This week, James, our worship pastor, came and spoke to us about Jesus being the Way, the Truth and the Life.
1“Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. 2There is more than enough room in my Father’s home.a If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?b 3When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am. 4And you know the way to where I am going.”
5“No, we don’t know, Lord,” Thomas said. “We have no idea where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
6Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. 7If you had really known me, you would know who my Father is.c From now on, you do know him and have seen him!”
(John 14:1-7)
We live in a secular world where there are lots of opinions about everything, with lots of people claiming to be right about their claims to different things. At the same time, we live in a world of pluralism and postmodernism, where some people believe lots of contradictory things can be true at once. The thing is, when we take Jesus at His Word and believe His truth, everything else is brought into perspective.
The Way
Some journeys have many potential alternative ways. The right route isn’t necessarily the easiest, but it’s always more tempting to take the easy route than the right route.
13“You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hellf is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. 14But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.
(Matt 7:13-14)
Everyone can take their own routes, but taking the wrong routes have their consequences. According to Jesus, if we take the wide road, it will have bad consequences for us, so we should choose to follow Him, choose the narrow road, to get life.
In verse 6 of today’s passage, Jesus tells His disciples that nobody can come to the Father except through Him. God is Triune, He is one being shared coequally between three Persons: the Father, the Son (Jesus) and the Holy Spirit. If Jesus and the Father are one, we can be assured that if we are following Jesus, we are also following the Father and the Holy Spirit.
The Truth
We live in a society where people’s opinions are described as “their truth” today. This is incorrect. Instead of “your truth” and “my truth”, we should be referring to things as “your perspective” and “my perspective”. Even in the 4 gospels, there are slight differences showing different aspects of the life of Jesus. The 4 gospel authors were sharing their different perspectives, and we can harmonise those perspectives to see the one truth of the events of the life of Jesus.
In life, lots of people think they are right about spiritual things, but Jesus said He is the truth. According to the Bible, there is only one God. If multiple religions say there is one god and other religions say other gods or multiple gods, they can’t all be true. If Jesus is the truth, then everything else is from a different perspective, and an incorrect one at that.
The Life
Only in Jesus can we find eternal life and salvation. He lived perfect life to redeem our lives from the pit of sin. Nobody else could have done what Jesus did. In the Old Testament, God gave Israel the sacrificial system where they had to shed the blood of goats and lambs when they sinned. To be right with God, you have to be perfect. Shedding animals’ blood was only a foreshadowing of Jesus. In the New Testament, Jesus came and lived a perfect life, then died a sinners death to be the one sacrifice for sin so that we can be redeemed.
There might be things in our past we need forgiveness for. We can be cleaned of all unrighteousness by believing in Jesus. He paid for all our sin on the cross, and eternal life and forgiveness of sins comes from believing in Jesus.
Christianity isn’t a list of things to do, it’s a life to live. Our lives should be our worship to God, every second, minute, hour and day. Just like in a marriage or a relationship, the more we choose to be less selfish, the stronger the relationship. The more time we spend with God, more like Him we become.
So please consider Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life, and believe in Him for salvation.