I Am The Truth

The middle portion of John 14:6 has Jesus saying, in addition to The Way, He is The Truth. The Greek word for truth is aletheia – which means reality, sincerity, faithfulness. Jesus claims to be all that and more – namely the Ultimate Reality.

We have lived for years with truth being relative to the speaker, the conditions, the whims, and the circumstances. In a Postmodern world, there is no such thing as an objective truth. All truth depends on other things, making truth very subjective.

This is really nothing new. When Jesus stood in front of Pilate prior to being condemned to death, Pilate famously asks, “What is truth?”

That is the question of the hour – what is truth?  How can I know whether something is true or not. We have an instinctual desire to know the truth. We long for something or someone we can trust as real and dependable. We see and hear things and then talk with someone who saw and heard the same things and realize they came away with something entirely different. How can I even trust what I think I know?

Even when I speak my truth, there is no guarantee that anyone will believe me. We hear that phrase “my truth” and people holding to it, regardless of what others say. I believe we landed on the moon. I saw with my own eyes the landing. It was amazing. I was with my grandfather who had never imagined such a thing possible, having been born in the close of the 19^th Century. But we both saw it and believed. Obviously we saw it on television; we were not actually there. And therein lies the issue. Today people have written a lot about how they believe the moon landing never happened. Their truth is that the moon landing was a big scam, filmed on a sound stage somewhere. Even more serious and startling, there are those who do not believe the Holocaust occurred. They don’t necessarily doubt all the six million plus people died, but they were casualties of a massive war, not an ethnic cleansing.

My dad used to question me, regarding comments I would make, “Is that true?”  “Are you sure?” I remember in middle school telling him about some rather abusive comments a teacher had made to me in front of class. He was prepared to go to battle for me, but kept asking if this is what truly had happened. Was I embellishing? Did the teacher really say that? My dad questioned me so much at first it offended me, because it was the truth. Then I began to wonder if I was right or not. I remember sitting in class waiting to be pulled out for making up such a story. I knew I had spoken the truth, but under dad’s questioning I began to doubt. However, along with my dad believing me, the principal did too. The teacher was dealt with. But I came away with a lifelong defensiveness when my veracity is questioned.

And maybe this is because we all struggle with truth. Our nature makes us want to be believed, trusted, so we can be known to embellish in order to make things look better from our point of view. Lies, even little ones, come rather easily. We see this with little children bending the truth so they won’t get in trouble, or so they will be praised. Some go on to continue these practices into adulthood. Someone I care about has been catfished online multiple times. They so want to find someone to share their life with that they believe these compulsive liars, losing money along with their ability to believe anyone anymore.

What is truth? Jesus says He is. If we want to find truth in this life, our best shot is Jesus. When Pilate (just prior to his pivotal question) asked if Jesus was a king, Jesus responded, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into this world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” To which Pilate famously responds, “What is truth?” (John 18:37-38) Pilate didn’t understand that The Truth was standing right in front of him.

John wrote about Jesus and truth multiple times. When announcing the coming of God into the world as a human being, John wrote “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” “For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (John 1:14, 17).  “To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, ‘if you hold to my teaching you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’.” (John 8:31-32). During the last meal with Jesus’ disciples, in addition to His I Am the truth statement in John 14, he said, “When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth.” (John 16:13). And in His prayer he asks the Father, “Sanctify them by the truth; your Word is truth.” (John 17:17). John also wrote in his later epistle “We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know Him (God) who is true. And we are in Him (God) who is true by being in His Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. (I John 5:20-21).

Jesus said that He was/is truth. He said His word is true. He gives us an objective truth. Jesus didn’t say He was “a” truth, or His words were “a” truth. If the latter were the case, then we would need some standard for that truth to conform to, or worse, we'd see it only as "his truth" as we speak today of "my" truth, one of many. But Jesus claims to be The Truth – the standard to which all other truth needs to conform.

In a world full of subjective truth, where can we turn? How can we know what is really true? What is the answer to Pilate’s question “what is truth?”  I think we all long for those we can trust, who will be faithful and true to the confidence we place on them. But people, even those closest to us, can fail to meet our expectations. And who around us can promise truth that can set us free? As a believer in Jesus Christ I can confidently proclaim that Jesus is the answer. He is the only answer. I can safely place my trust in Jesus because He is truth, His word is truth, and He is faithful.

