The Way

4 "And you know the way where I am going."  5 Thomas said to Him, ‘Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?’ 6 Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. 7 ‘If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him." 8 Philip said to Him, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us." 9 Jesus said to him, "Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father'?  10 "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.”       John 14:4-10

Jesus had a great deal to teach His disciples the night before His crucifixion, and many of those teachings are revealed by John in chapters 13-17. In John 14, Jesus’s focus was on the way to heaven, the way to the believer’s eternal future. He was trying to strike a contrast between the old covenant ways and a brand new approach to God. The old covenant is based on a series of commandments that Jews were required to follow or suffer consequences. In Deuteronomy 5:32-33, “So you shall observe to do just as the Lord your God has commanded you; you shall not turn aside to the right or to the left. You shall walk in all the way which the Lord your God has commanded you, that you may live and that it may be well with you, and that you may prolong your days in the land which you will possess.” So the old covenant believer is required to follow a set of standards (commandments, precepts, statutes, etc.) that determine the quality of his future. On the other hand, the new covenant believer follows a man, the God-man, the One who follows His Father.

The same essence

Jesus begins this teaching with the guiding point of the entire chapter, that belief (trust) in Jesus is believing in the Father, that they are made from the same cloth! He tells them in verse 1 to believe in Jesus with the same substance of faith that you believe in God. The faith we place in Jesus as Messiah, as God Himself is the personification of our faith in the Father. No longer does a believer need the Law of Moses as one’s access to God, but the man Jesus (Who is also the mediator of the new covenant) is now the way, the avenue to finding and experiencing God. In 1Timothy 2:5, “For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,” Philip’s question to Jesus in verse 8 exposes his lack of understanding that Jesus and His Father were of the same essence (Hebrews 1:3) where Scripture says, “And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature”.

The apostle Paul is a great example of this principle. As Saul of Tarsus, he was one of the premier Pharisees of his day, having trained under Gamaliel and educated “strictly according to the law of our fathers, being zealous for God just as you all are today. I persecuted this Way to the death” (Acts 22: 3-4). His pursuit of God was through his intense zeal for the Law of Moses and related man-made laws (Mishna) that Jesus referred to as “the traditions of the elders” (Matthew 15:2). Yet Paul tells the Galatians in Galatians 1:11-17 that the gospel he heard was not received from man, but it came right from “a revelation of Jesus Christ”. Paul was able to recognize that the calling of God on his life came to him from his mother’s womb and the revelation of His Son came within Paul and not the result of an academic pursuit. He tells the Galatians that he did not immediately seek out the other Christian leaders (verse 16) to confirm or refine his understanding, but he needed to go away so that he would relearn the Scriptures in light of Jesus as Messiah.   

A circumcised heart 

Once Paul clearly understood his commission, he recognized the problem of his fellow Jews as being zealous for the Law and began to reach out to Gentiles to forsake the Law of Moses and the Jewish customs. He recognized that the true Jews (true circumcision) were those who “worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh” (Philippians 3:3). It was now the direct connection to Christ, Himself, through the Holy Spirit that would allow the new covenant believer to put no confidence in one’s own ability. 

In Romans 2:28-29, the true Jew has had his heart circumcised, a spiritual work and not the result of applying the letter of the law in a person’s life. Jeremiah 9:25-26 says the Lord will “punish all who are circumcised and yet uncircumcised” since “all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart”. This circumcision of the heart is a reference to one’s personal devotion to the Lord, as revealed in Jeremiah 4:4, “Circumcise yourselves to the Lord and remove the foreskins of your heart, men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, or else My wrath will go forth like fire and burn with none to quench it, because of the evil of your deeds.” This consecration to the Lord was always His intention and is understood in the context of the roller coaster relationship with God that Israel had since the introduction of the Law of Moses. In Deuteronomy 10:16, “So circumcise your heart and stiffen your neck no longer”, which speaks to the problem of stubbornness that works against a godly devotion. Ultimately, it is the Lord who circumcises the heart of Israel and descendants to love God with all the heart (Deuteronomy 30:6).

