The Lord had laid down the inward conscious knowledge of the disciples, according to God, and the glory of His own person, whom they confessed soon, by redemption and the gift of the Spirit to bloom in full intelligence. But in this they were as yet dull to apprehend His meaning; and he who was remarkable among them for his gloomy thoughts expresses this for all.
“Thomas saith to him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; [and] how know we [or can we know] the way? Jesus saith to him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father but by me. If ye had known me, ye would have known my Father also; and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.” (Vers. 5-7.)
No the thoughts of Thomas limited the Lord to that earthly horizon which formed the boundary of his own hopes of Israel clustering around their Messiah. He could not conceive, any more than the rest, whither the Lord was retiring, now that He had come to the people and the land which, he knew, He was pledged to bless richly and forever. How, then, know the way? His mind was yet earthly. As he had no thought of heaven for the Lord Jesus, so he overlooked the way. But this furnished the opportunity for the Lord to announce, in words as simple as profound, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Much conveyed in them might have been gleaned from testimonies to Him, most from His own previous discourses, as given in this very Gospel, but nowhere so much combined with so brief an expression. It was worthy of Him, and at that moment above all.
A way is a great boon, especially through a wilderness which characteristically has no way. Neither had Eden, or unfallen creation, a way; but then it needed none. For all things everywhere were good, and as long as man ate not of the forbidden tree, there was no straying. All else it was for him to enjoy, giving thanks to God. But sin came in, and death, the harbinger of judgment, and all was changed into a wilderness, and men wandered in all directions, and all of them away from God and irreparably wrong: a wilderness-world truly, a void place, where there is no way. Not that promise did not, less or more, bold out the hope of better things; not that law did not, in due time, thunder and lighten; but God's way was not known, as His grace alone could show it. Now it is; for Christ is the way, the only sure way, for the most erring of sinners, avowedly for the lost, whom He is come to seek and to save; and He is the way to the Father, not to God displayed in power and glory on the earth, as the Jew should expect for the day that is coming, when the rejected Messiah returns as the glorious Son of man. But He is much more, and above all time or change, the deepest rejection only forcing out what was there always, His own personal glory as Son of God superior to every dispensation. And in the fullest consciousness of it, He says to dimly-seeing Thomas, “I am the way.” Why should one wait for the time when the wilderness shall be gladdened by His presence and power? Then, doubtless, the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water; and a highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called, The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it, but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein. But He is this, and more now, to all that believe in Him, and faith delights to own, as God to make known, all He is, when unbelief disowns and slights and casts Him out. He is accordingly the one divine way; and as there is none other, so is He all, sufficing for him who has no strength or wisdom or worth in any sort. But Christ is the way now for the steps of such as know Him, the wisdom of God in an evil world—Himself the highest and perfect expression of that wisdom, and thus open to the babe in faith, no less than to an apostle.
Further, He is the truth, the full expression of every one and of everything as they are. He tells us in His own person what God is; He shows us the Father, being Himself the Son. But He, not Adam, shows us man. Adam, no doubt, shows us falling, or fallen, man; Christ alone is man according to God, both morally, as once here below, and in counsel, as now risen and in heaven. Moreover, as He shows us holiness and righteousness, so also He brings out sin in its true colors; as He says Himself, “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin, but now they have no cloak for their sin. He that hateth me hateth Father also. If I had not done among the works Which none other man did, they had not had sin; but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father.” Hence He, and He only, brings out His adversary the devil personally, the prince of this world, but the constant enemy of the Son. Even the law, holy, just, and good as the commandment may be, is not the truth; for it is rather the demand, on God's part, of what a man should do; but Christ tells out, not merely what he ought to be, but what he is. The law claims his duty; Christ declares that all is over, and he is lost. But Christ also shows us a Savior in His own person, and this from God, and with God. Not that He is not the Judge, for He will judge living and dead, as surely as He will appear and set up His kingdom; but He is Savior now and to the uttermost. Indeed it would be impossible to say what of good and glorious He is not, nor from what evil He does not deliver. He is the truth, the exhibition of the true relation of all things with God, and consequently of the departure of any from God. He, and He only, to the challenge, Who art thou? could answer, Absolutely that which I am also saying to you. He is what He says, as no other man was, the truth; and this, as He intimates in the same chapter viii. of our Gospel, because He is not man alone but God.
But He is more than the way and the truth; He is life, and this because He is the Son. In communion with the Father, He quickens. It is not so in judgment; for the Father judges none, but has given every kind of judgment to the Son, and this because He is the Son of man; and as men dishonored Him because He deigned in love to become man, so the Father will have Him honored, not only as God, but as man in judgment. Believers honor Him in a very different and far more excellent way. They bow to Him now, they willingly gladly exalt Him while rejected by the world. They are thus by grace in communion with God, who has set Him on high at His own right hand, and will by-and-by compel every creature to bow and own Him Lord, to His own glory. But those that believe have life in Him now, Which issues, by the Spirit's power, in the practice of good, and hence they will enjoy life-resurrection at His coming; as those that have done evil must be raised to resurrection of judgment in its day.
