Jesus The Way, The Truth And The Life
JESUS THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE
JOHN 14:1-7
Jesus does not claim to be a way to God, but the only way: to know Jesus is to know God.
In the face of the disturbed atmosphere among the disciples—his saying that he will leave them and his prediction of Peter’s denial—Jesus tells them not to be troubled. Such a situation was an occasion for faith in the Father and the Son. There were many places in heaven. His departure was in order to make them ready for his disciples. Nor did he intend to leave them for ever, for he would return and take them to himself so that their fellowship might be restored and continue.
When Jesus asserts that they know the way where he is going, Thomas protests that as they do not know the destination they cannot possibly know the route. This gives Jesus the chance to deliver another of the “I am” sayings. He himself is the way, the truth and the life. Because he is the truth and the life, he is the exclusive way to the Father. No one can reach the Father except through him. The bewilderment about the Father was due to their state of muddle about who Jesus was. To know him as what he really was would be to know the Father too (8:19).
Notes 14:2: “rooms”—the word means places to stop and remain in rather than progressive halts on a journey (cf. 14:23). The NEB renders as the KJV. “if it were not so I should have told you.” The difficulty with the RSV translation is that Jesus has not specifically been recorded as having told them that he was going to prepare a place for them. 14:3: “I will come again”—the primary reference seems to be to the second coming or to his receiving each disciple at death. But the succeeding passages show a great emphasis on his coming through the resurrection and the Holy Spirit (14:18,28; 16:16,22). 14:6: “the way, the truth and the life”—in the context it is clear that the second and third words explain further what Jesus means by the first. He is the true way and the living way. “Life” is a word which occurs with particular frequency in the first twelve chapters, “truth” an almost equal number of times in chapters 1–12 and 13–21.