.

His declaration founded upon it

Many are the ways which men have devised of coming unto God
[Some have sought for mediators among their fellow-creatures. Others have trusted in their own repentances and reformations Innumerable are the refuges of lies in which sinners have sought to hide themselves from the displeasure of God ]
But there is no way to God but through Christ
[Nothing can be plainer than our Lords assertion. If we ask, What is the way to God? He answers, I am. If we inquire, What other way there is? He answers, None. If we wish to be informed whether there be not some exception in favour of those who have served God from their earliest infancy, as Timothy, or to the most advanced age, as John? the answer is, No: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me: Timothy must come as Mary Magdalen, out of whom seven devils were cast; and John, as the thief, who died a few hours after his conversion. All need equally to have their guilt expiated, and their hearts renewed: and there is none but Jesus who can do either the one or the other of these things fur us: therefore there is no other name or power but his, that can ever save us [Note: Act 4:12.].]

Address
1.

Those who are ignorant of the Saviour

[Have you so little concern for heaven that you will not inquire the way thither? Or do you suppose that a life of worldliness and carnal ease is the path that leads to God; and that men will find it, as it were, blindfold? If this were the case, Jesus would never have become incarnate, and died upon the cross, to open a way for you; nor would he have warned you to the contrary in such solemn terms as those before us. Consider this; for every tittle of his word, whether credited or not, shall be fulfilled.]

2.

Those who desire to come to God

[Beware lest you attempt for a moment to find any other way than that marked out for you by Christ. He must be your only way of access to God. We do not say that you are not to walk in the way of holiness, (for the Scripture asserts the contrary in the strongest terms [Note: Isa 35:8.]) but this we say; It is the blood of Christ, and not your own holiness, that must reconcile you to God; and it is the Spirit of Christ, and not your own natural powers, that must enable you to believe in him, or to serve him. Submit to this at once [Note: Rom 10:3.]; for you must be brought to it, if ever you would enter into the kingdom of heaven. You cannot come to God in prayer, but by Christ; much less can you be admitted to him in heaven. Even Christ himself, as the sinners representative, entered into heaven by his own blood [Note: Heb 9:12.]: think not therefore that ye shall enter in by any other way.]

3.

Those who have already come to God

[Yes; blessed be God, many have come, through Christ as their way, and by Christ as their life: and O, whither are they going? to their Fathers house, whither Christ is gone before to prepare a place for them! What a joyful thought! every day and hour brings them nearer to their home! and, for aught they know, they may arrive at those blissful mansions within the space of a few months, or days, or even hours! Regard not then if your road be occasionally rough; but keep in it; press forward; turn not from it even to the end; and, when Christ, who is your life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.]

Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)

6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

Ver. 6. I am the way, and the truth, &c. ] As if he should say, Thou hast no whither to go but to me, nor which way to go but by me, that thou mayest attain eternal life. Which made Bernard say, Sequemur, Domine, te, per te, ad te: Te quia Veritas, per te quia Via, ad te quia Vita. God, we will follow you, through you, to you: because you are the truth, through you because you are the way, to you because you are the life. And this was one of those sweet sayings that old Beza had much in his mouth a little before his death. (Melch. Adam. in Vitis exter.)

No man cometh unto the Father, but by me ] Christ hath paved us a new and living way to God, with his own meritorious blood: and his flesh stands as a screen between us and those everlasting burnings, Isa 33:14 . Let Papists say of their saints, Per hunc itur ad Deum, sed magis per hunc. Through him is the way to God, but greater through him. Let us say of all their he and she saints, as that heathen, Contemno minutos istos Deos, modo Iovem (Iesum) propitium habeam. I despise such petty gods, but let us have the propious Jesus.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

6. ] Our Lord, as Lcke (after Bengel) remarks (ii. 596), inverts the order of Thomas’s question, and in answering it practically, for them , speaks of ‘the Way’ first. He is THE WAY; not merely the Forerunner; which would imply on our part only an outward connexion with Him as His followers: but the way , in and on which we must go, having an inner union with and in Him (De Wette): see Heb 10:20 .

more than . , Euth. It is another side of the same idea of the Way; God being true, and only approached by and in truth. Christ is THE TRUTH, in Whom only ( Col 2:3 that Knowledge of Him is gained, which (ch. Joh 17:3 ) is eternal life.

not merely because , Euthym [193] , but as being THE LIFE (see Joh 14:19 : Gal 2:20 ) of all His, in Whom only they who live can come to the living Father (ch. Joh 6:57 ).

[193] Euthymius Zigabenus, 1116

. ] This plainly states the , and the way also.

as .

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Joh 14:6 . . “I am the way and the truth and the life: no one comes to the Father save through me.” I do not merely point out the way and teach the truth and bestow life, but I am the way and the truth and the life, so that by attachment to me one necessarily is in the way and possesses the truth and the life. “The way” here referred to is the way to the Father. He is the goal of all human aspiration: and there is but one way to the Father, “no one comes,” etc. , “and the truth,” primarily about God and the way to Him, but also as furnishing us with all knowledge which we now require for life. Thomas craved knowledge sufficient to guide him in the present crisis. Jesus says: You have it in me. , “and the life”; the death which casts its shadow over the eleven and Himself is itself to be swallowed up in life. Those who are one with Jesus cannot die. They are possessed of the source of the source of life. Further see Hort’s The Way , etc., and Bernard’s Central Teaching . , “no one comes to the Father save through me” as the way, the truth, the life. It is not “through believing certain propositions regarding me” nor “through some special kind of faith,” but “through me”.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

Jesus. App-98.

am. This affirmation used by our Lord at least twenty-five times in John. See Joh 4:26; Joh 6:20 (“It is I”. Greek Ego eimi), 35, 41, 48, 51; Joh 8:12, Joh 8:18, Joh 8:23, Joh 8:24, Joh 8:28, Joh 8:58; Joh 10:7, Joh 10:9, Joh 10:11, Joh 10:14; Joh 11:25; Joh 13:19; Joh 15:1, Joh 15:5; Joh 18:5, Joh 18:6, Joh 18:8, Joh 18:37.

way. Compare Act 9:2; Act 18:25, Act 18:26; Act 19:9, Act 19:23; Act 22:4; Act 24:22.

the truth = and the truth. Note the Figure of speech Polysyndeton to emphasize the Lord’s statement.

truth. Greek aletheia. Compare App-175. This word occurs twenty-five times in John, always in the lips of the Lord, save Joh 1:14, Joh 1:17 and Joh 18:38 (Pilate). Only seven times in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

life. App-170., a characteristic word in this Gospel, where it occurs thirty-six times. See first occurance (Mat 7:14), “the way which leadeth unto life”, and compare 1Jn 5:11, 1Jn 5:12, 1Jn 5:20.

no man = no one. Greek. oudeis.

cometh. Compare Joh 6:44.

the Father. See Joh 1:14,

but = if not. Greek ei me.

by = through. Greek dia. App-104. Joh 14:1.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

6.] Our Lord, as Lcke (after Bengel) remarks (ii. 596), inverts the order of Thomass question, and in answering it practically, for them, speaks of the Way first. He is THE WAY; not merely the Forerunner; which would imply on our part only an outward connexion with Him as His followers:-but the way, in and on which we must go, having an inner union with and in Him (De Wette): see Heb 10:20.

