(Audio version; Music: "Jesus, Only Jesus" by: Phillips, Craig & Dean and "Only Jesus" by: Point Of Grace)
Introduction
G. K.
Chesterton once said that when people stop believing in God they don’t believe
in nothing—they believe in anything. It happens to be an occupational hazard
that I receive stories everyday that remind me just how Lost people are. I don’t mean physically Lost, I mean spiritually Lost.
Just this week, the city of Toronto in Ontario, Canada banned the annual
Christian music festival held for the past five years in Yonge-Dundas public
square. Why? Because the lyrics in the songs include the name of Jesus! Imagine
that, Christian music that references Christ! Boy nothing gets by these folks!
It only took them five years to realize that the foundation for Christian music
is Jesus. All sarcasm aside, does this surprise you? I’m not asking you if it
makes you happy if you’re an unbeliever or sad if you’re a believer, I’m just
asking if it surprises you? It doesn’t surprise me in the least bit. This is
just another illustration of how unbelievers have once again succeeded in
leading more people into darkness where they can be Lost together. It’s Satan’s plan to convince people that there is a
better way than believing in the silly fairytale of Jesus Christ. Let’s put a
slight twist on Chesterton’s prophetic words—Satan doesn’t convince people to
stop believing in God and thereby believe in nothing. Satan convinces them that
all beliefs are equally valid. Of course we’ve come to expect this type of
pluralistic thinking from the secular world—people who are Lost trying to lead the world. It’s precisely the reason Jesus gave
us the Great Commission—to continue His mission of seeking and saving that
which has been Lost. The Church is
kind of like a search and rescue team that has been sent out by Jesus to find
those who are Lost. But what happens
when the Church gets Lost?
Many of us
expend a significant amount of energy trying to reach a world that is Lost. We take it for granted that our
fellow believers at the very least won’t undermine those efforts.
Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. There is a large Protestant
denomination here in America that has been systematically tearing itself apart
because a significant portion of its membership and its pastorate have wandered
away from clear biblical truth and gotten Lost.
The process started years ago when professors in the denomination’s seminaries
began to teach what they wanted the Bible to say instead of what the Bible actually
says. Now the rotted fruit of those labors are being harvested. Not long ago
the denomination was divided when its leadership endorsed homosexuality as an
acceptable alternative lifestyle. By itself, that sin was probably something
the denomination could have repented from but there is something more sinister
at work that is far worse than that particular unrepentant sin. A poll was
conducted of its membership and its pastorate seeking their position on the
assertion that all the world’s religions are equally good ways of finding
ultimate truth. The poll reported that 60 percent of its membership either
agreed or were neutral about the assertion. And as appalling as those findings
might be, 23 percent of its pastorate also agreed or were neutral about the
assertion! Twenty-three percent of pastors of a Christian church in America
either do not believe or are neutral about the exclusive claims of the gospel.
Is it any wonder then that more than half of its membership also rejects or is
neutral about the exclusive claims of the gospel? Let me ask you this, if the
shepherd is Lost, what hope do the
sheep have of finding their way? There is no greater illustration of the truth
in Chesterton’s words than this example—people who walk away from the truth of
the Bible don’t stop walking, instead they walk blindly in any and every
direction until they are hopelessly Lost.
Subject Text
John 14:1-11
1“Do
not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. 2In
my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I
am going there to prepare a place for you. 3And if I go and prepare
a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may
be where I am. 4You know the way to the place where I am going.” 5Thomas
said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the
way?” 6Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No
one comes to the Father except through me. 7If you really knew me,
you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen
him.” 8Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be
enough for us.” 9Jesus 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’? 10Don’t you
believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say
to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is
doing his work. 11Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and
the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.
