For This Reason 13

[HKHaugan]

For This Reason 13

John 14:6 keeps popping into my head. It was like a fishing float bobbing up and down in my thought at 5am this morning. “I am the way, the truth and the life.” I know that verse. It’s one everyone knows and many have a special fondness for it. It’s one of those ‘me too’ verses that become part of your faith. I rest on it. But because it kept bobbing I thought the individual letters meant something so here’s what I came up with. Jesus is obviously identifying Himself with the “I AM” announcing Himself to Moses as He did in John 8:58 when He declared, “Before Abraham was, I am.” So Jesus is saying He is God. OK, but what about the next words, the way, the truth and the life? When the Father announced that Jesus was His well beloved Son at His Baptism and Transfiguration so “Listen to Him” He became the Father’s declaration of intent, that the Son is the complete and perfect expression of the way, the truth and the life.

But there’s more. Break down each word starting with the Way.

The Way’s letters, W-A-Y, “Where Are You?” is God’s question to Adam and Eve after their rebellious behavior. The reason God asks Adam was not because He didn’t know but because Adam needed to know. Adam lost the ‘Way’ as did the rest of us because of his disobedience. Sin becomes the issue. The good we want we can’t and the evil we don’t want we do. Self-centeredness, pride, fear, blame, guilt and hiding the ‘way’ Adam had chosen (Gen.3). Mankind descended into experiencing that “Every inclination of a man’s heart was only evil all the time (Gen.6:5).” If sin has produced an ‘every, only, all’ situation then that question is the most important question that anyone can ask themselves.

What is the way I have chosen to live my life? I add one that we all need to ask ourselves or help someone who needs to ask it, “Is it working for me?”

The whole Old Testament is built around that question of where we are in our mind, heart and spirit. All the characters, people and cultures in the Old Testament attempt to answer that question and their first response we can see is without God. That’s why we study the Old Testament, to learn about the holiness of God and discover our condition, the need for restoration in Christ.

But what about truth, T-R-U-T-H? Trust Returns Us To Him. Jesus says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me (John 14:1).” The second most important question appears in Matthew 17:15 when Jesus asks Peter, “Who do you say I am?” There’s that ‘I Am’ reference again. Peter’s answer clears the deck when he says that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God. That is where the mind begins to see its shift from guesswork to a needed structure of absolute concepts that are logical and practical. Jesus is the truth about personal identity, who I am, an image of God in need of restoration to Him. I am a spiritual reality that has eternal significance and present purpose. I am a relational being first relating to God and then with other images like me that Jesus might restore them through my faithful obedience to Him. When I say ‘I am’ in any context it is a declaration of my being an image of Him learning from Him how to become a mature spiritual being in an immature world.

Since Jesus is the truth then my mind follows what He declares to be the truth which is not only Himself but everything about Him in His Word. When He prays for all believers just before His crucifixion it is with these words, “Father, sanctify them by the truth, your Word is truth (John 17:17).” He is the expression of the Word. He is the Word so eloquently put in John 1. He is found in every page of Scripture. Scripture is the pattern for reshaping the way the mind thinks. Paul is clear about that, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewal of the mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will (Romans 12:2).” Scripture gives us principles, concepts and precepts so that we have a much needed structure to be relational and spiritually grounded. Truth, T-R-U-T-H, does mean Trust Returns Us To Him.

This brings us to the third self-declaration Jesus makes, life. Here we have what the world cannot give and only Jesus can, Life--- L-I-F-E --- Love---Intimacy---Family---Eternity. Jesus is love personified. He is love in a different dimension. It is more than human emotion, good intention and our idea of a kind-hearted person. When John said “God is love (1John 4:8),” he was indicating that the full relational experience of God’s will and authority in both their affection and discipline will open our hearts to the depth of expanding the capacity for love He has put in us. “I have come that they may have life and have it to the full (John 10:10).” This is where true intimacy begins. This is where true love is realized. This is where we begin with the Cross to show the nature of love, God’s kind of love. This is where the Holy Spirit becomes the reality of God in our heart. He is the Spirit of love; He is the Spirit of life. Jesus told the Samaritan woman at Jacob’ well, “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).”

The Holy Spirit is the Lord of intimacy with God. He brings us into the family of restoring intimacy known as the Body of Christ. This is not only for this world but in a waiting company of faithful witnesses, our brothers and sisters already in Heaven who surround us day by day (Hebrews12:1). What we experience spiritually is not temporary but eternal. It is the ‘already’ while we are in the ‘not yet.’ In this world we struggle in the Body of Christ learning how to let His love reform us, revitalize us, restore us, restrain us, retrain us, and regain us. He reshapes our attractions, our desires, our minds, our hearts and our spirits to conform us to Jesus. This is the work of the Holy Spirit and why He is revealed as the Lord of Life. He is the love, the intimacy, the family unity and the forever bond in the Father and the Son. Eternity is in Jesus and the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Love, Intimacy, Family and Eternity, L-I-F-E.

I don’t know why this verse came at this particular time but I believe it is a way to share the Gospel, the good news in a bipolar world of bad news, when people you know are struggling with where they are in their doubts and fears. You know people with real identity and emotional issues, people who need a life that only God can give, who need a L-iving I-dentity F-or E-ver, a living identity forever. Be blessed in this moment as you travel into every next moment.