'And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. Thomas saith unto Him,
Lord, we know not whither Thou goest; and how can we know the way?
Jesus saith unto him, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man
cometh unto the Father, but by Me. If ye had known Me, ye should have
known My Father also: and from henceforth ye know Him, and have seen
Him.'—JOHN xiv. 4-7.
Our Lord has been speaking of His departure, of its purpose, of His
return as guaranteed by that purpose, and of His servants' eternal and
perfect reunion with Him. But even these cheering and calming thoughts
do not exhaust His consolations, as they did not satisfy all the
disciples' needs. They might still have said, 'Yes; we believe that You
will come back again, and we believe that we shall be together; but
what about the parenthesis of absence?' And here is the answer, or at
least part of it: 'Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know'; or, if
we adopt the shortened form which the Revised Version gives us,
'Whither I go ye know the way.'
When you say to a man, 'You know the way,' you mean 'Come.' And in
these words there lie, as it seems to me, a veiled invitation to the
disciples to come to Him before He came back for them, and the
assurance that they, though separated, might still find and tread the
road to the Father's house, and so be with Him still. They are not left
desolate. The Christ who is absent is present as the path to Himself.
And so the parenthesis is bridged across. Now in these verses we have
several large and important lessons which I think may best be drawn by
simply seeking to follow their course.