-more than . , Euth. It is another side of the same idea of the Way;-God being true, and only approached by and in truth. Christ is THE TRUTH, in Whom only (Col 2:3 that Knowledge of Him is gained, which (ch. Joh 17:3) is eternal life.

-not merely because , Euthym[193],-but as being THE LIFE (see Joh 14:19 : Gal 2:20) of all His, in Whom only they who live can come to the living Father (ch. Joh 6:57).

[193] Euthymius Zigabenus, 1116

.] This plainly states the , and the way also.

-as .

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Joh 14:6. , , , the way, and the truth, and the life) He is called in the Soliloquies of Augustine, ch. iv., the true way of life [vera via vit]. But the text has greater force, comprising the sum of the doctrine concerning Jesus Christ. For to the question concerning the Way, He answers this, I am the Way: to the question concerning Knowledge [Joh 14:5, How can we know?], He answers this, I am the Truth: to the question, Whither? He makes that answer, I am the Life. [To the metaphoric declaration, I am the Way, there is subjoined, for the sake of explanation, a more literal (plain, not figurative) declaration, I am both the Truth and the Life. He who moves onward by this way, he, and he alone, truly avails himself of the right path; and he who stedfastly holds to this way, he has life for ever.-V. g.] At the same time, also, three propositions are stated (comp. similarly the three [things, of which the Spirit reproves the world, sin, righteousness, and judgment], ch. Joh 16:8), of which the first, that concerning the way, is handled presently after in this verse, No man cometh to the Father, but by Me; concerning the truth, at Joh 14:7, etc., 17, The Spirit of Truth:-ye know Him; concerning the life, Joh 14:18-19, etc., Because I live, ye shall live also;- , to the Father) This again answers the question as to knowing [Joh 14:5]. The one and only way, the sure way.- , by Me) This again answers the question as to the way.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Joh 14:6

Joh 14:6

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way,-To enter into Christ and continue in him is the way. [Jesus only answers his difficulties in part. He is the exemplar, the living embodiment of what is needful to impart immortality. He who walks in his footsteps will travel the same road.]

and the truth,-He was the embodiment of the truth of God, and embodied that truth in his life and words. [He was not merely truth, but the truth-the key of all truth-the revelation of all truth necessary to elevate man to God.]

and the life:-He taught true and real life to the world. He brought life and immortality to light both by revealing the existence of both and revealing the conditions on which they could be enjoyed. [He is life itself-the bread of life-the living waters-the source from which the germ from which immortal life is imparted to the soul. Without him there would be no way revealed, no saving truth, nor immortal life.]

no one cometh unto the Father, but by me.-[No one can enter heaven without him, neither can he come close enough to the Father to enjoy the spiritual blessings of Christ Jesus. All must hold to Jesus to be saved. For neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved. By me, that is, walk in the way I map out.]

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

The Way, the Truth, the Life

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life.Joh 14:6.

1. The words of Christ immediately preceding the text seem to have been obscure and puzzling to the Apostles. Apparently they were not yet persuaded that their Master was shortly to die; and, accordingly, when He spoke of going to His Fathers house, it did not occur to them that He meant passing into the spiritual world. His assuring words, that where I am, there ye may be also, therefore fell short. And when He sees their bewilderment written on their faces, He tentatively, half interrogatively, adds, And whither I go, ye know the way. Unless they knew where He was going, there was even less consolation in the promise that He would come for them after He had gone and prepared a place for them. And when He thus challenges them candidly to say whether they understood where He was going, and where He would one day take them also, Thomas at once replies, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; how know we the way? This interruption by Thomas gives occasion for the great declaration, I am the way, and the truth, and the life.

2. Some people find it hard to trace the connexion between way, and truth, and life; and that difficulty was well expressed by Maldonatus in the pithy saying, If Christ had been less liberal in explanation, we had less labour in exposition. The three terms, way, truth, and life, are not co-ordinate, as Luther and Calvin hold, i.e. beginning, middle, end; neither do they express a single notion, as Augustines vera via vitae; nor does Reuss seem to express quite accurately their relation when he combines them, by defining the way as the means of arriving at truth and life. The phrase may be interpreted, according to Lightfoot and others, as a Hebraism equivalent to the true and living way; but it is better to take the two latter phrases as explanations of the former. Jesus means to say: I am the means of coming to the Father, because I am the truth and the life.

I

Christ the Person

I am.

The distinguishing feature and the chief glory of this wonderful declaration of Christ lies in its personal element. The special force of the utterance lies not in the words, the way, and the truth, and the life, but in Christs resolving their whole meaning into Himself. No man cometh unto the Father, but by me. It is this presentation of a Person, as concentrating within Himself all that can be embraced in the all-comprehensive words, the way, and the truth, and the life, that constitutes the grand peculiarity and the chief wonder of the text.

1. Mans need is satisfied only by a person. If anything is obvious in our everyday experience, and in the history, both secular and religious, of mankind, it is that in the formation of character, in great social changes, in shaping the destiny of our race, the great factor is not abstract truth, system, or form, but living, thinking, willing beingsmind acting on mind, heart on heart, life on life. This is human natureon the one hand, an obvious and universal susceptibility to the influence of the person; and, on the other, such influence at all times and in all directions at work, moulding character and gradually determining the great changes that mark our history. Take home life. What is moulding the natures there, and day after day shaping the future man and woman? Is it the acknowledged regulations of the house, the teachings out of book, or lip, or is it the teacherthe verbal lessons of the mother, or the mother herself? Take school life. This moulding, this gradual ripening is going on with obvious reality there; and what is doing it? The books, the maps, the desks, the forms, the cane? No. It is the teacher and the companions that are training and stamping the future man. Take a wider view of life, and the same lesson is as clearly taught. Who can calculate the personal influence of Confucius, of Zoroaster, or Mohammed? What may be fairly traced, in the Christian era, to the spirit and life of Paul, of Augustine, of Calvin, of Luther, of Wesley? In politics, what is well done or worth doing without a leader in whom the party fully trusts? In war, who can exaggerate the potency of the captain? What would have been our recollections of Waterloo in the absence of Wellington?

In general the progress of mankind has not been gradual, but sudden, like the burst of summer in some ice-bound clime. Still less has it been a common effort of the whole human race. If we take away two nations from the history of the world; if we imagine further that the six greatest among the sons of men were blotted out, or had never been, the peoples of the earth would still be sitting in darkness and the shadow of death. The two nations were among the fewest of all people: scarcely in their most flourishing period together amounting to a hundredth part of the human race. The golden age of either of them can hardly be said to extend over two or three centuries. The nations themselves were not good for much; but single men among them have been the teachers, not only of their own, but of all ages and countries. If the Greek philosophers had never existed, is it too much to say that the very nature of the human mind would have been different? We can hardly tell when or how the sciences would have come into being; many elements of religion as well as of law would have been wanting; the history of nations would have changed. So mighty has been the influence of two or three men in thought and speculationthe world has gone after them.1 [Note: J. H. Jowett, Sermons on Faith and Doctrine, 284.]

The intense devotion which the Vaishnavas feel for Rama is merely another proof that, East and West alike, the greatest moulding force is a great personality. In the former days of the British Raj great personalities, especially in the army, had free play. They remained long years in the country, and won not only the loyalty, but, as in Nicholsons and Sir Henry Lawrences case, the devotion of the natives. The almost universal complaint now is that natives are not brought sufficiently into personal relations to their rulers, but are governed too much by red tape and machinery. The importance which the natives attach to personality was seen, as Sir Bampfylde Fuller points out in his Studies in Indian Life and Sentiment, in the great loyalty felt by millions of natives towards Queen Victoria, of whom most of them knew nothing more than the name. But she was a Person, and embodied the idea of the British Raj in a way that appealed strongly to them. They recognized gratefully her sympathy shown in comparatively trivial acts, such as her learning Hindustani in order the better to understand her Indian subjects.1 [Note: C. Field, The Charm of India, ix.]