I Am the Way

One of the most controversial of the I AM statements, found in John 14, leaves little doubt Jesus claimed He was God and the only source of salvation. He said, “I AM the way, the truth and the life.” People criticize Christianity for being “exclusive”. How dare Christians claim to have the only way to God when there are so many different religions out there? What makes Christianity so special they can make such a claim?  Well, Christianity/Christians don’t make the claim. Jesus does. If I choose to follow Jesus then I am choosing to take Him at His word. He claims to be the only way, the only truth and the only giver of eternal life. So what do we do with that? To help us navigate these statements, I want to take each of them separately over the next couple of blogs.

“I AM the way.”  When I wrote about shepherds last time, I also noted Jesus saying he was the “gate” or the “door” – an entry point. (John 10:9) As the shepherd has a way into safe haven for his sheep via a single gate, so does Jesus offer a way to safe haven, and it’s not just a way, it is the way, the door, the entry point to have a relationship with God. And that entry point is Jesus. He is the Way.

I love GPS. I love being able to plug in a destination and have the GPS lead the way. For the most part, GPS can be trusted, although once our old Garmin directed us toward a body of water rather than a road, but that might have been an entry error.  Prior to GPS, we used maps. I have always enjoyed maps because they show me where I am and where I am going in time and space. If there are maps in a book I am reading, I always go back and refer to the maps. I like knowing my location (or my character’s). But maps are not exactly safe if you are the driver and don’t have a navigator. When I was a kid, I was my Dad's navigator on trips. I enjoyed that he needed my assistance, but always feared I would get it wrong. That’s what makes GPS so wonderful; it’s hand’s free and mostly correct, and we can use it without a navigator. 

Sometimes in seeking directions we are given choices, several ways to go. Sometimes these choices are driven by traffic, or construction or just direct versus indirect routes. But when given several choices, we can pick the one that best suits us. So we could say, “I chose a way out of those offered.”  The phrases in John 14 do not offer us a choice, like Jesus is one of many options for eternal life and salvation. The wording is very clear, Jesus is the way, period. That doesn’t set right with a lot of people. They want more options. Or they think it’s arrogant and audacious for someone to make themselves the only way. This was true in Jesus day as well. And it would certainly be an audacious statement if Jesus isn’t who He says He is. 

C. S. Lewis has a famous conclusion regarding this. Lewis said our choices, in reading Jesus’ declaration that He is the Way, are to see Jesus as a liar, a lunatic or The Lord.*  If Jesus is a liar, why would anyone who believed him a liar also claim He was a good man, good teacher, good role model? A lot of people see Jesus as just that. They don’t believe He is who He said He is, God. But they do believe He has a lot of good things to offer, like telling us to love one another.  But why accept statements from someone claiming to be God, if we don’t believe he is God? Why would we accept anything from a known liar?  And what type of person would lie to us about such important things? Certainly not a good person. That person is surely not someone to follow or listen to. In fact he’d be as imposter trying to trick us.

And if Jesus is not a liar, what other type of person makes such claims? Lots of people have claimed to be Jesus, or the Messiah. Most of them are declared mental, insane. All of them are ignored by most sane people. No one claims that a lunatic’s words are profitable for living a good life. They are crazy.to claim they are God.  Who believes a crazy person, other than other deluded people (like those who have followed so-called Messiahs to their death)? Yet, lots of people take Jesus’ words and trust them, saying He is a good teacher, a prophet, but do not believe true what He claimed about being God. If they like what Jesus has to say, but disbelieve his assertion that He is God, are they not trusting in a liar or a lunatic? What other choice is there? Jesus was either speaking truth, or He was deluded, or worse, a liar.

If Jesus is not a liar or a lunatic, the only other explanation for the claims he made is that He was sanely telling us the truth. Jesus is God, who came in the flesh and offers us the way to eternal life. That is exactly why His words ring true and hold such power, because they came from God, not a mere human.

