The Way… The Truth… The Life
Written by Ben Dismukes
Jesus tells us in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” He must be all three at once, or we can dismiss not only this verse, but the entirety of scripture. There is no other alternative. He didn’t leave the door open for us to pick and choose from among the three. He cannot be the truth and not the way. He cannot be the way and not the life. He is unconditionally the way, the truth and the life.
In our modern Christian vernacular this verse, like so many others, is merely a collection of familiar words with little to no meaning and therefore very little relevance to our daily walk. We likely memorized it in Sunday School or Children’s Church and have perhaps even given mental assent to a shallow and lifeless interpretation of it. Yet I fear that we fail to see the mystery and the beauty of Christ revealed in this profound statement. There is both an unconditional and unquestionable fullness that is expressed here – a revelation which, if understood, is both striking and offensive at the same time.
Christ as Truth
Jesus told Pontius Pilate, “For this purpose I was born, and for this purpose I have come into the world – to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” In response, Pilate asked rhetorically, “What is truth?” (John 18:37-38). There is a difference between factual statements and truth, as these men were discussing. Two and two equals four is a statement of fact, but it is neither here nor there in relation to truth. Romans 8 tells us that at the fall of Adam, man was “subjected to futility,” meaning he no longer had a sense of purpose. The truth of God’s intent towards the one object of creation that bore His likeness was eclipsed, and as a result, man began a frantic search to fill in the blanks.
Cut off from the one Source of truth, this frantic search was guaranteed to be fruitless, and man could look no further than within himself. His concept of meaning would be defined by what he could manufacture. And manufacture he would – most prominently in the pursuit of religion. Religion is man’s attempt to connect to God through an organized system of beliefs, doctrines and practices, in an effort to answer Pilate’s question. The world applauds such efforts, but the believer in Christ should recognize the pointlessness of looking for truth apart from the One who embodies it.
Ironically, Pilate would later answer his own question, though he most certainly did so out of ignorance, not realizing the prophetic nature of His proclamation. After having Jesus flogged, he summoned Him before the angry mob for presentation. “Behold, the man,” he testified. The Latin Vulgate translates this sentence as ecce homo, or “Behold, man!” In this way, Pilate testified rightly of the Lord Jesus. He is man as God intended. He is the pattern. Only the grace of God can lead us out of the void of fallenness and into the Truth. Such truth isn’t offered to us in the form of answers, but rather in a Person, named Christ.
Jesus is the blueprint for the humanity that God would build. He is the God-man who lived his life as both fully human and fully man. As a man, he set aside His own will, emptied himself, and in perfect humility towards and submission to the Father, obeyed Him to the uttermost. This was precisely the existence the Father had purposed for Adam – a love-based dependence upon and obedience to Him, requiring him to set aside his own will in favor of the God of his desire. Jesus, then, doesn’t merely offer us information. He is a picture of what human life should be, from the perspective of the One who created it. He unveiled truth before our very eyes.
Christ as Way
If Christ were merely the truth, we could end here by gathering around the fire and singing Kum Ba Ya, knowing that we’re all in agreement. But we’re only 30% of the way there. He is also the Way – meaning the truth is still very much out of our reach, except through Him.
We don’t much like absolutes in the modern church. We’ve traded away the binary nature of black and white for a more confused, if not more tolerable, gradient of grays. We don’t have the stomach for either/or, opting instead for a both/and approach to right and wrong. But Jesus couldn’t have been more unrelenting when He finished the thought of God by saying, “No man comes to the Father except through me.” Truth doesn’t take into account our feelings, our opinions to the contrary, or our concept of fairness. It is what it is and makes no apologies for its existence. Where have I heard that line of thinking before? Oh yes… at the burning bush in the wilderness! YHWH – I am who I am. And if I may add: and I make no apologies for it.
It’s a wonder that the purveyors of cheap grace in our day haven’t ripped this page out of their Bibles entirely. How draconian! How offensive and unloving! What about all those well-meaning souls who are searching for truth within the temples of the world’s religions or in the hallowed halls of science or among the ivory towers of our modern academic institutions? Surely God will make an exception for them! Surely in the end, “love wins” and only those who hold to archaic absolutes will be excluded from the Kingdom of God! Such sentiment has grown prevalent in much of the western church. But by redefining love in our own human terms and insisting that we are owed something from the God we rebelled against in Eden, we have made Him less than He truly is in our own minds, and we can’t even see it. We have neither the stomach, nor the wisdom to deal with the actual revelation of the Son of God given to us in John 14:6. He is quite clear, and not only so, He is adamant! He is the truth and the way.
The truth of God’s intent for us – a selfless fellowship with Him whereby He shares Himself freely with us - is not possible outside of Christ. The Father only gave us one option – the Son. He is the door… the gate… the only way in. If we want God, we must come into the Son. This completely undermines the spirit of antichrist that is not only sweeping its way through the nations at the moment but is also infiltrating the church at the highest levels, wrongly claiming that we’re all God’s children. We’re a hair’s breadth away from universalism, which is completely counter to scripture. It is to those who receive Christ and believe in His name that He gave the right to be called the children of God (John 1:12). Apart from faith in Jesus Christ, we cannot possibly know God. He is unapologetically the Way!