2. Christ supplies mans need of a leader. He is a person. His teaching is unique, because of the personal authority which He claims for Himself. Other teachers have been content to obliterate themselves that they may magnify the truths they come to teach, but Jesus speaks of Himself. He tells us who He is and why He is come. He puts Himself before His teaching. He did not only preach the gospel; He was the gospel. In this thing Jesus sets His religion over against all other religions. Buddhism, as has often been pointed out, is the religion of a method; Mohammedanism is the religion of a book; Christianity is the religion of a person. It is Jesus. Whosoever enters it, enters Him; whosoever would learn its lessons, learns Him; whosoever would feed upon its nourishment, eats His body and drinks His blood. I am the way, and the truth, and the life.

Plato is not Platonism; Platonism might have been taught though its author had never lived. Mohammed is not Islam; the Koran itself would warn us against any Buch confusion between the teacher of its doctrine and the substance of the doctrine itself. But Christ Himself is Christianity; His teaching is inextricably bound up with His Person; and it is not merely because He taught what He did, but because He is what He is, that through Him we can come to the Father.2 [Note: Canon Liddon.]

3. Christ would not be so great a person if He were not more than man. It is by reason of His Divinity that He is Perfect Man. By Him things were said which were never before and never have been since ascribed to any other being on earththings which it is impossible to reconcile with any theory short of His perfect humanity and essential Deity. No wonder those who heard Him were astonished at His teaching, struck by the authority with which He spoke. None among their prophets, not even the greatest, Moses or Elijah or the Baptist, had ever dared to say, I am, as Jesus so often did. I am the light of the world; I am the bread of life; I am the good shepherd; I am the door of the fold; I am the resurrection and the life; I am the true vine. What did He mean as He spoke thus? There is only one explanation. It certainly was not in a spirit of self-assertion, for He was meek and lowly in heart. He, in coming to earth, made himself of no reputation; He came not to be a master but to be a servant. Why was it, then? It was because He was a Divine as well as a human Teacher.

In very truth the claims of Christ are more eloquent of what He is than any assertions that can be made about Him. Wonderful to tell, it is His very greatness that is our security. If He were less than He is, we might be afraid of Him.

But greatness which is infinite makes room

For all things in its lap to lie:

We should be crushed by a magnificence

Short of infinity!1 [Note: A. W. Robinson, The Voice of Joy and Health, 45.]

4. Every word in the text is emphatic and remarkable. It is not, I teach the way; I declare what is true; I reveal or announce the life to come. Not that; but I am the way, and the truth, and the life. I am all this, in a sense quite distinct from My prophetic teaching. I, personally, am the way to God. I am Myself embodied truth. I have in Myself the source and springs of immortal life. That by the way He means the way to God is clear from the relation of the last clause of the verse to the first. I am the way;no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. Jesus does not simply assert, then, that He reveals and opens this way to the eye of the reason by an authoritative message; that He sets it forth in His discourses: that, by word and speech, in sermon and parable, He makes known to man in what way he may approach God, have communion with Him, enjoy His favour and friendship, and be ultimately admitted to His presence and glory in the upper world. It is not that, or that only, that He does. All this He may do, but there is something else and something more. He does not merely teach the way, He is the way. He not only says what is true, He Himself is the truth. He does not merely utter, in the Divine name, the promise of eternal life, He is the life.

In his Jottings from the Pacific (p. 83), Mr. Gill speaks of a native preacher in Rarotonga who referred to the custom at a great wedding for the bride to walk to her new home over the prostrate bodies of her husbands clan, whilst the bridegroom made a similar progress over his wifes people. Then came the application: Tread boldly, brethren, on the prostrate body of Jesus: for He is our only way to the Father. Trust your entire weight with all your burdens on Him; He will not wince or cry. Only thus shall we safely arrive at the home of the redeemed.

A beautiful story is told of Agassiz. When he was a boy his family lived on the edge of a lake in Switzerland. One day the father was on the other side of the lake, and Louis and a younger brother set out on the ice to join him. The mother watched the boys from her window. They got along well till they came to a wide crack in the ice. The taller boy leaped over easily, but the other hesitated. The little fellow will fall in, the mother said, and drown. But as she watched a moment she saw Louis, the older boy, get down on the ice, lay himself across the crack, his hands on one side and his feet on the other, and make a bridge of his body. Then the little fellow climbed over him in safety to the other side, and both the boys ran on to find their father.1 [Note: J. R. Miller Our New Edens 27.]

II

Christ the Way

I am the way.

1. The necessity of a way.(1) To be taught the way to God is mans supreme need. We instinctively use the figure, even though we know that it is but a figure. Moral distance is naturally represented by spacial distance. The sinner is pictured not only by Christ but by himself as in a far country; and though God be not far from any of us, men feel after Him, like the blind who have lost their way, if haply they may find Him. To reach God is the confessed goal of human life. To know the way to Him is our chief necessity. So testifies the history of all religions that have ever held sway over humanity. So testify the longings and felt needs of every thoughtful heart. God is necessary for our happiness. Life is unfinished until it is in harmony with God. Only in God can we be satisfied and saved. And so the cry of all earnest, awakened souls the world over is for God.

Livingstone, who waded waist-deep through pestilential marshes for weeks, to die at last in a miserable hut by the lake shore; the traveller, who has to cut his way for hundreds of miles through tangled forest and jungle at the rate of half a mile a day; the emigrant, who has to cross the trackless alkali plain, and who may perish midway; the military commander, who has to carry his forces over mountains, some sections of which are almost perpendicular,know how a well-engineered path is the first condition of successful movement.1 [Note: T. G. Selby, The Imperfect Angel, 248.]

You remember the character of Calista in one of Cardinal Newmans finest tales, the story that contains the wonderful picture of the locust plague in northern Africa, and her cry, Oh, that I could find Him! On the right hand and on the left I grope and touch Him not. Why dost Thou fight against me, O First and only Fair? And you remember the same longing expressed in one of Matthew Arnolds essays, in which he quotesMr. Hutton says he could not have been the first to use themthe words of Israel: Thou, O Eternal, are the thing that I long for. Thou art my hope, even from my youth. And you remember the passionate expressions of this longing in the Psalms: As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God. O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee; my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee, in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is. And nothing appeals to us quite so much, I think, as we read the lives of good men as those great experiences in which they have entered at last into the fulness of the consciousness of God.2 [Note: R. E. Speer, The Master of the Heart, 211.]

(2) If, then, man is so desirous of coming to God, what stands in his way? He is estranged by sin from filial fellowship with the Father. A few false and fatal steps have served to separate him from the fountain of eternal good. Every proud, unaided effort he may make to return only increases the intervening distance. Man and his Divine Father are lost to each other, moving in diametrically opposite planes. The Father mourns the alienated trust, love, and service of His rebellious child. The child no longer feels the rest, strength, rapturous awe once realized in the manifested presence of the Father. All the restlessness of ambition and all the disappointment that lurks in achieved success, all the fever that burns in the gold-hunt, and all the sickness of heart that leads man, after he has exhausted the last ambition on his programme, to lie down and long to die, are the inarticulate cries of this bitter orphanhood. Sin hides the Fathers face.