If I like Jesus’ words and sayings, but don’t believe He is God, the singular Way, I really need to reexamine my premises. Jesus claimed to be God and the only way to salvation. I can’t just like many of His words and ignore these pivotal I AM statements. Jesus doesn’t leave us room to pick and choose regarding Him. He either is or isn’t Who He claimed to be.

Jesus said “I AM the Way. What a comfort to have the Way laid out for us. We don’t have to make a path, or even find a path. It’s right there in the Person of Jesus. If we are searching for answers to life’s big questions; if we are looking for peace and reassurance in these tumultuous times, we need look no farther than Jesus. He is the Door and He is the Way. All I need do is accept and believe He is Whom He claimed to be, and follow Him through the door.

 

*quote taken from Mere Christianity, by C. S. Lewis

The Good Shepherd

 This past week we attended a memorial service for my cousin. He had a difficult fight with addiction in his life. He wandered away from God and family, and was wrapped in that horror for years. But God is so faithful. He brought my cousin out of his entrapment. Where years of trying to free himself had failed, God succeeded. God brought our cousin back, and he lived the last several years growing in God’s faith and freed from many of the things that bound him. He lived his life as a praise of what God had done, and now he is with our Lord, totally free and healed.

They key here is what God did. It is impossible for us to save ourselves from whatever binds us. Try all we want, we cannot free ourselves. But God can set us free. Even better, God is out there searching us out, collecting us, loving us, welcoming us into His healing power.  My cousin’s story is a modern day prodigal son story. You can read that story in Luke 15,  parables of lost things. Jesus tells of a lost coin, a lost sheep and a lost son. The lost represent us. The chapter begins with the religious leaders judging Jesus for welcoming and eating with sinners. The religious leaders’ attitude is most ironic, since we are all sinners, but like these leaders, some of us refuse to recognize that we are lost. Jesus lets them know, via this series of parables, that the religious leaders are right, sinners are most welcome in Jesus’ sphere. In every case there is “rejoicing in the presence of angels of God over one sinner who repents.” The overwhelming message is that God seeks and finds us sinners.

“The Lord is my Shepherd”. Psalms 23 beautifully portrays God’s care of His people. He supplies all our needs and in the end leads us through the Valley of Death. Back in Luke, this series on lost items begins with a lost sheep. A shepherd has 100 sheep, and one is lost. He leaves the 99 in search of the one lost. And when he finds the lost sheep, he goes home and celebrates “rejoice with me, I have found my lost sheep.”

John 10 talks of how a shepherd knows his sheep by name. The shepherd leads his sheep in and out through a gate. The sheep follow the shepherd because they know his voice. Jesus first says “I AM the gate, whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out and find pasture.” (John 10:9) He goes on to say, “I have come that they may have life and have it to the full”. (John 10:10).

Jesus then said, “I Am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (John 10:11)

Here we have another wonderful picture of Jesus’ character. He is a good leader, worthy of following. He did lay down His life for us. He searches for us; He desires a relationship with us; He saves us. None of this is incumbent on our behavior or qualifications. We are just sheep, but our Shepherd goes above and beyond to make sure we are brought safely home. And each one is precious, worthy of being sought out, because He wants us.

“God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions (sins) – it is by grace you have been saved…For it is by grace you have been saved through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:4, 8-9) We are sinners, saved by God’s grace, period. Our only “job” is to accept the gift.

What a picture we see in the Luke parables. God is searching us out! He wants relationship with us. The only thing keeping that from happening is our resistance. When my cousin turned back around, there was God, waiting with open arms, like the prodigal’s father. The focus wasn’t on what my cousin had or hadn’t done. The focus was on what Jesus’ had done in my cousin’s place.

For most of us urban dwellers, the shepherd/sheep image isn’t really something we are familiar with. But it does paint a beautiful, pastoral image of creatures that totally depend on a shepherd to provide. And that is what we are, totally incapable of taking care of ourselves spiritually (and often physically). We desperately need a Savior, a Good Shepherd, who can lead us, and care for us and secure us in his safe enclosure. And note that in that enclosure we can find "life to the full", abundant life!

Over and over in the Scriptures we see the Shepherd/sheep metaphor about God and His people. Jesus, in making the claim that He is the Shepherd, took on that metaphor and in doing so told the listeners He was God. They were familiar with the Old Testament passages, including the familiar Psalms 23.

