December 4: The Way, the Truth, and the Life
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”
Imagine with me a moment you were an avid hiker. You love the outdoors, its beauty and the uncontrollable power it represents. You love being out in nature and being reminded of your smallness in the face of something bigger than yourself. Now suppose you were on an epic trail, traversing a wild path up onto a rocky mountain outcrop. There is only one path up from the valley below, and as you climb it you notice a sudden and intense change in the air. The atmospheric pressure starts to shift dramatically and the temperature suddenly plummets leaving you exposed to the weather to come: a blizzard. There is only one path to take to return to safety, the one you came by to the sheltered valley below.
In this story, there really is only one way to safety. Every other path would lead to death. There really is only one true way, since all other trails lead to objectively certain doom. There really is only one way to life. Jesus himself makes this same kind of outrageously exclusive claim in today’s verse: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). This is Jesus at his most frustratingly clear and unambiguous. He leaves us with no wriggle room here!
How will you respond to his claim today? For this is why he came, that he might make a way for us to come to the Father. You cannot face the blizzard of life or death without the shelter of the rock of Christ (1 Cor. 10:4). But in him we have peace, security and access to God, for he is the way, the truth and the life. Take a moment to pray to Him now, and acknowledge his saving grace!