In the innermost part of the tabernaclethe Holy of Holiesthe visible symbol of Gods presence rested between the cherubim, and over the mercy-seat. This part of the tabernacle was divided from all the other parts by a thick and curiously-wrought veil. Through that veil, none might pass but the high priest, and he, only once a year, and with blood. The Holy Ghost this signifying, that sinful man may not approach a holy God.

2. Christ is the way from man to the Father.The great difficulty isHow is sin to be put away? Many attempts have been made to remove it, but there is no way of escaping from the guilt of sin except by Jesus Christ. Some have hoped for pardon from future good conduct, but the payment of a future debt can by no means discharge a past debt, so that even the perfect future obedience of man could not touch his past sins. Self-righteousness, therefore, even if it could reach perfection, would not be the way. Some hope much from the mercy of God, but the law knows nothing of clearing the sinner of guilt by a sovereign act of mercythat cannot be done; for then Gods justice would be impugned, His law would be virtually annulled. He will by no means clear the guilty. Every transgression must have its just recompense of reward, so that the absolute mercy of God as such is not the way out of the guilt of sin, for that mercy is blocked up by avenging justice, and over the face of that star of hope called absolute mercy there passes an eclipsing shadow, because God is righteous as well as gracious. There is no way by which a sinner can escape from the guilt of sin but that which is revealed in Jesus Christ.

In proclaiming Himself the way, Christ pronounced Himself able to effect the most real union between parties and conditions as separate as heaven and earth, sin and holiness, the poor creature I know myself to be and the infinite and eternal God who is so high I cannot know Him.1 [Note: Marcus Dods.]

Thou art the way.

Hadst Thou been nothing but the goal,

I cannot say

If Thou hadst ever met my soul.

I cannot see

I, child of processif there lies

An end for me,

Full of repose, full of replies.

Ill not reproach

The way that goes, my feet that stir.

Access, approach,

Art Thou, time, way and wayfarer.2 [Note: Alice Meynell, in The Mount of Vision, 31.]

(1) Christ is the way for all.Unless there be a road which the many can travel, unless Christianity can in a very real sense be made easy and popular, it fails of its purpose. If the treasures of its truth are at the disposal of only the wise and the clever, they need hardly have been revealed at all: there must be a way into the heart of them open to all, so that even the wayfaring man need not err therein, so that even the simplest need not despair of attainment.

A road is an essentially democratic thing: all ranks and kinds meet and jostle there; there are few explorers, few excavators, few mountaineers, few aeronauts, but there are many wayfarers, and the road is for them all.3 [Note: J. M. E. Ross, The Self-Portraiture of Jesus, 189.]

Astronomers tell us that, inconceivably vast as is the distance of some of the fixed stars, there is no point in the universe to which the influence and attraction of our sun does not extend. Christs mediating and restoring influence overflows every circle of conscious life, and touches the last extreme of degradation.4 [Note: T. G. Selby, The Imperfect Angel, 249.]

(2) Christ is the way now and for all time.The mind of man always seeks in the distance what the word of God presents close at hand. Thus Martha relegated to the far future the hope of her brothers resurrection, and Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. So here, Thomas claims that he does not know the way although it is there before his eyes, and Jesus has to explain to him: I am the way. But Christ was not the way only to Thomas and the other disciples. As is often the case with the words of Christ, we can hear beneath them a more general truth than the disciples recognized. Jesus was the present way for the disciples, and He is the way for us for all time. All that Christ said to the Apostles on the eve of His Passion He has said and still says to men in every great crisis of history. The trial to which the first disciples were exposed was peculiar in its form rather than in its essential character. It was the trial which belongs to every period of transition. It was the trial which presses and will press most heavily upon our generation. And if we in our turn would face it, and come out victors from the contest, it can only be by listening with absolute devotion to the revelation of Christ which makes clear to us that there is a purpose running through all the ages and broadening upwards to the threshold of a Fathers home; that there is an abiding reality underneath the shifting phenomena of the world which cannot be lost: that there is a law of coherence, of progress, of growth uniting in a harmonious whole movements, efforts, energies which appear to us to be broken, discordant, conflicting: it can only be by claiming for our own direct instruction, as charged with a new meaning and reaching to new realms, the words with which Christ answered the appeal of St. Thomas: I am the way.

It is a way that never has been broken up, and never will be. All the fioods of all His peoples sins have never made a swamp or bog-hole in this blessed way; all the earthquakes and upheavals of our rebellious natures have never made a gap or chasm in this glorious way. Straight from the very gates of hell, where the sinner is by nature, right up to the hilltops of heaven, this glorious causeway runs in one unbroken line, and will for ever and for ever, till every elect one shall be gathered safe into the eternal home.1 [Note: C. H. Spurgeon.]

(3) Christ is the only way.I am the way. The saying has a negative as well as a positive aspect, an excluding as well as an assertive force; yet there is nothing arbitrary in this assertion, nor is it a warning against presumption. Christ is not announcing conditions on which a man shall be allowed to approach the Father, and threatening with rejection those who fail to observe them. He does not declare that no man may, but simply that no man does, come to the Father unless it be through Him. He is not a kind of angel standing at the gate of the Garden of Eden with a flaming sword, saying, You cannot come to the Father and the happiness of heaven unless you come in just the way I point out. We are mistaken if we interpret this text in any such narrow and exclusive way as this. Christ does not say, You must not come unless you come by Me. He says that, in point of fact, no man does come except by Him. It is the broad and general declaration that there is no coming to the Fatherhood except as men come through the knowledge of the Son; that men have not come to a knowledge of the Father unless they have come through the revelation made by Jesus Christ His Son.

A pupil applies for admission to the Packer Institute, and asks to study logarithms. And the President answers, You must begin with arithmetic. But I dont like arithmetic; I dont want to study arithmetic; I want to study logarithms. You cannot study logarithms unless you first study arithmetic. The pupil says, I think that is very mean. I think it is a narrow and bigoted rule that I cannot study logarithms unless I first study arithmetic. The President replies, There is no other road. It is not possible for you to come to an understanding of logarithms unless you take the only way men ever will enter into that knowledgenamely, the way of arithmetic.1 [Note: Lyman Abbott.]

I am the way!

Lo, as of old, one Voice is ever speaking;

Yet, all the day,

Still earnest souls another way are seeking.

Who, save the Son,

Our condemnation in His body bearing

With us made one

Our likeness in His Fathers presence wearing

O who, save He,

Could lead us safely through the night of sadness,

With Him to be,

Through an eternity of rest and gladness?

Lord, we have heard:

Thou art the Way, and in Thyself confiding,

We trust Thy Word;

We trust ourselves in all things to Thy guiding.1 [Note: E. H. Divall, A Believers Rest, 14.]

(4) Christ is the way and the end.Here a question arises, which has often been asked: How can Christ be the way? The way is the means to an end. When the end is gained, the means may be discarded. In common material things this is so. What we desire is the end; we choose the means solely with a view to the end; there is no significance or value in the means except as introductory to the end. But in higher things we cannot thus sharply distinguish means and the end: the search after truth has a worth in itself, the way to life is itself life; the way and the end are one.

