IX.

_THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE._

"Thomas saith unto Him, Lord, we know not whither Thou goest; how

know we the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the Way, and the Truth,

and the Life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by Me. If ye had

known Me, ye would have known My Father also: from henceforth ye

know Him, and have seen Him."--JOHN xiv. 5-7.

It surprises us to find that words which have become familiar and most

intelligible to us should have been to the Apostles obscure and

puzzling. Apparently they were not yet persuaded that their Master was

shortly to die; and, accordingly, when He spoke of going to His Father's

house, it did not occur to them that He meant passing into the spiritual

world. His assuring words, "Where I am, there ye shall be also,"

therefore fell short. And when He sees their bewilderment written on

their faces, He tentatively, half interrogatively, adds, "And whither I

go ye know, and the way ye know."[15] Unless they knew where He was

going, there was less consolation even in the promise that He would come

for them after He had gone and prepared a place for them. And when He

thus challenges them candidly to say whether they understood where He

was going, and where He would one day take them also, Thomas, always the

mouthpiece for the despondency of the Twelve, at once replies, "Lord, we

know not whither Thou goest; and how can we know the way?"

This interruption by Thomas gives occasion to the great declaration, "I

am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father,

but by Me." It is, then, to the Father that Christ is the Way. And He is

the Way by being the Truth and the Life. We must first, then, consider

in what sense He is the Truth and the Life.

I. I am the Truth. Were these words merely equivalent to "I speak the

truth," it would be much to know this of One who tells us things of so

measureless a consequence to ourselves. The faith of the disciples was

being strained by what He had just been saying to them. Here was a man

in most respects like themselves: a man who got hungry and sleepy, a man

who was to be arrested and executed by the rulers, assuring them that He

was going to prepare for them everlasting habitations, and that He would

return to take them to these habitations. He saw that they found it hard

to believe this. Who does not find it hard to believe all our Lord tells

us of our future? Think how much we trust simply to His word. If He is

not true, then the whole of Christendom has framed its life on a false

issue, and is met at death by blank disappointment. Christ has aroused

in our minds by His promises and statements a group of ideas and

expectations which nothing but His word could have persuaded us to

entertain. Nothing is more remarkable about our Lord than the calmness

and assurance with which He utters the most astounding statements. The

ablest and most enlightened men have their hesitations, their periods of

agonising doubt, their suspense of judgment, their laboured inquiries,

their mental conflicts. With Jesus there is nothing of this. From first

to last He sees with perfect clearness to the utmost bound of human

thought, knows with absolute certainty whatever is essential for us to

know. His is not the assurance of ignorance, nor is it the dogmatism of

traditional teaching, nor the evasive assurance of a superficial and

reckless mind. It is plainly the assurance of One who stands in the full

noon of truth and speaks what He knows.

But in His endeavours to gain the confidence of men there is discernible

no anger at their incredulity. Again and again He brings forward reasons

why His word should be believed. He appeals to their knowledge of His

candour: "If it were not so, I would have told you." It was the _truth_

He came into the world to bear witness to. Lies enough were current

already. He came to be the Light of the world, to dispel the darkness

and bring men into the very truth of things. But with all His

impressiveness of asseveration there is no anger, scarcely even wonder

that men did not believe, because He saw as plainly as we see that to

venture our eternal hope on His word is not easy. And yet He answered

promptly and with authority the questions which have employed the

lifetime of many and baffled them in the end. He answered them as if

they were the very alphabet of knowledge. These alarmed and perturbed

disciples ask Him: "Is there a life beyond? is there another side of

death?" "Yes," He says, "through death I go to the Father." "Is there,"

they ask, "for us also a life beyond? shall such creatures as we find

sufficient and suitable habitation and welcome when we pass from this

warm, well-known world?" "In My Father's house," He says, "are many

mansions." Confronted with the problems that most deeply exercise the

human spirit, He without faltering pronounces upon them. For every

question which our most anxious and trying experiences dictate He has

the ready and sufficient answer. "He is the Truth."

But more than this is contained in His words. He says not merely "I

speak the truth," but "I am the Truth." In His person and work we find

all truth that it is essential to know. He is the true Man, the

revelation of perfect manhood, in whom we see what human life truly is.

In His own history He shows us our own capacities and our own destiny.

An angel or an inanimate law might _tell_ us the truth about human life,

but Christ is the Truth. He is man like ourselves. If we are

extinguished at death, so is He. If for us there is no future life,

neither is there for Him. He is Himself human.

Further and especially, He is the truth about God: "If ye had known Me,

ye had known My Father also." Strenuous efforts are being made in our

day to convince us that all our search after God is vain, because by the

very nature of the case it is impossible to know God. We are assured

that all our imaginations of God are but a reflection of ourselves

magnified infinitely; and that what results from all our thinking is not

God, but only a magnified man. We form in our thoughts an ideal of human

excellence--perfect holiness and perfect love; and we add to this

highest moral character we can conceive a supernatural power and wisdom,

and this we call God. But this, we are assured, is but to mislead

ourselves; for what we thus set before our minds as Divine is not God,

but only a higher kind of man. But God is not a higher kind of man: He

is a different kind of being--a Being to whom it is absurd to ascribe

intelligence, or will, or personality, or anything human.

