“I AM the Way, the Truth, the Life.” – John 14:6
In Jesus’ I AM statement in John 14 he covers three things that most everyone wants to know in life. What is the way I am to go? What is truth? We hear the echoes of Pilate from John 18 who is wrestling with who oversees the world. What is life? This is what each of us is bombarded with every day in our society. The question of what it means to truly be living is the question where marketing hangs its hat. What is the picture of the good life? Answer that question honestly and you’ll have a glimpse into the true desire of your heart. Meditate regularly on these three questions and allow the Spirit to examine your heart. Don’t assume you’ve got the right answer and move on. These three things are worth always exploring. Look at the example of Jesus and then look at your life. Does your life line up to his example? Then keep letting the Spirit bring you along the way, into truth, to discover true life.
This section begins with Jesus giving assurance. It is this assurance that is needed to find yourself truly following the way. This assurance will help you find rest in what is really true in the world. This assurance will help you cut through everything the world is trying to sell you that brings you into empty ways of living. It will bring you into true life. Jesus is going to prepare a place for you. He calls this place, “my Father’s house.” When was the last time you heard Jesus refer to “His Father’s house”? Go back to John 2:16 when Jesus clears the temple. I’ve repeated this numerous times and it is worth repeating again. John places the cleansing of the temple at the beginning of his gospel so that everything you see Jesus do is seen through that event where he makes the bold claim that his body is the temple.
Jesus is preparing a place for you. It is a house that is big enough and has plenty of room for everyone. This plays a little bit with the imagery of Jesus coming and making his “dwelling” with us in John 1. That dwelling is temporary. The dwelling he is preparing for us is permanent. He’s trading a tent for a house. This is resurrection and new creation imagery. We trade this temporary life for something more permanent. This is “more physical” than what we experience right now. This is what Paul is saying in 1 Cor 15:53-54, “For the perishable must clothe itself with imperishable, and mortal with immortality…death has been swallowed up in victory.” This is not trading physical for a non-physical (spiritualized) existence. Jesus is promising a more physical life that is fully animated and enlivened by the Holy Spirit. This new creation life begins now as we wait for it more fully to come. The house he has prepared for us is not only a future hope but also a present reality. The question is, will you choose to live in that house, or will you continue to choose the temporary dwelling place of this world?
Let me be more clear. Jesus promises the Holy Spirit to come and live in and amongst us, the church. The Father is in Jesus. When you look at Jesus, you see and know the Father. John 16:20 says, “…I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” Jesus came to be with us in our temporary dwelling so that he could invite us to live within the divine community, the Trinity, in the permanent dwelling. We experience this permanent dwelling when we are in the church together where the Spirit dwells. So, what are we to unite in? The Way. The Truth. The Life.
“No one comes to the Father except through me.” The world sees this as arrogant. Jesus is seen as one of many ways into the next life. I’m not going to take time to unpack the differences in world religions but most of them only carry you to the divine mountain and fail to take you to the top. Jesus is God in the flesh who stepped down from the mountain to come to us and invite us to join him “on the way” as the path to Truth and Life. Part of the reason the world has rejected Jesus as The Way, and only way, is because of the failed witness of his people. We tell the world that the only way to “get to heaven” is through Jesus, and this is correct, but then we go on living as though Jesus isn’t the only way. Model your life after Jesus and you will be walking along the Way.
Christians have often sought power over the world through worldly means, but Jesus shows us the Way by washing his disciples’ feet. We often try to win fights with our own understanding of facts and “truth,” but Jesus lays down his rights, and his life, to lift others up (Philippians 2:1-11). Jesus meets people where they are in their messy lives without fear of their mess getting on him because he knows fully where his home is. Christians have often fought to make this life more comfortable for themselves as if this were our permeant dwelling place. Jesus says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled…my Father’s house has many rooms.” When we let go of our grip on this world, and hold firmly to the world that is to come, we will be able to truly love people where they are, invite them to join us on the Way, and bring them into Truth and Life with Jesus. This isn’t “truth and life” as seen in the world, but Truth and Life that came down to show us how to truly live in servitude of others. When we become more interested in “truth” from this world, rather than living in the Truth of Jesus, we will never be set free (John 8:31-32).