The way, and the truth, and the life

Rev. Peter J. Haugen

St. Paul Evangelical

Lutheran Church

On the night when our Lord Jesus was betrayed, the hearts of His disciples were troubled. He had been explaining to them yet again that it was necessary for their own sakes that He depart from them, and that they themselves knew the way to where He was going.

But the hearts of the disciples were troubled. So an exasperated St. Thomas finally asked, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?” (St. John 14:5). The disciples were troubled, for they did not understand that our Lord’s road back to His Father must go through the cross.

Our Lord Jesus knew exactly where He was going. He wandered throughout His life, but never without purpose. He journeyed from birth to death, taking upon Himself the sins of world, including our own. Those very sins He bore on His cross, and in so doing He prepared a place for us.

We are being urged today to accept that there are many equally valid paths to God. We are being told that Muhammad or the Buddha or the Great Spirit or some preferred aspect of creation are legitimate sources of truth, of the Truth, that these are all lights giving us hope as they show us a way to God. We are being encouraged to see no substantive difference in the worship of church or synagogue or mosque or temple. This lie is a blasphemous temptation to our flesh, and its end can only be eternal damnation.

Our Lord Jesus is the only way to the Father. There is no other. None. He Himself said, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life” (St. John 14:6).

That little word “the” is profoundly significant. Our Lord is not a way, a truth, a life. He is the Way, the Truth, the Life. He is the one and only way. “There is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). We must come to God through Jesus and no other – not Muhammad, not Buddha, not the Great Spirit, not even the Torah apart from Jesus. We must go through the cross if we are to arrive Home. It is a hard Way, a narrow Way.

But it is also wide enough for all broken sinners. And so it is wide enough for us.

This valley of the shadow of death is deep and dark and rough. The road through it is long and hard. We still struggle under our sorrows and sufferings, our trials and tribulations, our troubled hearts. We still weep in our hurt and confusion and terror.

But the Word of the Lord is just as sure and certain for us as it was for the disciples. Our Lord Jesus is “the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.” And that means He is our Way, our Truth, our Life. So “let not your heart be troubled” (St. John 14:1). Amen.