Here in Cambridge we are scholars all; teachers or learners; or rather teachers and learners at once. Learning is no doubt a meana mean whereby we may be enabled to serve God and our country in Church and State. Yet learning is not only a mean even to this high end, much less to those low grovelling ends which, by a corruption of language unknown to our founders, are called the rewards or prizes of knowledge. No single result is the satisfying fruit of labour, but the labour itself, steadily moving onward day by day, and proving itself not to be in vain, is the best proof that Gods blessing is upon us. The work of education is the end and the reward: and that teacher and that student will labour restlessly and slavishly, not with a free and hearty enthusiam, who do not lose themselves and all distant ends in the engrossing enjoyment of the work itself.2 [Note: J. E. B. Mayor, Sermons, 9.]

III

Christ the Truth

I am the truth.

1. Were these words merely equivalent to I speak the truth, it would be much to know this of One who tells us things of so measureless a consequence to ourselves. The faith of the disciples was being strained by what He had just been saying to them. Here was a man in most respects like themselves: a man who became hungry and sleepy, a man who was to be arrested and executed by the rulers, assuring them that He was going to prepare for them everlasting habitations, and that He would return to take them to these habitations. He saw that they found it hard to believe this. Who does not find it hard to believe all that our Lord tells us of our future? Think how much we trust simply to His word. If He is not true, then the whole of Christendom has framed its life on a false issue, and is met at death by blank disappointment. Christ has aroused in our minds by His promises and statements a group of ideas and expectations which nothing but His word could have persuaded us to entertain. Nothing is more remarkable about our Lord than the calmness and assurance with which He utters the most astounding statements. The ablest and most enlightened men have their hesitations, their periods of agonizing doubt, their suspense of judgment, their laboured inquiries, their mental conflicts. With Jesus there is nothing of this. From first to last He sees with perfect clearness to the utmost bound of human thought, knows with absolute certainty whatever is essential for us to know. His is not the assurance of ignorance, nor is it the dogmatism of traditional teaching or the evasive assurance of a superficial and reckless mind. It is plainly the assurance of One who stands in the full noon of truth and speaks what He knows. For every question which our most anxious and trying experiences dictate He has the ready and sufficient answer. But more than this is contained in His words. He says not merely I speak the truth, but I am the truth.

2. Our Lord has declared that He is Himself the truth. We are to discover in Him all we can learn of the ultimate nature of things Divine and human, all we can need to know of the mystery of the universe and the meaning of our lives.

(1) Christ is the truth about man.I am the truth, said Christ. Our attitude in respect of that saying of His is determined by our belief as to His person. It is revealed in Scripture, and accepted by the Church, that God in becoming man took upon Him the nature of humanity at large, that He united to Himself not the personality of a favoured individual, but the nature of the race. Thus He represents in Himself all men, past, present, and to come, with their gifts and their achievements no less than their troubles and their tears.

He shows us what man is, and what man may be. We measure ourselves over against Him, and for the first time we realize ourselves. We hold ourselves aloof from Him, and our ideals seem glorious, and our attainment passable, and our sins venial. We measure ourselves against Christ, and we abhor ourselves in dust and ashes. We stand up face to face with Him who is the truth about man, and for the first time we understand what we areall the misery and the flaw of our lives, all the shame and the loathsomeness of our shortcomings. And we look up into His face once again, and we see there not alone what we are, but what we may be. We hear Him speaking of Himself as the Son of Man; we hear Him telling us that the Father sent Him to show what in the Fathers mind we are, and that we may hide ourselves in Him. Jesus Christ is to us the truth about ourselves as we are and as we may be.

Christs unique power as a teacher of morals lies in the fact that He embodied in His own life His whole teaching. Did He teach the love of God and man? His life expressed just that; for His whole career was nothing but the utterance of love to God and to man. Did He teach the duty of personal, sincere, absolute righteousness? Did He teach humility and meekness and purity? Did He say, As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise? Did He say, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you? All this was pictured in His own condition and character for the admiration and imitation of mankind. He could say, I am the truth.1 [Note: G. T. Purves, The Sinless Christ, 129.]

Though Goethes history be known but imperfectly, the Faust, with what there is of teaching in it, will live. Though Dantes sad life-path be never followed, we can still tremble at the Inferno, or drink hope from the Purgatorio, and from the Paradiso consolation. Though dim to our minds the life-struggle of Shakespeare, we shall still weep and wonder at Portia, at Hamlet, at Lear. The messagesuch as it iscomes, though the messenger be withdrawn into shadow. Not so with Christ. He is absolute truth.2 [Note: W. J. Knox Little, Sunlight and Shadow, 28.]

And so the Word had breath, and wrought

With human hands the creed of creeds

In loveliness of perfect deeds,

More strong than all poetic thought.1 [Note: In Memoriam.]

(2) Christ is the revelation of God.He was God manifest in the flesh. It is common to say that Christ was the great Revealer of God, who, by His inestimable instructions, has made us acquainted with the Divine character and will. Now this is true, but it is not the whole truth, nor yet indeed the chiefest and most blessed portion of the truth. He was not only the Revealer of God, but He was Himself the revelation of God. Not merely did He say things about God which are written in a Book, not merely did He inspire His servants to write in that Book still other things which they came to understand only after He had left them, by the illuminating influence of His Holy Spirit, but He was the Book Himself.

He is the Truth in reference to the Divine nature. That Truth, then, is not a mere matter of words. It is not only His speech that teaches us, but Himself that shows us God. His whole life and character, His personality, is the true representation within human conditions of the Invisible God; and when He says, I am the way, and the truth, He is saying substantially the same thing as the great prologue of this Gospel says when it calls Him the Word, and the Light of men, and as St. Paul says when he names Him the image of the invisible God.

This is the function of the Son of Man, to give men their Heavenly Father, the Father whom He knew, the God with whom He lived in communion, in the personal relations of Spirit with spirit. To preach theologies would have been no new thing; to preach theologies in the belief that through them we are making acquaintance with realities is an occupation and an illusion of which the world never wearies; but to have the living God mirrored in a human soul, as face answers to face in a glass, this was not the old work of announcing abstract truths about God, it was to reveal God Himself. We have no means of knowing God except by knowing His image in our own nature. The knowledge of God was lost to the world, because the image of God had been lost out of the soul. Christ, through obedience to the inward promptings, kept the mirror pure, without flaw or soil, and so manifested the Father in the Son. There is no other mirror, to which we have access, in which He can spiritually be seen as He is. Other mirrors, as those of outward Nature, are dead mirrors, which have to convey their symbols to a living soul there to be interpreted. How could we know God if we saw Him only in the reflection of a soul that is itself unclean, clouded, distorted? If there had been no unsoiled mirror, we could have known God under no adequate living type. If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also. We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.1 [Note: J. H. Thom, Laws of Life after the Mind of Christ, 13.]

IV

Christ the Life

I am the life.

The phrase, I am the life, points to all Christs work upon us as a life-giving Spirit, a Quickener and an Inspirer. Dead men cannot walk a road. It is no use making a path if it starts from a cemetery. Christ taught that men apart from Him are dead, and that the only life that they can have by which they can be knit to God is the Divine life which was in Himself, and of which He is the source and the principle for the whole world.

Thou art the Life!

All ways without Thee paths that end in death;

All life without Thee with death harvest rife;

All truths dry bones, disjoined, and void of breath:

Thou art our Life!2 [Note: E. R. Charles.]

