III.
Jesus is the "Life"

All of these sayings of Jesus get focused in one verse, John 14:6, where Jesus said “I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through Me.”

You know, that is an incredible statement for someone to make. It would be either supremely arrogant or supremely delusional in the mouth of anyone else.  Yet from Jesus, it has a strange credibility.  His example, His compassion, His power, His integrity all conspire to cause us to pause and think when we hear His words. Listen to His words again:

“I am the way”- not “a way” but “the way”- a single, unique, personal way to the Father.  In our pluralistic era this is not a popular thought, but the more one studies religions, the more one realizes that all religious ideas and systems are not equally valid or good.  And Christianity is a unique way among the world’s religions. God’s forgiveness and blessings are not earned through keeping rules, or gaining some secret knowledge, or doing a particular religious ceremony or by putting ourselves into some altered state of consciousness. Rather than earning or working for God’s forgiveness we are to receive these blessings as a gift through our simple faith in Christ’s atoning death and resurrection.

Jesus said in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”  Jesus said that He personally was the only way to the Father.

Jesus then said: “I am the Truth.”-  truth singular, absolute, and personal; not just one truth among many truths. The Apostle Paul elsewhere says that in Christ “are hidden all the hidden treasures of God’s wisdom and knowledge.” (Col. 2:3, NIV)

Then Jesus brings these sayings to a climax by stating categorically: “I am the Life” – again singular, absolute, and personal.  Jesus was saying He is the source of Life, real life that begins in this world and extends into the next.  Elsewhere Jesus is recorded as saying “I came that they might have life and might have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)

We all realize at some time in life that we need an anchor. It might happen to you early in life, or it might happen later, like to the woman academic I mentioned earlier. To continue her story, after she found herself bankrupt from alcohol and TV, she found her anchor in a living relationship with the risen Christ, and she found the way out of her addictions and uncertainty.  I would like to offer you that same anchor, Jesus Christ. Jesus’ answer is not something to do, but someone to trust.  If you trust Him, you will find Him sufficient for whatever life throws at you, and you will have an anchor that will give you a certain hope in the next life as well.

What is this eternal life that Jesus says He is the source of?  Jesus tells us a few chapters later (John 17:3):

“Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

This life is a relationship with God. Jesus is the key to it because only He can give it.  The final part of John 14:6 was, ‘No-one comes to the Father except through me.’ The Bible tells us that our sins keep us from God.  Jesus died on the cross so that those sins can be forgiven.  Jesus also gives the Holy Spirit to whoever believes in Him, and that Spirit makes it possible for you to have a close relationship with God.

The Bible makes this promise to us when we trust in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17):

“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new the has come!”