Christ as Life
Most of us have no problem acknowledging Christ as both the blueprint for what God intended for man and the way through which it is attained. But if we end there, we have diluted His importance. He must also be the Life!
Oswald Chambers, speaking of the church in his day, had this to say: “There is [presently] no regeneration, no being born again into the Kingdom in which Christ lives, but only the idea that He is our Pattern. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ is Savior long before He is Pattern. Today, He is being dispatched as the Figurehead of a Religion, a mere Example. He is that, but He is infinitely more; He is salvation itself. He is the Gospel of God.” If this were true in Chambers’ day, it is twice as bad in ours. We have minimized His importance and consequently turned Christianity into a religion.
Remember that the essence of religion is as follows: to connect with God through some means of self-exertion. That is quite opposite to the Gospel of God, as Chambers calls the Lord. Our good news message is not do x, y and z that you may reap a reward. It is simply this: Christ has given Himself to whosoever will believe in and receive Him. But to believe and receive rightly, we must comprehend the nature of Who and what is being offered.
We are not commanded to believe in things or concepts. Nor are we firstly after blessings or rewards. He is Truth, Way and Life! To rightly lay hold of Christ, and therefore be found in Him, is to be willing to lose our own lives and find sufficiency in His Life alone, which He freely offers. It is to lose our sense of independence from God – not just on a surface level with words and ideas, but to do so way down deep in the hidden recesses of our souls, as He probes and uncovers the far-reaching tentacles of the self-life. He’s after much more than an “in name only” testimony. He’s desiring a company of sold-out disciples whose hearts cry is, “Not my will, but Yours be done,” no matter the circumstance. This awareness requires us to acknowledge our need for the cross – the instrument of death to the flesh. Without losing our own lives, His can never become ours. We cannot serve two masters. We’ll only end up hating one and loving the other. We must choose which life we want, and we must choose without repentance.
If we accept Him as Truth and Way, but not as Life (which is what a cross-less Christianity encourages), we end up with religion no matter how you slice it. Christ as pattern and way but not as life will always lead to a greater exertion of self. Consider this: to accept Him as Truth is to see Him as the blueprint of God for mankind. To accept Him as Way is to acknowledge His part in restoring us to relationship with the Father. In failing to accept Him as Life, we’re seeking to finish what was begun by the Spirit, with the flesh – the efforts, the understanding, the traditions, the feelings, etc. of man.
Religion is, simply put, the bewitchment of the Galatians, and it will never get us to the finish line!
Neo-Pharisees have come onto the scene in recent years – those who are quick to dismiss as legalists and cultists the ones who steadfastly point to Christ as Way, Truth and Life - claiming that the harsh and unyielding nature of their message is akin to the harsh and unyielding rhetoric of the Pharisees in Jesus’ day, who pointed to the works of the Law as the only Way to the Father. But harshness and unyieldedness don’t make one a Pharisee. It is, instead, love of religion and one’s own ability to navigate its stringent demands, in whatever form they take, that does so.
Two thousand years ago, the Pharisees loved their own interpretation of the truth, as given in the Law of Moses, and valued it over the manifestation of the Love of God, in the Person of Jesus. He was a threat to their religious system, so they murdered Him. They did so to their own demise. In our day, Neo-Pharisees love their own concepts of love, far more than they love the One who revealed Himself as the Truth. They say things like, “Loving well is more important than truth,” which is ironic, if meant to be taken seriously… that is… as a truthful statement. In so doing, they seek to put to death the testimony of the One would tear down their silly, religious constructs and offer them freedom instead. They’ve forgotten that He is full of grace and truth.
To dissect Him is to diminish Him.
Neo-Pharisees are high on forms of godliness without making provision for the Life to come forth. They’re quick to accept some version of Messiah as Truth and Way, but have no compulsion to know Him as Life – which would require that they lay down their own. They point to outward things as evidence of spirituality, failing to recognize that it’s fruit God is after (see Galatians 5:22-24 – the Fruit of the Spirit). Like their forefathers, they make a show of washing the outside of the cup, while neglecting the true need for Christ inwardly, where the real dirt and grime reside. I’m not speaking necessarily of outward sins as we’ve come to know them in modern Christianity. I am, however, suggesting there’s a greater sin within, deep in the heart of humanity, which must be dealt with: the sin of independence from the One who created us.
This will be labeled as harsh, unyielding, radical, extreme, etc. by many. But let’s be clear. Those words are often tossed about whenever folks sense the religious foundations beneath their feet are being shaken. It is merely a self-defense mechanism - a no-I’m-not-the-problem-you’re-the-problem mentality. Let me once again be crystal clear. We are all the problem. That is precisely the point. Until we recognize that, we will never reach for Christ as Life. The only solution for the adamic life is death, which is why Jesus told us about the cross we have need of taking up. We’re meant to die on it… that we may find Him as Life!
I write this not as an exposé on Neo-Phariseeism, or as a critique of their doctrines. I’m writing as a gut-check reminder of what biblical Christianity is all about. If Jesus Christ isn’t absolutely the Way, the Truth and the Life, then we may as well toss the whole thing into the trash can and hope for the best.
But if He is… we’ve no choice but to honor Him as all three!