1. Christ is the life of the body.We may take Christs words first of all in their most literal meaning.

(1) I am the life.It is a tremendous claim for any man at any time to make, and He who makes it here is about to die. But as the Apostles listen, startling deeds of His come back to their recollectionHis healing of the sick, His restoring of the dying, and His raising of the dead.

It is a plain fact of history,true as the decrees of truth are true,that everything which ever came into the presence and contact of Christ, when He was upon the earth, lived. No corpse was ever under the influence of that high touch, but it took again its vital power. When He met the dead body upon the road, when He was in the same room with the dead child, when He stood at the mouth of the grave of a dead manand those are the only recorded occasions of His intercourse with deathdeath retired and life came back.

See the poor woman in the crowd, who has spent all her living on seeking health, and has spent that living in vain. She comes behind the great Teacher, in the crowd secretly, saying, If I do but touch his garment I shall be made whole. She had tried every other resource, gone to every other professed healer, had been filled with disappointment, and she was about to give up in despair; and in that critical hour of her experience, she touched the Saviour and was healed.1 [Note: J. Parker.]

Around Bethesdas healing wave,

Waiting to hear the rustling wing

Which spoke the angel nigh, who gave

Its virtues to the holy spring,

With earnest, fixed solicitude,

Were seen the afflicted multitude.

Among them there was one whose eye

Had often seen the waters stirred;

Whose heart had often heaved the sigh

The bitter sigh of hope deferred;

Beholding, while he suffered on,

The healing virtue givn and gone.

No powr had he; no friendly aid

To him the timely succour brought;

But while his coming he delayed,

Another won the boon he sought;

Until the Saviours love was shown,

Which healed him by a word alone.2 [Note: B. Barton.]

(2) Christ is also the life, from the fact of His own resurrection. When Christ says: lam the life, He does not mean, I lived the perfect life on earth; He means, I, through the very fact of My death, am the life for evermore, and as a symbol of this, witness My death and resurrection. Never was one born into the world like Him. Other men are born to live, to act, to do; He was born to die. But the death which cast its shadow over the Eleven and over Himself should itself be swallowed up in life. Standing there beneath the shadow of His cross, before the open grave over which the stone was to be rolled to hide His burial, Jesus Christ, the frailest life in the world, declared to men, I am the life.

For three-and-thirty years, a living seed,

A lonely germ, dropt on our waste worlds side,

Thy death and rising Thou didst calmly bide:

Sore companied by many a clinging weed

Sprung from the fallow soil of evil and need;

Hither and thither tossed, by friends denied;

Pitied of goodness dull, and scorned of pride;

Until at length was done the awful deed,

And Thou didst lie outworn in stony bower

Three days asleepoh, slumber godlike-brief

For Man of sorrows and acquaint with grief!

Life-seed Thou diedst, that Death might lose his power,

And Thou, with rooted stem and shadowy leaf,

Rise, of humanity the crimson flower.1 [Note: George MacDonald, Poetical Works, i. 257.]

2. Christ is the spiritual life.He did not only say, I am the living One, as if He meant to affirm His own immortality. That was indeed true, but it was clearly not His only idea in this place. But Jesus said, I am the life, the life, that is, of renewed souls, the power which alone can make humanity truly live, the moral and spiritual vital force of the Kingdom of heaven.

(1) Christ is the life now. The eternal life of the spirit is not altogether a future blessing, which we are to get from Christ hereafter, but a present blessing too, which we are to look for from Christ now. It is Jesus Christ who brings us into connexion with this source of life eternalHe bears it in His own person. In Him we receive a new spirit; in Him our motive to live for righteousness is continually renewed; we are conscious that in Him we touch what is undying and never fails to renew spiritual life in us. Whatever we need to give us true and everlasting life we have in Christ. Whatever we need to enable us to come to the Father, whatever we shall need between this present stage of experience and our final stage, we have in Him. The more, then, we use Christ, the more life we have. The more we are with Him and the more we partake of His Spirit, the fuller does our own life become. It is not by imitating successful men that we become influential for good, but by living with Christ. It is not by adopting the habits and methods of saints that we become strong and useful, but by accepting Christ and His Spirit. Nothing can take the place of Christ. Nothing can take His words and say to us, I am the life. If we wish for life, if we see that we are doing little good and desire energy to overtake the good that needs to be done, it is to Him we must go. If we feel as if all our efforts were vain, and as if we could not bear up any longer against our circumstances or against our wicked nature, we can receive fresh vigour and hopefulness only from Christ.

O ancient streams, O far-descended woods

Full of the fluttering of melodious souls;

O hills and valleys that adorn yourselves

In solemn jubilation; winds and clouds,

Ocean and land in stormy nuptials claspd,

And all exuberant creatures that acclaim

The Earths divine renewal: lo, I too

With yours would mingle somewhat of glad song.

I too have come through wintry terrorsyea

Through tempest and through cataclysm of soul

Have come, and am deliverd. Me the Spring,

Me also dimly with new life hath touchd,

And with regenerate hope, the salt of life;

And I would dedicate these thankful tears

To whatsoever power beneficent,

Veild though his countenance, undivulged his thought,

Hath led me from the haunted darkness forth

Into the gracious air and vernal morn,

And suffers me to know my spirit a note

Of this great chorus, one with bird and stream

And voiceful mountain.1 [Note: William Watson.]

(2) Christ is the life for ever. Not only is He the life in us now, but through Him and in Him we never die. Our souls rise up in war against the thought of ending, and as they struggle with their limitations and their chains, the great Deliverer comes, as He came that night to the little group shocked with the sorrow of His departure, and says to us, I am the life.

The man who is sailing under trustworthy captainship, and in company with genial friends, out of one zone into another, is scarcely conscious of the lines of demarcation over which the ship glides. Throughout the months of summer, darkness is unknown in the latitudes of the far north. The rising and the setting suns blend their light without the handbreadth of a shadow between.1 [Note: T. G. Selby, The Imperfect Angel, 255.]

I lift mine eyes to see: earth vanisheth.

I lift up wistful eyes and bend my knee:

Trembling, bowed down, and face to face with Death,

I lift mine eyes to see.

Lo what I see is Death that shadows me:

Yet whilst I, seeing, draw a shuddering breath,

Death like a mist grows rare perceptibly.

Beyond the darkness light, beyond the scathe

Healing, beyond the Cross a palm-branch tree,

Beyond Death Life, on evidence of faith;

I lift mine eyes to see.2 [Note: C. G. Rossetti, Poems, 193.]

The Way, the Truth, the Life

Literature

Bernard (J. H.), From Faith to Faith, 63.

Bigg (C.), The Spirit of Christ in Common Life, 11.

Brown (A. G.), In the Valley of Decision, 115.

Brown (J. B.), Idolatries, 136.

Brown (J. B.), The Divine Mystery of Peace, 21.

Burrell (D. J.), The Religion of the Future, 97.

Chadwick (W. E.), Christ and Everyday Life, 154.

Dale (R. W.), Christ and the Future Life, 111.

Dods (M.), Footsteps in the Path of Life, 4.

Forsyth (P. T.), Missions in State and Church, 197.

Frst (A.), Christ the Way, 1.

Gibson (J. M.), The Glory of Life on Earth, 69.

Illingworth (J. R.), Sermons in a College Chapel, 60.

Illingworth (J. R.), University and Cathedral Sermons, 21.

Liddon (H. P.), Advent in St. Pauls, 587.

Little (W. J. Knox), Sunlight and Shadow, 1.