Context
It its
immediate context, Jesus just told the disciples that He will soon be put to
death and be glorified through His resurrection. Clearly the disciples didn’t
yet understand the purpose of Jesus’ advent. They still didn’t grasp the idea
of a Messiah that would allow Himself to be put to death. On top of all that,
they left everything in order to follow Him. Now, they are faced with the
revelation that Jesus is going to a place where they can’t follow Him at this
point. It’s not hard to imagine that the disciples are troubled about this news
and Jesus wants to calm their fears. However, there is a very important
theological revelation overall in chapter 14—the foundational introduction of
the Trinity. We have the benefit of 2,000 years of theological development to
lean on for our belief in the Trinity. However, if we ignored all that
historical development, chapter 14 of John’s gospel should give us enough
information to form the framework of our own Trinitarian theology. If people
still reject the existence of the Trinity than they are being purposely
ignorant. Belief in the Trinity is essential in understanding our Subject Text and the verses that follow
our Subject Text, which introduce us
to God the Spirit. In the span of ten verses from John 14:9-18, God the Father,
God the Son, and God the Spirit are all in the same sphere of Jesus’ teaching.
The disciples went from trusting their lives to God the Father to trusting
their lives to God the Son, and with the news that Jesus would be leaving them,
they didn’t have to worry about getting Lost
because they would be able to trust their lives to God the Spirit.
Text Analysis
1“Do
not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.
Jesus is
planting the seed in v. 1 for a harvest
he hopes to reap in the later verses. With His death and especially His
resurrection on the horizon, it was time for the disciples to really stretch
their understanding not just of Jesus’ humanity but also His divinity. Jesus
wanted the disciples to begin to understand that their trust in God and their
trust in Him should be interchangeable because of His divinity. We take this
for granted because, as true Christians, we have always lived under the
umbrella or Trinitarian theology. But this would have been completely foreign to
the disciples who were all Jewish. Remember that they grew up memorizing the
Shema which begins, “Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.” So for
Jesus to teach them that they could trust Him in the same way and to the same
extent that they could trust God would have been quite unnatural for them.
Nevertheless, Jesus is leading them in a very specific direction that begins
with them understanding Jesus’ divine nature.
“The way
the disciples are to calm their hearts is spelled out in the second part of the
verse: Trust in God; trust also in me.
The two verbs rendered ‘trust’ [Gk. pisteuō]
could either be [grammatically] indicative or imperative, leading to the
following principal translations: (a) indicative/indicative: ‘You trust in God
and you trust in me’—which at some marginal level is true, but not obviously
appropriate in this context since the core problem of the disciples’ felt
turmoil is lack of trust; (b) indicative/imperative: ‘you trust in God; trust
also in me’…which makes sense as an invitation to extend the object of their
faith beyond God as they have known him in the past to Jesus as well, but it is
not clear, from their troubled hearts, that their trust in God is very secure
at this point; (c) imperative/imperative: ‘Trust in God; trust also in me.’
This is the way the verbs were taken in nearly all the Old Latin [manuscripts],
and it makes most sense of the context.
Although
the last option is best, all three assume a formidably high Christology, for they
link Jesus with the Father as an appropriate object of faith. For the
thoughtful readers of the Gospel, however, the link is almost inevitable. If
Jesus invariable speaks the words of God and performs the acts of God, should
he not be trusted like God? If he tells his followers not to let their hearts
be troubled, must it not be because he has ample and justifiable reason?”[1]
2In my Father’s house are many
rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a
place for you. 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come
back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4You
know the way to the place where I am going.”
The Old
Testament is focused primarily on instructing God’s people on living in a right
relationship with God in this life. While Jesus certainly doesn’t contradict or
ignore that instruction, Jesus opened peoples’ eyes to a dimension of living in
relationship with God beyond this life. And for the disciples who were anxious
about the news of Jesus’ departure, what could be more comforting than the
picture of going home one day in vv. 2-4
to live with God. It’s a little hard to understand Jesus’ illustration but it
would be a mistake to take Jesus’ reference to God’s house literally. Jesus is not
saying that we will all live in one big house with God one day. Instead, Jesus
is saying, among other things, that one day all believers will have a place in
God’s heavenly kingdom along with Him. But first, Jesus has to make
preparations for their arrival. This too can be confusing. Hasn’t heaven
already been created? Yes it has but again don’t get too tangled up in the idea
of building an actual house with rooms. Instead, we need to understand that the
idea of living with God is primarily intended to convey the idea of being in
relationship with God. And the preparation that Jesus is referring to in order
to make that relationship possible is His death on the cross and subsequent
resurrection.
