I love GPS.

I mean, really LOVE GPS.  It saves me far more often than I care to admit.

You see, I’m an embarrassment to my gender.  This is my confession: I am…directionally challenged.

I can go somewhere four times and still get lost going there the fifth time.  I could be drawn a map and I will miss the turns.  If you give me a direction like “go east,” it’s like me looking at you and saying, “Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος”—it’s all Greek.*

Then the miraculous advent of geosynchronous, global positioning satellites arrived.  I was saved.  I often tell people, “Don’t tell me how to get there—I’ll never make it—give me your address.”  My fingers fly across the screen of my GPS-powered maps program and—POOF—I’m on my way.

Last week, we entered into John 14 in our study through John’s Gospel, the setting remains the Last Supper (where we’ve been since John 13 and will be until John 17).  It’s been a strange night.  Jesus washed their feet, told them He was going to be betrayed, Judas was identified (and departed), and He told them He was leaving.

Today, continue in John 14:4-6:

Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.    

John 14:4-6
New International Version

I can really identify with the Apostle Thomas right here.

He tells Jesus, “We don’t even know where you’re going—we don’t know your address, so to speak—so how are we supposed to know how to get there?!”

But there’s a bit of shorthand occurring right here with Jesus.  In verse 4, Jesus isn’t saying, “You know the location where I am going.”

He’s trying to get the disciples to see some life-changing theological truth.  They wouldn’t understand it fully now, but they would in time.

But the Master knew this question was going to be spoken and the answer is profoundly simple to Thomas, the rest of the apostles, and us today (in verse 6):  “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Jesus is the Way because He is the pathway

Jesus bases this on Old Testament theology and thought.  Jesus is the pathway of life and blessing.  He is the “way” we walk when we walk in faithfulness to the Scriptures.

This is “the way” the prophet Isaiah wrote in Isaiah 35:8 “And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness; it will be for those who walk on that Way. The unclean will not journey on it; wicked fools will not go about on it.”  It is why Christians were originally called those who “belonged to the way” recorded in Acts 9:2. 

Jesus is the truth because He Himself is the truth.

Jesus is the supreme revelation of God to humanity; He “narrates” the Father to us.  When Jesus speaks, they are the words of the Father.  When He acts, they are the actions of the Father.   As the Apostle Paul wrote in Colossians 1:15, “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.”  Jesus is the truth of God—every bit the “Word of God made flesh” (John 1:14).

Jesus is the “life” because He is LIFE.

He is the “resurrection and the life” in John 11:25. John 1:4 simply declares “In Him was life and that life was the light of all mankind.”  LIFE is what He came to give us.  In John 10:10 Jesus boldly asserted, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. 

The “life” we have is NOT just a home in heaven—that is certainly our ultimate promise—but it’s the life of being used for His Kingdom while on earth.  We’re not to spend our time pining to leave this world; instead, we are called to allow Jesus to live His life through us and be witnesses to Who He is while we wait for Him!

With all these words, pregnant with rich meaning, Jesus answered Thomas.  The address for where Jesus is going is Heaven by the way of the cross.  The road to get there is through Him.  You wanna see Heaven, you gotta go through Jesus.  Plain and simple.

The message of the Gospel is very exclusive.  Please read this well: there are not multiple ways to get to Heaven.  God doesn’t grade on a curve.  It doesn’t matter how sincere you are in your belief.

This is what Jesus said: “No one comes to the Father except through me.” Jesus did not say it’s okay to reject Him and still go to Heaven.  Quite the contrary: Jesus said He is the ONLY way to Heaven.

Friend, if you reject Jesus, it will not be for His lack of trying.  You have heard the Word of the Lord: “No one comes to Father except through” Jesus: the way, the truth, and the life.

Is He Your way?
Your truth?
And your life?

______________

* “In the beginning was the Word” – John 1:1