We have felt the force of what is thus urged; and feeling most deeply

that for us the greatest of all questions is, What is God? we have been

afraid lest, after all, we have been deluding ourselves with an image of

our own creating very different from the reality. We have felt that

there is a great truth lying at the heart of what is thus urged, a truth

which the Bible makes as much of as philosophy does--the truth that we

cannot find out God, cannot comprehend Him. We say certain things about

Him, as that He is a Spirit; but which of us knows what a pure spirit

is, which of us can conceive in our minds a distinct idea of what we so

freely speak of as a spirit? Indeed, it is because it is impossible for

us to have any sufficient idea of God as He is in Himself that He has

become man and manifested Himself in flesh.

This revelation of God in man implies that there is an affinity and

likeness between God and man--that man is made in God's image. Were it

not so, we should see in Christ, not God at all, but only man. If God is

manifest in Christ, it is because there is that in God which can find

suitable expression in a human life and person. In fact, this revelation

takes for granted that in a sense it is quite true that God is a

magnified Man--that He is a Being in whom there is much that resembles

what is in man. And it stands to reason that this must be so. It is

quite true that man can only conceive what is like himself; but that is

only half the truth. It is also true that God can only create what is

consistent with His own mind. In His creatures we see a reflection of

Himself. And as we ascend from the lowest of them to the highest, we see

what He considers the highest qualities. Finding in ourselves these

highest qualities--qualities which enable us to understand all lower

creatures and to use them--we gather that in God Himself there must be

something akin to our mind and to our inner man.

Christ, then, is "the Truth," because He is the Revealer of God. In Him

we learn what God is and how to approach Him. But knowledge is not

enough. It is conceivable that we should have learned much about God and

yet have despaired of ever becoming like Him. It might gradually have

become our conviction that we were for ever shut out from all good,

although that is incompatible with a true knowledge of God; for if God

is known at all, He must be known as Love, as self-communicating. But

the possibility of having knowledge which we cannot use is precluded by

the fact that He who is the Truth is also the Life. In Him who is the

Revealer we at the same time find power to avail ourselves of the

revelation. For:

II. "I am the Life." The declaration need not be restricted to the

immediate occasion, Christ imparts to men power to use the knowledge of

the Father He gives them. He gives men desire, will, and power to live

with God and in God. But is not all life implied in this? This is life

as men are destined to know it.

In every man there is a thirst for life. Everything that clogs, impedes,

or retards life we hate; sickness, imprisonment, death, whatever

diminishes, enfeebles, limits, or destroys life, we abhor. Happiness

means abundant life, great vitality finding vent for itself in healthy

ways. Great scope or opportunity of living to good purpose is useless to

the invalid who has little life in himself; and, on the other hand,

abundant vitality is only a pain to the man who is shut up and can spend

his energy only in pacing a cell eight feet by four. Our happiness

depends upon these two conditions--perfect energy and infinite scope.

But can we assure ourselves of either? Is not the one certainty of life,

as we know it, that it must end? Is it not certain that, no matter what

energy the most vigorous of us enjoy, we shall all one day "lie in cold

obstruction"? Naturally we fear that time, as if all life were then to

end for us. We shrink from that apparent termination, as if beyond it

there could be but a shadowy, spectral life in which nothing is

substantial, nothing lively, nothing delightsome, nothing strong. That

state which we shrink from our Lord chooses as a condition of perfect

life, abundant and untrammelled. And what He has chosen for Himself He

means to bestow upon us.

Why should we find it so hard to believe in that abundant life? There is

a sufficient source of physical life which upholds the universe and is

not burdened, which in continuance and exuberantly brings forth life in

inconceivably various forms. The world around us indicates a source of

life which seems always to grow and expand rather than to be exhausted.

So there is a source of spiritual life, a force sufficient to uphold all

men in righteousness and in eternal vitality of spirit, and which can

give birth to ever new and varied forms of heroic, holy, godly living--a

force which is ever pressing forward to find expression through all

moral beings, and capable of making all human action as perfect, as

beautiful, and infinitely more significant than the products of physical

life which we see around us. If the flowers profusely scattered by the

wayside are marvels of beauty, if the bodily frame of man and of the

other animals is continually surprising us with some new revelation of

exquisite arrangement of parts, if nature is so lavish and so perfect in

physical life, may we not believe that there is as rich a fountain of

moral and spiritual life? Nay, "the youths may faint and be weary, and

the young men utterly fall," physical life may fail and in the nature of

things must fail, "but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their

strength, they shall run and not be weary."

