CHRIST AND OUR WAYWARDNESS

"I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me." — St. John xiv. 6.

We must beware, of course, of spoiling our Lord’s metaphors about Himself by trying to make them parts of one consistent figure. They were spoken at different times, as circumstances suggested; they were not, for the most part, used with any distinct reference to one another. When our Lord called Himself the Door, for example, He was not thinking of a door opening on to a way, but in to an enclosure; and when He called Himself the Way, the image of the Door was not before His mind. Yet it is no idle fancy to associate the two images with one another. Our Lord Himself did so when He said, "Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction.". . . "Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life." The association of the two has been further familiarised to us in the Pilgrim's Progress, where no sooner has the traveller entered the Gate than he is pointed to the one and only Way. There is no "way" before coming to the gate; he may come to it by any route; as a matter of fact he chooses a very roundabout one. But once he is there, the way is clear and definite. Many persons and things may lead us to Christ, but only Christ can lead us, in a full sense, to God. Thus the Door and the Way may be regarded as complementary figures, each having its part in any right conception of what Christ does for us. Entering by a Door is a single decisive act; traversing a Way is a long continuous process. In religion, as in everything, it is important that there should be a fixed and definite starting-point; a basis from which to work. But it cannot be too often insisted upon that this is only the beginning. He that putteth on his harness must not boast as he that taketh it off. There must be continual progress in the Christian life. And in view of this two-fold need— a definite start and a regular march — it is surely not without significance that He who said, "I am the Door," said also, "I am the Way"; that He Who said, "By Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved," said also, "No man cometh unto the Father, but by Me." By the one Door we enter; by the one Way we travel. In the one case Christ offers Himself to us in our homelessness — offers us a Door, a home, with its refuge, its freedom, its nurture. In the other He corrects our waywardness, offers us a Way of truth and a Way of life, to keep us alike from error and from sin, and to lead us to the Father Who is the source of all truth and life.

The three words here applied by our Saviour to Himself — Way, Truth, and Life — have always been felt to possess a special attractiveness — an attractiveness perhaps all the greater because the relation of the three ideas to one another is not immediately apparent. Even the coincidence that in Latin, the language of medieval theology, they form an alliteration — Via, Veritas, Vita — has proved attractive, and has led to such elaborations as Augustine’s Vera via vitæ and Bernard’s Via in exemplo, veritas in promissoy vita in præmio. As an example of the way in which men loved to enlarge on this theme, we may take the following from Thomas & Kempis: —

"Follow Me; I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

"Without the Way, there is no going; without the Truth, there is no knowing;; without the Life, there is no living.

"I am the Way which thou must follow, the Truth which thou must believe, the Life which thou must hope for.

"I am the Way inviolable, the Truth infallible, and the Life interminable.

"I am the Way most straight, the Truth most high, the true Life, the blessed Life, the uncreated Life.

"If thou abide in My Way, thou shalt know the Truth, and the Truth shall make thee free, and thou shalt lay hold on eternal Life.

"If thou wilt enter into Life, keep the commandments. If thou wilt know the Truth, believe Me."

Luther and Calvin regard Way, Truth, and Life as the beginning, middle, and end of the Christian course. Attempts have also been made to apply the words to the three offices of Christ — Priest (Way), Prophet (Truth), and King (Life); or to suggest that they represent the three elements of His work for us — His sacrifice being the Way, His teaching, the Truth, His example, the Life. Many hymns, too, have been founded on the words.

Thou art the Way, the Truth, the Life;

     Grant us that Way to know,

That Truth to keep, that Life to win,

     Whose joys eternal flow.

The Occasion.

The words were first spoken on the night on which our Lord was betrayed. The apostles, gathered round the first Communion Table, had come to realise that their Master was about to leave them. "Whither I go," He said, "ye cannot come." St. Peter breaks in with questions such as those which any child would ask at such an announcement. "Lord, whither goest Thou?" "Why cannot I follow Thee now?" Jesus speaks words of comfort, and bids them trust His Father and Himself. He tells them of the heavenly mansions, of His going to prepare them a place, of His coming again to receive them unto Himself. Then He adds, "Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know," or perhaps more tersely, "Whither I go, ye know the way." St Thomas, always the rationalist of the band, breaks in with: "Lord, we know not whither Thou goest; and how can we know the way?" Jesus, in His reply, does not so much answer the particular question, as raise the whole matter from the particular to the universal. "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me." He goes on to show how the knowing of Him implies the knowing of His Father; and in reply to St Philip’s demand, "Show us the Father," re-affirms the same truth in different language. "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father."

