“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” So said Augustine of Hippo in around the fourth century A.D. We are born into this world with a restlessness that can only be satisfied when we find our ultimate home in God. That is the location in which it was God’s intention that we should reside. Until we find the way to this, our home, we are lost and alone.
The Father established and set in motion an eternal plan, His Son spoke forth every stage of creation as recorded in Genesis chapter one and the Holy Spirit carried out each divine command. At the very centre of that eternal plan was the creation of a man whom God named Adam. From Adam’s introduction into the Garden of Eden, God and man enjoyed communion and fellowship. Adam had a Father. He had been created in the likeness of His Father’s only begotten Son. In addition to his body and soul God had created Adam with a spirit. His spirit had not yet been made alive. In order to become spiritually alive, that he might forever become a perfect son of God, Adam must make a choice. Eden was his proving ground. The fruit of every tree in the garden except one was his to enjoy. Only the fruit of one tree was forbidden for him to eat. Had Adam and his wife, Eve, taken of the fruit of the tree of life they would have become spiritually alive and in God they would have found their home, their dwelling place forever.
On that proving ground of Eden man became a slave to sin, so God ‘drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life’. Genesis 3:24. Man became an orphan without the fatherhood of God and he and all who would issue from him became spiritually dead. However, God had left a promise of the One who would bruise the serpent’s head and ‘when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons’. Thus, the sons of Adam through faith in the atoning death of Jesus are no longer orphans, All who have come to faith in Jesus are now the children of the Living God.
Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way….let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience…. Hebrews 10:19,20,22. Through His shed blood Jesus became ‘a new and living way’ back into the presence of God for all who come unto God through Him. Yes! The way has been made open again into the fullness of the presence of the Living God. Jesus is the way.
During every moment of His earthly life among God’s people, the Jews, Jesus was the truth and reality of His Father. He could confidently proclaim such things as “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me. “And He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.” To all who have believed in Jesus He promises, “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.” John 16:13-14. Jesus represents all that is real and has eternal value and significance. Jesus is the truth.
In Jesus ‘the way to the tree of life’ has been restored. He is the all-inclusive food, for He said, “I am the bread of life. “Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. “This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.” John 6:48-50. In just the same way that the manna supplied to the Israelites during their wilderness journey was their complete supply of nourishment, just so is Jesus as the bread of life the complete spiritual sustenance and the assurance of eternal life to all who believe in Him. Jesus is the life.
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4 thoughts on “Jesus is ‘the Way and the Truth and the Life’”
Dear Tom…just one question. Who is this aimed at ? Christians or non-Christians? Who are the reading ‘audience’ of this excellent website? It is a phenomenally good site. Who exactly is it aimed at ? Anthony.
Hello brother Anthony,
Thank you for posing such a key question. Early this year, 2018, the Lord God prompted me to create a website for those who have a heart to seek Him. I sense there is a spectrum of seekers from the unbeliever who feels there must be a higher power, who is the source and overseer of everything, to the ultimate seeker such as the apostle Paul who exclaimed “That I may know Him.” Philippians 3. The former group are well represented by the ones who responded positively to Paul’s message in Athens on the Areopagus. Acts 17.
I trust my response to your question will be helpful and may be the beginning of some dialogue between us for fellowship is, in essence, the flow of the Spirit between members of Christ’s one body. Tom, your brother.
Thank you Tom,
That has answered my question very clearly…and by using the word ‘very’ I mean in it’s true sense, which is of course to mean Truly….or verily! Great to play with words. But oh boy how important they are ! Last week I had a guy here in Oxford who said that I shouldn’t take offence at him using ‘my Lord’s Name’ …Jesus, as a swear word…as it is ‘only’ a word…I asked him how he felt about the ‘N’ word…and suddenly he admitted, words can hold much power….In the book written by the Apostle and Jesus’ disciple John, we find, straightaway in the very first chapter, that the ‘Word was in the beginning’ and that ‘the Word was with God, and the Word WAS God. ‘ ! We are then told that HE, ‘He was with God in the beginning…’ Isn’t that confusing? Until we realise the Truth is, that as the Bible tells us, that right at the very beginning (there’s that word again, in the True ‘very’ beginning ) God SPOKE the ‘world’ the whole world as we know it, the Universe itself into existence…where is it ? I’ll look it up, here it is…Genesis Chapter One verse 3, ‘and God SAID let there be light….’ (BOOM!) ‘and there was light.’ ( lots of it I can tell you….What an understatement!! I studied Cosmology and Theoretical Physics for years to only discover that everything I thought I’d learned and ‘discovered’ was right there all along, in the Bible, in Genesis Chapter One ! ) and the text continues… ‘ God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness…’