Psalms 95: 6-8 “Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for he is our God and we are the sheep of his pasture, the flock under his care. Today, if only you would hear his voice. Do not harden your hearts.”

Isaiah prophesied about the coming Messiah, coming to take on our sin and die in our place. “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering…he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned in our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:4-6)

We went for a walk after my cousin’s memorial. We walked past a field where there were eight new little lambs. My cousin now lives free from sin’s burden. Like those new little lambs, he is safe in the care of the Good Shepherd, as we all are, only now he is actually there with our Shepherd, new, free and bounding through heaven in joy. Praise God! 

Living Water

I’ve written about Jesus’ claiming to be the Light of the world and the Bread of Life. These two claims not only give us insight into the true character of Christ, but also give claim to His deity. There is no getting away from the fact that Jesus claimed to be God. The “I AM” passages in the book of John make up a large part of this affirmation.  When Moses asked the name of the One who spoke to him out of the burning bush (Exodus 3:11-15) God answered, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.”  God goes on to say “This is my name forever, the name you shall call me.”

Jewish culture highly respected this name, in Hebrew rendered YHWH, also known as the Tetragrammaton (which is Greek for “four letters”).  Jehovah became a translation of the four letters outside of Hebrew. It is considered the most sacred name for God and speaks of His eternal existence, the eternal I AM. 

When Jesus referred to Himself as I AM, you can imagine the response. He made an outright claim to the most sacred name of God.  In John 8:58 Jesus said “before Abraham was I AM”. Pretty clear what He was saying.

These I AM passages beautifully illustrate our Savior, Jesus.  So Jesus said, “I AM the Light of the World” and “I AM the Bread of Life.” We talked of God’s provision to Israel in the wilderness after escaping Egypt. God, in addition to providing manna and quail, provided water. Where no water was naturally available, God provided it.  Moses struck a rock and out came water.  We can live quite a while without food, but not so long without water. I read we can only survive 3-7 days without water, but, without food, if we have water we can survive much longer, even a month or more. So water becomes the most essential provision for life.

In John 4, Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman at a well. Jesus is by himself, the disciples having gone to obtain food. He asks the woman for a drink. She is shocked and a bit alarmed, as she is a woman and a Samaritan, both cursed by Jewish men. Jesus responds to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” (John 4:10) She, understandably, wonders what water he is speaking of. Jesus, referring to the water in the well, says “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst again…a spring of living water unto eternal life.” (John 4:13-14) What follows are her questions, and His revealing how well He knows her. They discuss the differences in worship between Samaritans and Jews, and eventually she brings up the promise of a coming Messiah, to which Jesus responds, “I AM He.” (John 4:26)

In noting Christ’s character, I think it is important to repeat how amazing this conversation is. Jesus took the time to address a Samaritan, a people despised by most Israelis. And not just a Samaritan, a woman, lower than low in a male dominated world. To make things worse, she is a woman of questionable moral character.  All of this would have kept most any Jewish man (and many Samaritan men) from approaching her, let alone asking her for a drink and holding a lengthy, theological conversation with her. But not Jesus. He is very comfortable and purposeful. The woman is so taken by the experience, she runs back into town and, despite her probable low standing, convinces the people to come out and meet this man “who knew me”. 

Jesus knew this woman needed a relationship with God. He knew she was “thirsty” for more to life than she had found. He freely offered her a different life. And she, though hesitant and skeptical at first, takes what Jesus offers her, and then exploding with the news, ran to share with anyone who would listen. Jesus revealed Himself fully to this lowly woman, and it changed her forever.

Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, said “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness” (Matthew 5:60). He stands as the Bread of Life and the Living Water. While bread and, especially, water are absolute essentials to our physical life. Jesus is saying that even more those things are absolute essentials to our spiritual life, and they come in the form of the great I AM.

Do we hunger and thirst for righteousness in our life? Are we seeking an answer to life’s disappointments? Do we long for something more filling and satisfying than the bread and water found in our world? Jesus calls us to try the bread and water He offers. Like the woman, He can make our lives something different, something explosive. We can change! We can become more like Him, loving and accepting those around us, sharing The living bread and water with our world.