Lorimer (G. C.), The Modern Crisis in Religion, 204.

Macdonnell (D. J.), Life and Work, 45.

Maclaren (A.), Creed and Conduct, 283.

Macnicol (D. C.), Some Memoirs and Memorials, 84.

Mayor (J. E. B.), Twelve Cambridge Sermons, 3.

Paget (E. C.), Silence, 96.

Paget (F.), Christ the Way, 1.

Pearson (J. B.), Disciples in Doubt, 30.

Purves (G. T.), The Sinless Christ, 121.

Ragg (L.), Christ and our Ideals, 51.

Ridgeway (C. J.), The King and His Kingdom, 112.

Ross (J. M. E.), The Self-Portraiture of Jesus, 181.

Sinclair (W.), Christ and our Times, 137.

Smellie (A.), In the Secret Place, 174.

Speer (R. E.), The Master of the Heart, 206.

Telford (J.), The Story of the Upper Room, 98.

Thomas (J.), Sermons: Myrtle Street Pulpit, i. 151.

Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible

I am: Joh 10:9, Isa 35:8, Isa 35:9, Mat 11:27, Act 4:12, Rom 5:2, Eph 2:18, Heb 7:25, Heb 9:8, Heb 10:19-22, 1Pe 1:21

the truth: Joh 1:14, Joh 1:17, Joh 8:32, Joh 15:1, Joh 18:37, Rom 15:8, Rom 15:9, 2Co 1:19, 2Co 1:20, Col 2:9, Col 2:17, 1Jo 1:8, 1Jo 5:6, 1Jo 5:20, Rev 1:5, Rev 3:7, Rev 3:14, Rev 19:11

the life: Joh 14:19, Joh 1:4, Joh 5:21, Joh 5:25-29, Joh 6:33, Joh 6:51, Joh 6:57, Joh 6:68, Joh 8:51, Joh 10:28, Joh 11:25, Joh 11:26, Joh 17:2, Joh 17:3, Act 3:15, Rom 5:21, 1Co 15:45, Col 3:4, 1Jo 1:1, 1Jo 1:2, 1Jo 5:11, 1Jo 5:12, Rev 22:1, Rev 22:17

no: Joh 10:7, Joh 10:9, Act 4:12, Rom 15:16, 1Pe 2:4, 1Pe 3:18, 1Jo 2:23, 2Jo 1:9, Rev 5:8, Rev 5:9, Rev 7:9-17, Rev 13:7, Rev 13:8, Rev 20:15

Reciprocal: Gen 3:24 – to keep Exo 26:36 – hanging Exo 40:5 – the altar Exo 40:28 – General Exo 40:33 – hanging Lev 17:4 – bringeth Deu 30:20 – thy life Deu 32:4 – a God 1Ki 6:31 – doors Psa 2:12 – ye perish Psa 25:9 – his way Psa 26:3 – and Psa 33:4 – all his Psa 45:4 – because Psa 85:11 – Truth Psa 117:2 – General Psa 139:24 – the way Pro 2:9 – General Pro 8:7 – my mouth Pro 8:35 – whoso Pro 15:24 – way Isa 49:11 – General Isa 65:16 – in the God Jer 32:39 – one way Eze 47:9 – shall live Mat 7:13 – at Mat 22:16 – true Joh 1:9 – the true Joh 4:21 – worship Joh 5:26 – so hath Joh 6:27 – which the Joh 7:34 – General Joh 7:37 – let Joh 8:12 – shall have Joh 8:18 – one Joh 8:19 – if Joh 14:13 – in my Joh 20:17 – I ascend Act 2:28 – made Act 16:17 – the way Rom 8:6 – to be spiritually minded 1Co 1:30 – wisdom Eph 3:12 – General Eph 4:21 – as Col 1:12 – the Father Col 2:6 – walk 2Th 2:13 – belief 1Ti 2:4 – the knowledge 1Ti 3:15 – the truth 1Ti 6:13 – who quickeneth 2Ti 1:10 – and hath Heb 7:8 – he liveth Heb 7:19 – we Heb 10:20 – a new Heb 11:6 – he that Heb 13:15 – him 2Pe 1:17 – God 2Pe 2:2 – ways 1Jo 2:1 – Father 1Jo 4:9 – we Rev 22:14 – and may

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

THE LIVING WAY

I am the way.

Joh 14:6

To what does the way lead?

I. It is the way to the Fathers house of which He has just spoken, where God manifests His Presence to His people, and they are for ever with Him in glory.

II. It is the way to the Father Himself, here and now. For only as we realise our heavenly sonship, and live as the children of God, can we claim a place in our Fathers House hereafter, or be made meet for the inheritance of the saints in light.

III. He is the way, straight and direct, so that wayfaring men, though fools, can walk therein.

IV. He is the only certain way: There is none other Name under heaven whereby we must be saved.

V. There are three difficulties which must be overcome if the way is to avail for mans use.

(a) The way must be made for man, for by himself man could not make it. No man cometh unto the Father but by Me.

(b) Man must be made willing to walk in it. Ye will not come unto Me.

(c) Man must be made fit for his Fathers Home with that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.

And in Jesus all these difficulties are done away. The Way has been made, made by Jesus in His life, His death, His Resurrection.

Bishop C. J. Ridgeway.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

6

In answering the last question of Thomas, Jesus made his speech more general in its application. That is, he laid down the principle on which all must act who would reach that blest abode in the Father’s house. I am the way was the answer, and he asserted that no man would be able to reach the Father except by the Son.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

[I am the way, the truth, and the life.] Why is this superadded of truth and the life; when the question was only about the way?

I. It may be answered that this was perhaps by a Hebrew idiosyncrasy; by which the way, the truth; and the life; may be the same with the true and living way.

Jer 29:11; To give you an end and hope; or expectation; that is, a hoped or expected end. So Kimchi in loc.; “A good end even as you expect.”

II. Our Saviour seems to refute that opinion of the Jews concerning their law, as if it were the way, the truth, and the life, and indeed every thing: and to assert his own authority and power of introducing a new rule of religion, because himself is the way, the truth; and the life; in a sense much more proper and more sublime than the law could be said to be.

It had been happier for the Jew if he could have discerned more judiciously concerning the law; if he could have distinguished between coming to God in the law and coming to God by the law: as also between living in the law and living by the law. It is beyond all doubt, there is no way of coming to God but in his law: for what outlaw, or one that still wanders out of the paths of God’s commandments, can come unto him? So also it is impossible that any one should have life but in the law of God. For who is it can have life that doth not walk according to the rule of his laws? But to obtain admission to the favour of God by the law, and to have life by the law; that is, to be justified by the works of the law; this sounds quite another thing: for it is by Christ only that we live and are justified; by him alone that we have access to God.

These are the fictions of the Rabbins: “There was one shewed a certain Rabbin the place where Corah and his company were swallowed up, and, ‘Listen,’ saith he, ‘what they say.’ So they heard them saying, Moses and his law are the truth. Upon the calends of every month hell rolls them about, as flesh rolls in the caldron, hell still saying, Moses and his law are truth.”

It is, indeed, a great truth, what is uttered in this most false and ridiculous legend, that “the law of Moses is truth.” But the Jews might (if they would) attain to a much more sound way of judging concerning the truth of it, and consider that the law is not the sum and ultimate of all truth, but that Christ is the very truth of the truth of Moses: Joh 1:17; “The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”

Fuente: Lightfoot Commentary Gospels

The Apologists Bible Commentary

John 14

6Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me.”