It is Jesus Christ who brings us into connection with this source of

life eternal--He bears it in His own person. In Him we receive a new

spirit; in Him our motive to live for righteousness is continually

renewed; we are conscious that in Him we touch what is undying and never

fails to renew spiritual life in us. Whatever we need to give us true

and everlasting life we have in Christ. Whatever we need to enable us to

come to the Father, whatever we shall need between this present stage of

experience and our final stage, we have in Him.

The more, then, we use Christ, the more life we have. The more we are

with Him and the more we partake of His Spirit, the fuller does our own

life become. It is not by imitating successful men we become influential

for good, but by living with Christ. It is not by adopting the habits

and methods of saints we become strong and useful, but by accepting

Christ and His Spirit. Nothing can take the place of Christ. Nothing can

take His words and say to us, "I am the Life." If we wish life, if we

see that we are doing little good and desire energy to overtake the good

that needs to be done, it is to Him we must go. If we feel as if all our

efforts were vain, and as if we could not bear up any longer against our

circumstances or against our wicked nature we can receive fresh vigour

and hopefulness only from Christ. We need not be surprised at our

failures if we are not receiving from Christ the life that is in Him.

And nothing can give us the life that is in Him but our own personal

application to Him, our direct dealing with Himself. Ordinances and

sacraments help to bring Him clearly before us, but they are not living

and cannot give us life. It is only in so far as through and in them we

reach Christ and receive Him that we partake of that highest of all

forms of life--the life that is in Him, the living One, by whom all

things were made, and who in the very face of death can say, "Because I

live ye shall live also."

III. Being the Revealer of the Father, and giving men power to approach

God and live in Him, Jesus legitimately designates Himself "the Way."

Jesus never says "I am the Father"; He does not even say "I am God," for

that might have produced misunderstanding. He uniformly speaks as if

there were One on whom He Himself leant, and to whom He prayed, and with

whom, as with another person, He had fellowship. "I am the Way," He

says; and a way implies a goal beyond itself, some further object to

which it leads and brings us. He is not the Being revealed, but the

Revealer; not the terminal object of our worship, but the image of the

invisible God, the Priest, the Sacrifice.

Christ announces Himself to Thomas as the Way, in order to remove from

the mind of the disciple the uncertainty he felt about the future. He

knew there were heights of glory and blessedness to which the Messiah

would certainly attain, but which seemed dim and remote and even quite

unattainable to sinful men. Jesus defines at once the goal and the way.

All our vague yearnings after what will satisfy us He reduces to this

simple expression: "the Father." This, He implies, is the goal and

destiny of man; to come to the Father, who embraces in His loving care

all our wants, our incapacities, our sorrows; to reach and abide in a

love that is strong, wise, educative, imperishable; to reach this love

and be so transformed by it as to feel more at home with this perfectly

holy God than with any besides. And to bring us to this goal is the

function of Christ, the Way. It is His to bring together what is highest

and what is lowest. It is His to unite those who are separated by the

most real obstacles: to bring us, weak and unstable and full of evil

imaginings, into abiding union with the Supreme, glad to be conformed to

Him and to accomplish His purposes. In proclaiming Himself "the Way,"

Christ pronounces Himself able to effect the most real union between

parties and conditions as separate as heaven and earth, sin and

holiness, the poor creature I know myself to be and the infinite and

eternal God who is so high I cannot know Him.

Further, the way to which we commit ourselves when we seek to come to

the Father through Christ is a _Person_. "I am the Way." It is not a

cold, dead road we have to make the most of for ourselves, pursuing it

often in darkness, in weakness, in fear. It is a living way--a way that

renews our strength as we walk in it, that enlivens instead of

exhausting us, that gives direction and light as we go forward. Often we

seem to find our way barred; we do not know how to get farther forward;

we wonder if there is no book in which we can find direction; we long

for some wise guide who could show us how to proceed. At such times

Christ would have us hear Him saying, "I am the Way. If you abide in Me,

if you continue in My love, you are in the way and must be carried

forward to all good." Often we seem to lose ourselves and cannot tell

whether our faces and our steps are directed aright or not; we become

doubtful whether we have been making any progress or have not rather

been going back. Often we lose heart and begin to doubt whether it is

possible for us men ever to reach any purer, higher life; we are going,

we say, we know not whither; this life is full of blunders and failures.

Many of the best and most earnest and gifted men have owned their

ignorance of the purpose of life and of its end. No voice comes to us

out of the unseen world to give us assurance that there is life there.

How can lonely, ignorant, irresolute, weak, and helpless creatures such

as we are ever attain to anything we can call blessedness? To all such

gloom and doubting Christ, with the utmost confidence, says, "I am the

Way. Wherever you are, at whatever point of experience, at whatever

stage of sin, this way begins where you are, and you have but to take it

and it leads to God, to that unknown Highest you yearn for even while

you shrink from Him. From your person, as you are at this moment, there

leads a way to the Father."