My daughter
went to a wedding in sort of a rural part of Wisconsin a few weeks ago. She
called me while she was driving to the venue to let me know that she was
totally lost. She said the place didn’t have a formal address so she had to
rely on directions from someone in the wedding party. The only problem was that
the person providing the directions was very familiar with the area and clearly
assumed my daughter was equally familiar with the area because the directions
referenced well-known landmarks. Except they were only well known to those who
already knew them well. She eventually got there but only after receiving
additional directions. The disciples perhaps should have known the way Jesus
was referring to but they had much to digest with the announcement of Jesus’
betrayal by one of them and his imminent death. But His death was precisely the
preparations Jesus was referring to and His resurrection would lead the way for
them to spend eternity with Him.
“But in
spite of the portrayal of God in a ‘house,’ one must take great care not to
visualize God in some earthlike ‘place.’ Moreover, since we are bound by
space-time limitations in all our thinking, we must not limit our concept of
God’s domain to something like our idea of the three-story universe where
heaven as the dwelling place of God is ‘up.’ It is now most appropriate for
Christians to begin to think in dimensional concepts that are far beyond the
old three-dimensional reasoning of the previous generations…The domain of God
is certainly beyond our finite thinking. The best we can do is to describe God’s
domain in metaphors. That is exactly what Jesus, the agent of God, did for his
bewildered disciples.
Furthermore,
God’s domain has plenty of room, and the preparation of Jesus for our entrance
into that domain was through his ‘departure’ or death on the cross…arriving on
the scene after his departure is not the point when Jesus ‘begins to prepare
the place,’ but ‘it is the going itself, via the cross and resurrection’ that
is the act of preparation. The Gospel of John is not trying to portray Jesus as
being in the construction business of building or renovating rooms. Rather,
Jesus was in the business of leading people to God.”[2]
5Thomas said to him, “Lord, we
don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” 6Jesus
answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father
except through me.
You have to
wonder if maybe Jesus’ words in the previous verses weren’t intended to lead
His disciples right into the question Thomas asks in v. 5 and His answer to the question in v. 6. It almost feels like the disciples walked right into the path
of Jesus’ main lesson of our Subject
Text and probably the most important exclusive claim of Christianity. It is
the line in the sand the divides believers from unbelievers. If you do not
believe the Jesus is the only way to be reconciled to God then you cannot call
yourself a Christian. Well, you can call yourself a Christian; you can call
yourself whatever you want but the truth is that you are still Lost. Jesus does not equivocate about
how we are saved. We are saved through Him or we are not saved. You don’t have
to like it; you can be ashamed of it, but that doesn’t change the fact that
Jesus and only Jesus is the Way we are reconciled back to God; He is the Truth
of God incarnate; He alone gives us eternal Life in relationship with God.
“It’s hard
to exhaust the multifaceted nature of Jesus’ statement here. Thomas,
interpreting the comment in the ‘most crassly natural way,’ is looking for a
literal road map, complete with specific directions that would enable him to
know how to get to where Jesus is going. This is understandable; if Thomas and
his fellow disciples have not come to terms with Jesus’ departure itself, how
can their thinking about the circumstances surrounding it be coherent? But
Jesus says that he himself is the
way. Tellingly, the early Christians were initially called the followers of
‘the Way.’ Jesus’ claim of himself being the way (with the corollary that no
one can come to the Father but through him) is as timely today as it was when
our Lord first uttered the statement. For an age of religious pluralism,
Christianity’s exclusive claims are considered inappropriately narrow, even
intolerant, and pluralism itself has, ironically, become the criterion by which
all truth claims are judged.
Yet in a
day when keeping the law and scrupulous observance of religious customs are
considered paramount, Jesus claimed that allegiance to himself was the way.
Jesus is the way, he is also the truth and the life…To know the truth and to
have life beyond the grave are the great aspirations of humankind. As John
tells us, only in Jesus can these deepest of all human longings be fulfilled.
