- Overcomer Literature Trust
- Swindon
- Wiltshire
HE IS THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE.
Human nature has a strange and stubborn way of seeking to turn the simple into the complicated. Not satisfied with the self-evident we insist upon turning the plain into the difficult, the basic into something bewildering. Not so the Lord Jesus Christ. He taught simply, with illustrations from everyday life, using ordinary things and familiar situations. He referred to fishermen and fish, the sower and the seed, the birds of the air and the flowers of the field. He presented the most profound truths with the greatest simplicity. He stated the commonplace with clarity and people understood. From Him we learn that we too should be straightforward and not ignorant, sincere and not shallow, honest and not artful. The Saviour stated that He Himself is “the way, the truth and the life”. He described Himself and His purpose in three straightforward statements but we make them difficult to understand and practically impossible to realise.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the Way.
He is not a way to the Way. We can be so preoccupied with the problems of making a pathway to Him that we do not walk in the King’s highway. We are taken up with steps, signposts and self-evaluation, with the result that we wander in a maze of our own making. We busy ourselves with activity and make no spiritual advance. We persist in painful effort and do not progress.
We are not to plod painfully towards the way, rather as the Scriptures say, “As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in Him” (Col. 2 v6). We receive Him by faith and by faith we must walk in Him. We are walking “in newness of life” (Rom. 6 v4). The Word adds, “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” (Gal. 5 v25), and walking in the Spirit we do not fulfil the desires of the flesh (Gal. 5 v16). We are to walk in the light (1 John 1 v7), walking worthy of our calling, “with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love” (Eph. 4 v1-2). We are to walk honestly (1 Thess. 4 v12) and wisely (Eph. 5 v15). Most of all we are to walk in the Way and not keep striving to make a way to the Way.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the Truth.
In our stupidity we try to think up philosophical and theological systems to discover the truth. In our self-effort to attain it we lose our way in a maze of speculation. By searching we never find God. The Bible plainly declares that “in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God” (1 Cor. 1 v21). Instead of searching after Truth with the dim light of our understanding we are to begin with the Truth and to look at divine revelation from His viewpoint.
We must face the facts of God’s general revelation, His creation, with the awareness that “Christ is the image of the invisible God”, that “He is before all things, the First-born”, that “all things were created by Him . . . seen and unseen” and that “He is before all things” (Col. 1 v15-17). This is His universe, to be observed and understood in all humility by the study of science.
We turn to the Bible as God’s special revelation and beginning with the Truth we take the same high view of the inspiration of the Scriptures as the Lord Jesus did. He plainly held that all Scripture is divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit and is fully accurate and authoritative. There are vast areas of reality to be learned in the Scriptures and in the universe of things and men, but beginning with the Truth we proceed to learn their true meaning and relationship.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the Life.
We do not live in Him by struggling, falling and rising. We live in Him by breathing the fresh air of the Spirit of life, we are to be nourished by the Bread of life and refreshed by the Water of life. There is tremendous reality to be realised in trusting Galatians 2 v20, “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me”. Our testimony should be, “For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phil. 1 v21).
The Word declares that “This is the record that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son” (1 John 5 v11).
The Lord Jesus Christ is the Way. Walk in Him and find that He walks with you and in you.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the Truth. Believe Him, trust and obey Him.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the Life. Live in Him and find His glorious resurrection life in you.