Discovering Who Jesus Is: Seven Days on the Seven I Am StatementsSample

On Shuttles and Roads

As I thought about the implications of these words, I immediately thought about the word way. I grabbed a Bible dictionary, and my suspicions were confirmed. The word for way in Greek is hodos. It appears 101 times in the Bible. And though it can mean way, it can also be translated means of access, approach, entrance, or road.

Eugene Peterson captured this perfectly when he rendered John 14:6 in The Message: “Jesus said, ‘I am the Road, also the Truth, also the Life. No one gets to the Father apart from me.’”

The only means by which you can soar through the heavens is by traveling down a two-thousand-year-old road. This is the exploration that will lead to true transformation.

The context for this stunning, all-important announcement from Jesus is even more powerful when you understand that it came in response to something we often look down on. Doubt. You probably aren’t proud of your doubts, and you aren’t likely to think highly of yourself when you find them creeping in. But doubting is not only normal as a human; it is to be expected. And if it hadn’t been for doubt, we never would have been given this vital piece of information where Jesus clarified, in no uncertain terms, that he is not just a way to get to heaven but the only one. Information that is incredibly important to know.

We have Thomas to thank. Yes, Thomas, the disciple who has gone down in history as the doubter. I’ll have you know that Thomas’s superpower wasn’t that he had doubts (as I said, that’s all of us) but that he was honest about them. All the disciples were doubters; they just did a good job of pretending they weren’t.

Thomas was upfront and open about what he didn’t know. As a result, he was given answers he wouldn’t have otherwise heard. That is what happened in John 14. Jesus was giving a speech about how after his death on the cross and resurrection, he would leave them and go to heaven. They began to freak out, wearing it all over their faces. Jesus responded with a pep talk:

“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.” (John 14:1–4)

If you are a Christian, this world is not your home. You live here and are meant to view yourself as in the world but not of it. You are a resident alien. Max Lucado said, “The greatest calamity is not to feel far from home when you are, but to feel right at home when you are not.”

Jesus was assuring them it was going to be okay. Then he followed up with a little more information that assumed they were tracking with him because he also wanted to be sure they were being honest with themselves: “And where I go you know, and the way you know” (v. 4).

As he said this, you can almost imagine eleven of his disciples nodding their heads as if to say, “Yes, yes we do. We do know exactly where you are going.” Like the penguins of Madagascar.

Thomas wouldn’t have it. He couldn’t believe the disciples were just going along with all this like the universe wasn’t about to come to an end. He butted in and let Jesus have it straight: “Thomas said to Him, ‘Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?’” (v. 5).

I picture Jesus feigning surprise and turning to the other eleven as if to say, Is he right?

In my mind, they act surprised by the question and, for a split second, seem like they are either going to pretend like it’s not true or feign outrage at Thomas for outing them in their phony know-it-all attitudes. In the end, it seems they shrugged and owned up to the fact that he was right and accepted the truth of their ignorance.

Without Thomas’s honest, doubt-fueled interruption, the world might never have received Jesus’ to-the-point, blunt, and helpful clarification. He used plain words: You do know the way. It is me. I am the way. I am the road. And I am the only one. Translation: There is no getting to God except through me.

In our day, such stark positioning is thought to be intolerant. It causes our “everyone gets a trophy” cultural hairs to stand up on the backs of our necks if someone suggests that a sincere person could be sincerely wrong. We want everyone to get to be right. Except that Jesus is saying that the only way to get right with God is to go through him. There is just one way to heaven because heaven only sent one Son. That one is Jesus, and two thousand years ago, he walked the dusty roads of the Roman Empire so that today you could launch into the freedom of being fully alive through his Spirit. And when you die and leave this world, you have his footsteps to walk in, many mansions prepared for you to dwell in, and ultimately a newly created heaven and earth for you to live in.

On that final, awesome day, there will be many questions to ask each other—when we arrived, how we died, what happened to us during our time on earth. But you won’t need to ask anyone how they came to be in heaven. Every single one of us will have this in common: we will all have gotten there through Jesus—the only road.

Response

Ask God to shape your life through the dusty, two-thousand-year-old—but still vibrant and relevant—words of Christ. As you think about what lies in front of you today, what is one simple thing you can do to take up your cross and follow him?

Prayer

Lord, open my eyes to see the areas I have wandered to a different path, and bring me back on track to the one road, the only road that leads to you.