For he in his very essence is truth and life; Jesus is the one and only way of
salvation…In the obstreperous Jewish and Greco-Roman world of the first
century, as well as in today’s pluralistic climate, Jesus’ message is plain: he
does not merely claim to be ‘a’ way or ‘a’ truth or ‘a’ life, but ‘the way, the
truth, and the life,’ the only way to salvation.”[3]
7If you really knew me, you would
know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” 8Philip
said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” 9Jesus
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’? 10Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and
that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather,
it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11Believe me
when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe
on the evidence of the miracles themselves.
In case the
disciples weren’t already reeling from everything Jesus told them to this
point, He piles on with a lesson in vv.
7-11 that had to leave them scratching their heads in confusion. Very
simply, Jesus is saying that He and the Father have the same essential divine
qualities. It had to be difficult for the disciples to grasp this concept given
their theological framework summarized in the Shema as I referenced earlier
that specifically reinforces God as being “One.” Let’s make sure we understand
what Jesus is and is not saying. Jesus is not saying that He and the Father are
the same thing only that they share the same essential characteristics of God. For
example, both are sinless, both are perfectly holy, and both performed miracles
just to name a few. Although Jesus willingly set aside some of His divine
attributes when He became incarnate, His divine essence remained unchanged. And
if they doubted that, then the miracles He performed should have given witness
to the fact that He shared the same divine essence as the Father who they never
doubted could perform miracles. The beauty of Jesus’ incarnation is that we
have the opportunity to encounter God with skin on. With Jesus, we no longer
have to wonder what God is like. That’s what Jesus was trying to tell the
disciples—they could stop looking for God because He was standing right in
front of them. There was no essential difference between Him and the Father and
they would later come to find out that God also included the Spirit who shared
the same essential divine qualities as Jesus and the Father.
“Jesus
explained that to see him is to see the Father, for Jesus is God in human form.
Philip and the disciples, after their years with Jesus, should have come to
know and recognize that the one among them was God in human, physical form. He
is the visible, tangible image of the invisible God. He is the complete
revelation of what God is like. Jesus’ answer contains no rebuke; he explained
to Philip, who wanted to see the Father, that to know Jesus is to know God. The
search for God, for truth and reality, ends in Christ.
[The unity
of Jesus and the Father] ensures that Jesus truly and completely revealed God
to us. This unity goes far deeper than Jesus being of one mind with the
Father—merely reflecting the intentions of the Father. Jesus and God were one
in essence and purpose…If believing in this oneness is too difficult for you
just now, Jesus told the disciples, ‘at least believe because of what you have
seen me do.’ God’s power was revealed through Jesus’ works.”[4]
Application
I can only
think of a few people who sincerely don’t care whether or not people like them.
It’s human nature for people to want other people to like them. I think it is
rooted in our deep desire to be in relationship. We were created from the very
beginning to be in relationship—with God and with one another. However, there
comes a time when our commitment to be faithful followers of Christ must take
precedent over our desire to be liked. We must be willing to take a stand for
something to avoid falling for just anything. Conceding that all beliefs lead to
the same ultimate truth is foolishness that stands for nothing while it
pretends to uphold the dignity of all beliefs as equally valid. That’s like
dropping a group of blind people into the middle of the jungle and telling them
that they can all walk in different directions and eventually end up safely in
the same place—except you can’t clearly identify the place they are going so
they wouldn’t even know if they ever got there. The only thing that turning
blind people loose to go in whatever direction they want will accomplish is
ensuring that a group of blind people will become desperately, hopelessly Lost.
[1] D. A.
Carson, The Gospel According to John—The
Pillar New Testament Commentary, (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Co., 1991), pp. 487-488.
[2] Gerald
L. Borchert, John 12-21—The New
American Commentary, (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2002), pp.
104-105.
[3] Andreas
J. Köstenberger, John—Baker
Exegetical Commentary on the New Testment, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic,
2004), pp. 428-430.
[4] Bruce
Barton, Philip Comfort, Grant Osborne, Linda K. Osborne, and Dave Veerman, Life Application New Testament Commentary,
(Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001), p. 436.
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