Thus the believer had Christ for all possible need, and all the blessing that our God and Father can bestow. One cannot have Him as the way and the truth without having Him as the life also, for indeed He is the resurrection and the life; And this life, which we have in Him, the, Son, the Holy Spirit strengthens and exercises, as His word flourishes it, revealing Him afresh to our souls. The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord; and as the way in Christ is a path of love and liberty and holiness, so the end also is everlasting life.
Nor is there any other means of blessing: “No one cometh unto the Father but by me,” says the Lord.
There is the surest guarantee, the amplest and the highest good, but it is absolutely exclusive. By none but the Son can one come to the Father; by Him can come any, the proudest Jew, the most debased Gentile. Through Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father, as says the apostle expressly, when showing the nature of that church which now takes the place of the ancient people of God. And be it observed that it is not to God only in sovereign grace above sin, saving the most guilty and wretched it is to the Father; in that relationship of grace which the Son knew eternally in His own right and title, and none the less, but the more, to His Father's honor, when He glorified Him on earth as the perfectly dependent and obedient man. How wondrous that we should come to the Father, His Father and ours, His God and ours: all glory to Him and His work of redemption, through which alone it could be to us who believe!
Next the Savior lets them know that the knowledge of the Father is inseparable from that of the Son. “If ye knew me, ye would know my Father also; and henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him.” He is the image of the invisible God; in the Son is the Father known; and this the disciples are given to learn now objectively.
But there is no capacity in the bright and active-minded disciple to enter into divine things, any more than in the most reserved or sombre one. “Philip saith to him, Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us.” (Ver. 8.) An excellent wish for one who had not seen Jesus and helped others in their desires to see Jesus. But it was sad unbelief in Philip, especially after the patient gracious words just uttered to lead them on.
“Jesus saith to him, Am I so long with you, and hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; [and] how sayest thou, Show us the Father? Believest thou not that I [am] in the Father, and the Father is in me? The words which I says to you, I do not speak from myself; but the Father that abideth in me, he doeth the works. Believe me that I [am] in the Father, and the Father in me; but, if not, believe me for the very works' sake. Verily, verily, I say to you, he that believeth in me, the works which I do shall he do also; and, greater things than these shall he do; because I go unto the Father". (Vers. 9-12.)
The Lord thus poured a flood of light on the perplexity of the disciples. The Messiah Himself was not a mere man, however endowed and honored of God. He was a man, and the lowliest of men, but who was He that was pleased to be born of the virgin? He was the Son—He was God, no less than the Father, and in Him the Father was displaying Himself as such. It was God in grace, forming and fashioning His children by the manifestation of His affections and thoughts and ways in Christ the Son, a man on earth. This they had known, and yet had not known. They were familiar with Him, and the facts of His every-day works and words, little feeling as yet that they were words and works for eternity of the Creator displaying Himself in incomparably deeper fashion than in the wonders of His creation, or of His government in Israel. No one hath seen God at any time: the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him. It was for this He came, not only to annul sin by the sacrifice of Himself, but to manifest the eternal life which was with the Father, and this as the Son revealing the Father. How new the order of being, how strange the range of thought, to the disciples! Yet this had Jesus been ever doing here below, occupied with His Father's business long before the beginning of His ministry.
“Believest thou not that I [am] in the Father, and the Father in me?” All turned on the glory of His person; and the very unity of the Godhead, the cardinal truth Israel had to testify, makes a difficulty to the reasoning mind of man, unable to rise above its own experience. Not only had law and prophets prepared the way, and John the Baptist's witness, but the words that Jesus said were not as any other man spoke. They were no mere human things, nor independently of His Father. He had been made flesh, but never ceased to be the Word, the Son; and the works He did bore the unmistakable imprint of the same gracious One—the Father. It was He that did the works, or His works. The disciples were therefore called to believe that He was in the Father, and the Father in Him; a state of being only possible in the divine nature, to which the works themselves gave a witness that left the incredulous without excuse.
And this the Lord follows up with His formula of special solemnity in verse 12, wherein He intimates the testimony that would be rendered to the glory of His person when, and because, He was going to the Father, the power which should invest the believer, and enable him to do, not only what they had seen Jesus do, but things greater still, in honor of His name. And this was to the letter fulfilled. For never do we hear of the Lord's shadow healing the sick, nor were napkins taken from His body (save in lying legends) to cure disease, or expel demons, not to speak of the multitudes which were brought in, far and wide, by apostolic preaching. What greater proof of divine power than to work as He Himself did, and yet more by His servants; and more, again, when He went on high than when He sent them out from His presence on earth! But if the power displayed—if the works were to be greater, who could compare himself with the Lord in self-renouncing love, dependence, and obedience Certainly none that believed on Him.