CommentaryJesus’ answer to Thomas – rightly called the core statement of the Gospel – is striking because not only does Jesus point to the way to the Father, Jesus asserts that He is the way to the Father. And, indeed, the only way. Jesus has just said that the Disciples know the way that He is going (v. 4), but Thomas demurs: “how do we know the way?” (v. 5). Jesus responds by a profound self-identification. The Disciples can safely place their faith in Him just as they place their faith in God (v. 1 ) precisely because Jesus is the only way to the Father. He is the truth and the life – words charged with meaning throughout John’s Gospel (“truth” occurs 21 times; “life” 39 times). Jesus is “full of grace and truth” (1:14) and those who abide in His word “will know the truth,” and by this truth, will be “set free” (8:32). Jesus has “life in him” (1:4), has the same quality of “life in Himself” that the Father has (5:26 ), and equates “eternal life” to knowing the Father and knowing Him (17:3 ). Only One who truly embodies the Father in the deepest sense – who can later say, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father,” (v. 9) and who includes Himself in the promised indwelling of believers (v. 23) could make such a claim. Jesus implicitly points to His Incarnation and grounds His answer in it: “All truth is God’s truth, as all life is God’s life; but God’s truth and God’s life are incarnate in Jesus (Bruce , pp. 298-99). In a culture that extols inclusivism and rejects all absolutes except the credo: “all truth is relative,” Jesus’ words are an offense. Men can cynically ask, as Pilate did, “what is truth?” But if Jesus is, indeed, the One come from the bosom of the Father to declare Him to us, the answer is clear: He is! He did not counter Thomas’s skepticism with an argument or a quotation drawn from his memory. He responded with an authoritative assertion as the master of life. He is the way to the Father because only he has an intimate knowledge of God unmarred by sin. He is the truth because he has the perfect power of making life one coherent experience irrespective of its ups and downs. He is the life because he was not subject to death but made it subject to him. He did not live with death as the ultimate end of his life; he died to demonstrate the power and continuity of his life. Because he is the way, the truth, and the life, he is the only means of reaching the Father. Jesus was not exhibiting a narrow arrogance. Rather, he was making the only possible deduction from the fact that he, the unique Son, was the sole means of access to the Father. Jesus’ claim parallels the author’s pronouncement: “No one has ever seen God, but God the only Son, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known” (John 1:18). Jesus is the only authorized revelation of God in human form and he is the only authorized representative of humanity to God. (EBC )

Grammatical Analysisegw eimi `h `odoV kai `h alhqeia kai `h zwh EG EIMI h hODOS KAI h ALTHEIA KAI h Z I am the way and the truth and the life I am the way, and the truth, and the life… Either of these statements is profound enough to stagger any one, but here all three together overwhelm Thomas. Jesus had called himself “the life” to Martha (11:25) and “the door” to the Pharisees (10:7) and “the light of the world” (8:12). He spoke “the way of God in truth” (Mark 12:14). He is the way to God and the only way (verse 6), the personification of truth, the centre of life. Except by me… There is no use for the Christian to wince at these words of Jesus. If he is really the Incarnate Son of God (1:1, 14, 18), they are necessarily true. (RWP )

Fuente: The Apologists Bible Commentary

Joh 14:6. Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father but through me. The three terms here used must not be taken as expressing three independent thoughts; still less can we fuse them into one, as if the meaning were, I am the true way of life. It is evident, both from what precedes and from what follows, that the emphasis is on way, and that the two other terms are in some sense additional and explicative. But in what sense? Let us notice that the thought of the Father is the leading thought of the previous verses of the chapter, and that in Joh 14:7 the knowledge of the Father is the great end to be attained; let us further observe that truth and life are precisely the two constituent elements of that knowledge, the one that upon which it rests, the other that in which it issues; and we shall see that Jesus adds these two designations of Himself to the first, because they express the contents, the substance, of that in which the way consists. The Father is the truth, the life: Jesus is the revelation of these to men: because He is so He is the way; and because He only is so, He is the only way to the Father. We must beware, however, of the supposition that the life thus spoken of is only life to us in a future world. It is life now in that ever-ascending cycle of experience in which the believer passes from one stage to another of truth, and thus from one stage to another of corresponding life. In the present way we have present truth and present life; and each fresh appropriation of the truth deepens that communion by which the life is conditioned. It may be well to notice, too, that the prominence here given to the mention of the way arises from that thought of separation with which the minds of the disciples were filled. Jesus had said to them, I must go away, and it seemed to them as if in the language a journey were involved, which would separate them from their Lord. Therefore with loving condescension the figure is taken up, and they are assured that He is Himself, if we may so speak, this very distance to be traversed. Is it a way that they have to travel? Then He is the way, and all along its course they shall be still with Him. Hence also the following verse.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am {d} the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

(d) This saying shows unto us the nature, the will, and office of Christ.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

Jesus again gave an enigmatic answer. He had already said plainly that He would die and rise again at least three times (cf. Mar 8:31-32; Mar 9:30-32; Mar 10:32-34). Nevertheless the disciples’ preconceptions of Messiah’s ministry did not allow them to interpret His words literally.

The words "way," "truth," and "life" are all coordinate in Jesus’ answer; Jesus described Himself as the way, the truth, and the life. The "way" is slightly more dominant in view of Thomas’ question and its position in relation to the "truth" and the "life." Jesus is the way to God because He is the truth from God and the life from God. He is the truth because He embodies God’s supreme revelation (Joh 1:18; Joh 5:19; Joh 8:29), and He is the life because He contains and imparts divine life (Joh 1:4; Joh 5:26; Joh 11:25; cf. 1Jn 5:20). Jesus was summarizing and connecting many of the revelations about Himself that He had previously given the Eleven.

"He not only shows people the way (i.e., by revealing it), but he is the way (i.e., he redeems us). In this connection ’the truth’ . . . will have saving significance. It will point to Jesus’ utter dependability, but also to the saving truth of the gospel. ’The life’ (see on Joh 1:4) will likewise take its content from the gospel. Jesus is both life and the source of life to believers." [Note: Morris, p. 569.]

Jesus was not saying that He was one way to God among many. He was not saying that He pointed the way to God either. He said that no one comes to God the Father but through faith in Himself. This means that religions that assign Jesus a role that is different from the one that the Bible gives Him do not bring people to God or eternal life. This was an exclusive claim to being the only way to heaven (cf. Joh 10:9; Act 4:12; 1Ti 2:5). It is only because of Jesus Christ’s work on the cross that anyone can enter heaven. Since He has come it is only through faith in the promise of God that His cross work satisfied the Father that anyone experiences regeneration (Joh 1:12; Joh 3:16; 1Jn 2:2; et al.). Since He has come, rejection of God’s revelation through Him results in eternal damnation (Joh 3:36).

This is the sixth of Jesus "I am" claims (cf. Joh 6:48; Joh 8:12; Joh 10:9; Joh 10:11; Joh 11:25; Joh 15:1).

"We should not overlook the faith involved both in the utterance and in the acceptance of those words, spoken as they were on the eve of the crucifixion. ’I am the Way,’ said one who would shortly hang impotent on a cross. ’I am the Truth,’ when the lies of evil people were about to enjoy a spectacular triumph. ’I am the Life,’ when within a matter of hours his corpse would be placed in a tomb." [Note: Ibid., p. 570.]

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)