From this it would seem that Way, Truth, and Life are not correlative terms, each corresponding to some one phase of our Lord’s life and work. Rather is the first term inclusive of the others, and illustrated by them. Way constitutes the parable, Truth and Life the interpretation. Jesus had already spoken of the way, and St. Thomas had also referred to the way. This word Jesus accordingly takes up and uses in a figurative sense. A way may be at once a way of truth and a way of life. Way, as applied to spiritual things, is a figure of speech, while Truth and Life are not The idea would have been a complete one, though of course less full and explicit, had our Lord left out Truth and Life altogether, and simply said, "I am the Way; no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me."

Christ the Way.

It is as the Way, then — the Way to the Father — that Jesus here offers Himself to His people. And this surely meets a human need. There could be no more pathetic study than that of the many strange ways in which men have sought to reach God. Man. kind apart from Christ are troubled by two difficulties. One is that they do not know the way to God; the other is that God’s own ways are past finding out. Could they but understand these two things — God’s way with man, man’s way to God — a great part of life’s problem would be solved. To Israel, the conception of a way was a familiar one. True, they might say of God, "Thy way is in the sea, and Thy path in the great waters, and Thy footsteps are not known." Yet man had not been left entirely ignorant even of God’s ways. "All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep His covenant and His testimonies." And with regard to the way in which man ought to walk, the revelation was clearer still. The wanderings between Egypt and Canaan were symbolic of the truth that God was always leading His people, though often by a way they knew not But here our Lord once and for all answers both the questions we have indicated. He is God’s Way to man, and because of that, He is man’s Way to God. On Him, as on the ladder between earth and heaven, angels of God are seen both ascending and descending. In Him God seeks and finds us; in Him, too, we seek and find God. The latter truth rests upon the former. The true way to God could only be shown By "One Who Himself came from God. This is implicit in His substitution of "cometh" for St. Thomas’s "goest." He speaks not as one who starts from earth, but as One Whose home is in heaven. Yet His reference here ‘s mainly to His work of bringing men to God. He answers the human craving for guidance and direction. When He calls Himself the Way to the Father, He utters a very rich and a very comprehensive truth. He does not refer exclusively to His teaching, or His example, or His sacrifice; He means all these and more; He means Himself. He means us to accept Him in all His fulness if we would reach God. His teaching warns us against evil and points us to good; His example presents us with the highest and holiest life ever lived; His sacrifice consecrates for us a new and living way into the Holiest of all. But over and above any of these is the great fact that our way to God must lie through Christ. Eliminate Him for a moment, even in thought, and the whole idea of approach to God breaks down. Try to leave out of account all that Christ has been and done, and taught and suffered, and you will find, like Dante in his dark wood, that the right way is lost, and that you are exposed to the powers of evil. We need not wonder, then, that the following of Christ, as we see from the Book of Acts, was soon known as "the Way," or that one of the earliest Christian writings after the New Testament was called the Dua Viæ, as showing the way of life and the way of death. No doubt many noble souls of heathendom have sought and felt after God, and have been not far from His kingdom. But are we not justified in saying that where they did come near Him they were following, albeit unconsciously, the way of Christ — that He was in some sort shaping and directing their way? Can we except even their experience from the exclusive claim He makes here — "No man cometh unto the Father, but by Me"?

Our Lord explains and amplifies this expression, "I am the Way," by stating the two chief forms in which it is manifested, "I am the Truth," and "I am the Life." These two are correlative to one another, and are each related to "I am the Way." To keep on the right way is to do two things; to observe correctness of judgment and rectitude of conduct. To depart from the right way is to commit intellectual error, or moral failure, or both. Thus the Way represents both Truth and Life; on our attitude towards it depend alike our creed and our conduct, our belief and our practice, our faith and our works. This becomes clearer when we remember that the Way is a Way by which we "come to the Father." For God is at once absolute Truth and absolute Life; and we are only fully His j when freed from both error and sin. In a sense, no doubt, we are freed from both when we enter the Door. We then experience for the first time the love that reveals and redeems. Yet we became progressively freed from both as we follow the Way which is at once Truth and Life.

