In John 14, Jesus talked to His disciples about His upcoming departure from this world. He explained that He would be returning to the Father and would be preparing a place for them to come and be with Him, and in verse 4, He said, “You know the way to the place where I am going.” And Thomas said, “Um, we don’t even know where you are going so how could we possibly know the way? And Jesus made this stunning declaration in verse 6: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Jesus was basically saying, you don’t have to know a path or a place. You just have to know a Person, and that Person is Me!
The Way is a Person. The Way is Jesus. Early on, after the Resurrection, the early Christians were called “The Way.” They were following Jesus by sharing His messages and witnessing to the Resurrection. They were teaching the Scriptures out of their relationship with Jesus. Even though He had ascended to the Father and had gone to Heaven, He was still communicating with His followers through the Holy Spirit. So, even though Jesus left earth and returned to Heaven, He never discontinued being the Way. He is still the Way today.
Jesus is the Way to the Father in Heaven.
In John 14:2 when Jesus told His disciples He was going to His Father’s house and would prepare a place for them, He followed it up by saying the He was the way to the Father’s house. What exactly did He mean?
Read further in the chapter: 8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” 9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.
Jesus came to show us what God the Father was like. Hebrews 1:3 says, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” Though they are two separate Persons within the Trinity, within the Godhead, God the Father and Jesus the Son share a oneness that helps us understand that to see Jesus is to see God. Jesus was God, and He represented God the Father while on earth. There is a separation between the two while all the while being no distinction between them.
I say all of that to say, if you want to know what God is like, get to know Jesus. Though they are separate, they are the same. And Jesus said He is the Way to the Father’s house which means He is the Way to Heaven. The Father is in Heaven. Scripture reinforces that reality in several places. Jesus knows the way out of death into eternity in Heaven, and Jesus has made it possible for us to follow Him because He paid the price for our sin, something that would keep us from making the trip. So, in reality, Jesus becomes both our path and our passport when we put our trust in His death, burial and resurrection and seek to follow Him.
People may want to debate all kinds of Scripture passages in order to wrestle something that seems theologically fuzzy or something that is incomprehensible to the human mind, but something I will never discuss in debate is that Jesus is the only Way to God the Father and eternity in Heaven. There is no gray area here, friends.
Acts 4:11-12 says, “11Jesus is “‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.’[a]12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is NO OTHER name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”
Call it particular. Call it strict. Jesus called it “narrow.” Call it whatever you want to, but you can’t dismiss that God has designed one Way for us to be reconciled to God and to enjoy eternity in Heaven. It is through Jesus. That makes Him the Way out of a life of sin and the Way out of death. We escape both only in and through Him.
Our sin can no longer condemn us because Christ has covered our sin with His shed blood on the Cross and death can no longer destroy us because Jesus has destroyed Death! No one but Jesus has taken care of our every enemy. That is what makes Him the only Way!