A new and living way

“Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water”.                         Hebrews 10:19-22 

The new covenant defines the environment in which the believer finds the confidence (boldness) to approach and draw near to God because this covenant is the direct result of the blood of Jesus and His priesthood. This “new and living way” is a relationship realized in the heart and the sincerity (Greek word alethinos meaning real or genuine, absence of lies) of that heart gives us the full assurance that we are forgiven and our evil conscience has been cleansed. In Proverbs 23:26, “Give me your heart, my son, and let your eyes delight in my ways.” This is the sentiment of a sincere heart, that we give it to God, that we are willing to be totally transparent with God. In so doing, His heart becomes my heart. In Psalm 73:28, “But as for me, the nearness of God is my good; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all Your works.” God is always interested in man’s heart and wishes man’s search to bring him to God’s heart. Jesus Christ is the manifestation of the Father’s heart!  

No confidence in the flesh

In Philippians 3:2-11, Paul writes to the church at Philippi about his background as a Pharisee and his deliverance from that life as he declares his conclusion in verse 3, that to glory in (credit given to) Christ Jesus meant that he no longer needed to have any confidence in his own flesh. He resolved that every matter that exalted his own accomplishments or natural abilities was of no consequence when it came to getting to know (ginosko – knowledge through experience) Christ. In fact, those things would oppose the process of knowing Him “and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings” (verse 10) since he was being conformed to Christ’s death. In verse 9, Paul defines the ultimate victory as “not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which comes from God on the basis of faith”. 

The righteousness of God only comes to the believer on the basis of faith and not through any human effort or accomplishment (Romans 4:4-5). The real power of God is found in the relationship with Christ, particularly through His resurrection. When the believer identifies with His resurrection, he enters into the deeper experience of that relationship. Colossians 3:1 says, “Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 

The works of God

The ending result of our faith in the deity of Christ and His substitutionary death on a cross is works; works are not the avenue to the relationship, but the by-product of that relationship. This kind of faith is not simply acknowledging the existing of Jesus as the Son of God, but a trust and confidence in Him. As James 2:19 states, “the demons also believe, and shudder”! James uses Abraham’s willingness to offer Isaac as a sacrifice in Genesis 22 as an example of the fruit of the relationship of faith in God. Faith cannot be perfected, brought to its ultimate conclusion without some guided action; real faith results in a call to action. James 2:17 is saying that a measurement of a real relationship with God is faith in action. 

Romans 10:13, "WHOEVER WILL CALL ON THE NAME OF THE LORD WILL BE SAVED." is a quote of Joel 2:32 and addresses the issue of the “Name of the Lord”. The implication of this quote is that in Joel it was referring to the Father, but Paul is speaking of Jesus, the Son of God. In our original passage from John 14:14, “If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it”. When we see references to the name of God in Scripture, it is equivalent to His character and nature, His True Being. The new covenant acknowledges that the very character of the Father is now represented by His Son, Jesus. In Ephesians 5:20, Paul says, “always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father.” The Name of God is sacred because it references exactly Who He Is. Jesus promises that “For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst." (Matthew 18:20). Jesus has committed by His Name that He will be in the midst of those who gather and call on the His Name, even a gathering as small as two or three. 

Resting from works

As the believer’s heart is intertwined with the Lord’s heart, He begins walking in the works and the ways of God (Epesians 2:10). He knows that he no longer must perform to prove his spirituality or worthiness because he has found his rest in whatever God has prepared for him. What we are speaking about is the fact that the mature believer recognizes his need to be a servant of God. In John 12:26, Jesus says, “If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him.” Service in God’s economy is the process of learning how to follow Christ and not requirements. In Psalm 37:5-6, “Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He will do it. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your judgment as the noonday.” Service means the believer has nothing to prove because Jesus has accomplished the work on his behalf and it is the righteousness of Christ that motivates him. Hebrews 4:10 says, “For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.” We learn how to serve by resting.