Are we today ‘separated from the darkness’… the spiritual darkness of our age ….No, sadly not. Not even a bit …. well maybe a bit. Because we have one shining light and example – Jeshua… When I was first at school at a Christian, Anglican, Church school I used to despair because firstly as a Scottish boy at a very English school in the depths of English Surrey ( I believe you know the one Tom !) ….I was being taught, back then in the 70s
( I’m 63 now and have been a ‘proper, committed Christian, since the 16th Sept. 1990, I will be 28 in Christian years, on my ‘birthday’ this year, 16.09.18…. is the way we write it out here in the UK….) I was being taught that this Man Jesus, this Messiah, this, in Hebrew Aramaic…’Messach’ in Greek ‘the Christos’ the Christ…the Saviour of all mankind, was, in fact, an Anglican! An Englishman!! I thought no he’s NOT…! He is all things to all mankind…In fact what really got to me eventually in 1990 ( that was back in 1971) …’fast forward’ to September 1990…(and I was a pretty nasty ‘piece of work’ then and an avowed atheist who ‘thought he knew it all’…) was this. In my particular case I, along with my interest in and study of the Cosmos, and theoretical physics, I had actually specialised at university level…. in ‘Romano-British History’ …yep ! I was indeed an Historian ! Now it is true, God does move in ‘mysterious ways’…God always ‘meets us where we are at the time’, God can, God is God. God IS the supreme Being, the Great Self or Greater Self as opposed to me, my little self…me, who thought he knew it all, remember ? You should do that was only a few words ago! So keep up ! …God IS and states in these WORDS …I AM….and always WAS…and always WILL BE….God is the Great I AM….not little sinful faithless me…God IS the Great I Am….the Greater Self of which my little self is only a mere little part….and then….that is, only by His Grace, God lets us in, inside the divine, God adopts us as children and then lets, allows or permits us to be a very part of Him and His world and His work within it…So what is this ‘permit’… Or, who or what, is the ‘permit’….Well being an historian, I suddenly realised that this Jesus character was far from being the ‘Englishman’ that they were trying to sell me in the Church in England…He, that is the historical Jesus…that I then studied, was in fact an absolutely fascinating Jewish spiritual mystic…who didn’t even want to ‘perform miraculous signs’ as he said that people would think he was just a trickster…He DID of course do so anyway….I believe, that was because He could not help himself! He was God on Earth and He could, in fact do anything…We learn in the 4 gospels that Jesus ‘wept’…that Jesus had ‘compassion on them’…that Jesus once, even told them ‘not to worry’about a dead girl….and then when he saw the tears of her father, ‘had pity’ and raised her from the dead, with the Aramaic WORDS…words again…’talitha koum’… which means ‘little girl, get up’….and she did! You see you and I, dear reader of these words, have to decide, as CS Lewis says, as to whether this amazing Jewish, Aramaic-speaking middle-eastern mystical healer and street-preaching, revolutionary rebel…who so upset the so-called authorities, that they convicted him as a common criminal and ‘hanged him upon a tree’ in a common criminal’s execution – alongside other common criminals and thieves….was in fact God…God here on earth…the God of the Universe, come down here to visit us from the other place in space and time, a different dimension even. The ‘ever-present’…the Realm of God or the ‘Kingdom’ as Jeshua called it….?
I believe he was and now is, back there again and has left behind him the four Gospels ( you should read those first if you are new to this ) with ALL of the knowledge and Truth that we will ever need…don’t believe me ?Fine ! …Then just go and read his revolutionary words….Radical ! The God of the Universe can’t possibly have an equal conversation with little me or little you unless he turns up here….( in the early Biblical stories, we are told that a couple, soon to become Samsom’s parents, met an Angel, a man…who told them that he could not eat their food and that he could not tell them or repeat his name as it would have been ‘too Wonderful’ for them to understand! I love that ! It is so cool ) So God would have to turn up here as one of us, to speak with us on our own level ?..Could he ? Oh ! that’s right …he did ! Then he decided to let them kill him as he knew and foretold he would get up again, and he did…I often say…usually around Londoners…’yer can’t keep a good man down’…!
And He did that to pay the cost of all of my nasty little pathetic sins and lies….to give me that ‘permit’ to ‘allow’ me in…A free ticket…to be part of God again, from where my life started…as a new born babe in His arms….free again, forever….Or…as CS Lewis says – yer can’t sit on the fence, you have to decide that if none of that or the gospels were in fact TRUE…then Jeshua was just a man who was as mad as a man, who says he’s a ‘poached egg’ !! I am quoting Lewis on that… Make your decision…and Good Luck with that and God bless you! The ‘buzzword’ God gave me this week in prayer was TRUTH ! Jesus is the Truth.
br Nigel Anthony. Oxford, August 2018. Franciscan Studies Centre. (encompassing the SSF. OFM. SBJ)
I read every word of your comment with great pleasure and feel I know you a little better as a result of doing so. Thank you. Forever your bro Tom