31 Dec 2022

John, one of the twelve disciples (Apostles) of Jesus Christ, recorded, in the Gospel of John, the words of Jesus Christ -“I am the way, the truth and the life… ”
The latter part of this same verse records Jesus saying, ..”No one comes to the Father (God the Father) except through me”.

When C.S. Lewis (Author of ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’), one who became a Christian after ‘running away from God’ for many years, examined the words of Jesus above, he wrote:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Jesus: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to”.

When we examine the same words of Jesus, the ‘way’ points us directly to the fact that Jesus alone provides access to the Father. In the book of Hebrews (10:19-20), the ‘way’ is referred as: ..through the shed blood of Christ, “a new and living way” has been opened for us into the most holy place, through “the curtain, that is, his body.” (the curtain in the BIble refers to the curtain that separates the ‘holy place’ from the ‘most holy place’ in the Temple i.e. Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross for us opens the way into the very presence of God).

The Bible explains to us that no one can be justified on the basis of the law (since none of us fully obey the law), implying that our own righteousness cannot grant us justification before God; Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us through his death on the cross; thus we are justified by faith in Christ alone and live by the gift of the Holy Spirit; Jesus’s full and perfect obedience, even unto death on a cross overcomes the burden of our disobedience. He has become “our righteousness, holiness and redemption”. In other words, because Jesus is the only one who has fully walked in the way of the Lord he is the only way we can come to the Father for life. Through Christ, “a new and living way” has been made for us; believing in Him alone we have life in His name (John 20:31).

The one who has believed in Jesus has “eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life” (John 5:24). This ‘life’ is a gift both to be enjoyed both now and forever. Those who believe in Jesus possess it already and thereby the hope of glory is truly theirs. This life is only experienced in and through a relational embrace of Jesus Christ. Life is in Him; He is God’s life incarnate (hence He can claim that He is the way,..and the life).

Jesus also claims to be the ‘truth’. All that is true about the invisible God is revealed to us in Christ. Christ is the mystery of God made manifest; in Him “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:2-3). God has disclosed Himself fully in HIs only-begotten Son (Heb. 1:1-3). God’s logos (Word) “was made flesh” (referring to the incarnation), writes John. “We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14 – John was a living witness).

Hence we see the three dimensions of the Faith as the “Truth, the Life, and the Way” – all embodied in Christ, the Son, and the revelation of God.

We examine again what was written by C.S. Lewis:

“Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe in Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universes we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have”.

I now direct this last portion of this sharing particularly to my dear colleagues (doctors who graduated in 1973 NUS who will be celebrating our 50th year of graduation in 2023). I have shared earlier that I need to share with you what is the most important ‘event’ in my life – finding life, meaning and purpose in Christ. At this juncture, more than ever, as we face the closing years of our life on earth (and 10% of our cohort has left us); do consider this sharing from my heart.

C.S. Lewis wrote the following during the second world war and the context today is somewhat similar:

“War made death real to us….it is always good for us to be always aware of our mortality. All the animal life in us, all schemes of happiness that centred in this world, were always doomed to a final frustration. In ordinary times only a wise man can realise it. Now the stupidest of us knows. We see unmistakably the sort of universe in which we have all along been living, and must come to terms with it. If we had foolish hopes about human culture, they are now shattered. If we thought we were building up a heaven on earth, if we looked for something that would turn the present world from a place of pilgrimage into a permanent city satisfying the soul of man, we are disillusioned, and not a moment too soon.”

Lewis described the conclusion reached by many during the darkest days of the second world war. Today, as we survey the happenings around the world with the pandemic, catastrophes from climate change, war and conflicts in many countries, economic disasters, suffering and death – if we do not feel disillusioned and despair, perhaps we are not fully aware of what is happening and what is coming.

In the face of all these, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”.