I Am the Way (cont.3)

[HKHaugan]

When Jesus said He was ‘the way’ He opened the door to the unseen dimension that governs the feeling heart, the inquiring mind and the motivational spirit making up our individuality. What Jesus did was to reveal that there are ‘two ways.’ One is the world’s way and the other is God’s way. Both are spiritual. One is sin which leads to death and the other is Jesus who offers His eternal life. Then He showed that each person is a unique, spiritually unique, image of God. Unique to the bone we move about in a world of completely different people. No two are alike. Similar maybe, but not alike.

The marked difference we can all attest to is how we think and act when we are among others. That marked difference can be measured by our confidence. How confident are we about our relationship with God when we are among others who don’t believe or could care less. Do we tend to silence when controversy breaks out? Do we hesitate to stand for Jesus’ truth when we realize we should have said something but didn’t? Does Scripture come to your mind that could have change the course of a conversation to something positive but you didn’t refer to it? When we see Jesus we see confidence personified.

However, if we look at the secular atmosphere in the world around us there is the unmistakable impress of standards that attempt to ‘de-confidence’ us. Clothing styles, fads, trendy behavior and language, boasting about who we know, trying to imitate famous people, worshiping entertainment ‘idols’, being ‘one of the guys’, ‘fitting in’ and we could go on. They soften us to avoid our individuality. When you travel, even the uniqueness of local cultures is swallowed up by food, clothing and media influences that work hard to fit us into their mold. We are being ‘Big-Mac’ed’ to death. Our individuality is diluted. The world is a confidence killer.

The world’s standards betray its wisdom as shallow, temporary and life draining. Put all your energies into being your own ‘tower of Babel’, obtaining what you can see, what impresses others and getting what you can while you can. ‘Look at me, see what I've done.’ I become the attitudes and opinions that help me fit in. That is the ‘wisdom’ of the world. That is the spirit of the world, the ‘way’ of the world. When someone takes on that spirit he finds God’s Spirit to be alien, “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit (1Cor.2:14).”

What Jesus does in the midst of all this is to offer ‘the Way’ to restore our uniqueness as persons. It is not how we dress our exterior but what we are within that makes us individuals. And it is within that Jesus comes to be the ‘Way.’ In Lk.17:21 Jesus tells us that the Kingdom of God is within. Within, in the mind, heart and spirit, is where Jesus starts. He starts by offering a spiritual relationship to restore our mind, heart and spirit.

For Jesus the ‘way’ is spiritual. Paul says it plainly, “What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. (1Cor.2:12-13).”

There are five things that mark Jesus being “the Way”, love, obedience, prayer, Scripture and humility.

First, His love for His Father. Over and over again in the Gospel of John Jesus points to His Father, His Father’s love and His Father’s will.

Second, obedience to His Father’s will. He sees His mission as total obedience to that will regardless of where it leads. Whatever the Father wants He does. “Not my will but Thy will be done.”

Third, prayer lifted to His Father. All the Gospels reflect Jesus being a person of prayer. The Lord’s Prayer of course typifies His prayer life but we can’t over look John 17 as the model for our prayer life as well.

Fourth, Scripture guided His mind. His life was a Scriptural diary. Here He excelled as the One who saw it as the mind shaping means for responding to every next moment.

Fifth, He was humble. But Jesus’ humility was not like fallen humanity, silent compromise to gain acceptance. No, He was humble before His Father in the presence of others. He humbled His mind to Scripture, His heart humbled to trusting His Father and His faith humbled to molding by the Holy Spirit.

But the most important thing we must grab hold of in Jesus being the ‘Way.’ He became a human being, humbling Himself, limiting Himself, to save all humanity by serving all humanity. He chose to live by faith, to live by the Spirit, to live by Scripture, to live by prayer, to live in total dependence on His Father in the Spirit. He and the Father were One in mind, heart and Spirit.

So what does all this say to us about Jesus being ‘the Way’ for us?

“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. 9 Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phlp.2:5-11).”