1. A Way of Truth.

To Pilate He said, "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the j world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth My voice." But to His disciples He could say more: not "I bear witness to the truth," or "I teach you the truth," but "I am the Truth." And while the word has a universal bearing. He means especially the truth about God, and about man in his relation to God. The words are governed by the final clause, "No man cometh unto the Father, but by Me." No man can know God in any full and intimate sense except through Christ He is the Word of God — the articulate expression of the Godhead. He is, as He has already told us, the Light of the world, dispelling the darkness and making all things clear. No doubt many precious truths with regard to God had been revealed before Christ appeared. To these He did full justice; He came not to destroy but to fulfil. Yet the truth, before His day, had been fragmentary, heterogeneous, obscure. It was "line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little." It resembled extracts from a great author, set in a child’s lesson-book, for the benefit of those unfit to read his works in their entirety. It was like the separate stones of a building, not yet fitly framed together. It was like the broken lights of the solar spectrum as shown through a prism, not yet fused into one clear radiance. It was diverse in its methods, in its agents of communication, in the principles which it imparted But at last God spoke to man not "in sundry portions and in divers manners through the prophets," but "by His Son, the brightness of His glory and the express Image of His Person." Christ speaks directly from God. His words ring true. He is sure of Himself. What He says has authority. "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." "All things that I have heard of My Father I have made known unto you." His Gospel is a manifestation of God’s nature. His parables are revelations of God’s truth. His mighty works, in one of their aspects, are "signs" or illustrations of truth. Even His great sacrifice, while it is much more, is the profoundest explanation of God ever given, the evidence of God’s love for the world. The Spirit He promises to His disciples is a Spirit of truth, a Spirit Who shall teach, and testify, and bring to remembrance, and guide them into all truth. Nor has the Church ever wholly lost sight of the fact that the communication of truth is one of the great tasks with which she is entrusted. When St. Paul said at Athens, "Him Whom ye ignorantly worship declare I unto you," he was following out the words of Christ, "lam the Truth." The ordinance of preaching, the formation of the creeds, the whole fabric of Christian theology, is but the development of the same idea. No doubt there is a great deal of truth which Christ does not directly touch. The Church has often erred in ignoring such truth, and her too one-sided and partial view of what truth means has had its reaction in the equally one-sided tendency to regard the truth of nature as the only truth attainable. A narrow orthodoxy in religion has been answered by as narrow an orthodoxy of science. But while we thankfully accept all that science tells us as to many of God’s wondrous ways, it is not by its means that we can ever see Himself. It is in Christ that God stands revealed. "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him."

2. A Wav of Life.

If Christ is the Way because He is the Truth, He is the Way for a yet more significant reason — because He is the Life. A way is a safeguard not only against intellectual, but against moral failure; and the search after righteousness is an even more important thing than the search after wisdom. Our main business here is not to know, but to live; and truth is valueless until translated into action. St. Peter, as long as he remained on the housetop, could only "doubt in himself what this vision which he had seen should mean." He found the answer to his doubts when he accompanied the men who were sent for him, and gave Cornelius the blessing he sought. St. Paul’s first cry after his conversion, "Who art Thou, Lord?" is quickly followed by a second, "What wilt Thou have me to do?" Truth and life have a mutual influence; if truth can inspire, action can illuminate. And thus, to come back to the words of our Saviour, it is clear that to "come to the Father" must imply more than the mere knowledge of God. Many of the Church’s greatest mistakes, much of her intolerance and persecution, have come from a one-sided conception of religion as truth to the neglect of life. Our Lord never regarded mere education as a panacea for all ills. He never said, like Socrates, that knowledge was virtue. Men, to Him, were not only blind, but sick; not only in error, but in sin; and He must, therefore, give them health as well as light, life as well as truth. Hence, to know Christ as the Truth is not enough; we must find Him as the Life. The Way is a way to life in God. "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." All the work of Christ was directed to this end. His teaching had invariably a practical object. His miracles, if they were "signs," were yet more emphatically "works" directed towards the helping and serving of men. His command, as he instituted the Holy Supper, was not "Look," but "Eat"; the act was to signify assimilation of life as well as apprehension of truth. His great sacrifice, while it contained the sublimest revelation of God’s nature ever made to man, had life, not truth, as its ultimate end; its aim was not so much to show God to man, as to give God to man, and to bring man to God. And while, as we have seen, He promised the Holy Spirit as a Spirit of truth, that Spirit is even more strikingly displayed as a Spirit of life and power. The Pentecostal grace consisted not only of illumination, but of inspiration; its emblems were the wind and the fire. And it is thus that the work of the Spirit is still manifest. As the Shorter Catechism well puts it, He operates not only by "enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ," but by "renewing our wills." According as we keep near to Christ we enter into larger and fuller life. As He alone can lead us to the full knowledge of God — to "know as we are known" of Him — so He will also lead us to perfect fellowship with God — to the fulness of what he calls "eternal life."

In these two respects — as the Truth and the Life — is Christ, for us, the Way to God — the One without Whom "no man cometh unto the Father." As Godet tersely puts it, "The truth is God revealed in His essential nature — that is to say, in His holiness and in His love; the life is God communicated to the soul, and imparting to it holy strength and perfect blessedness."

If the lesson of our last study, then, was "Enter by the one Door," our lesson from this one is "Journey by the one Way." Let your religion be a progress forward, onward, upward; an increase in knowledge, a growth in grace; a constant advance in truth and life. Perhaps nothing is so wanting in the average Christian fife of to-day as the signs of progress and growth. Remember that while fife is a journey it is not meant to be a haphazard wandering. It has Christ as its Way, God as its goal. It leads through the world, but in Christ we can learn to use even the world as a means of approach to God. We forget what is behind, and reach forth to what is before. Every trial, every conquest, every failure even, becomes a step on the way of truth and life. We "press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."