4. What did Jesus say about His own identity?

When we come to verse 6 of John 14, we come to one of the great "I am" passages which are such an important and unique feature of John's Gospel. In these "I am" passages, the Lord Jesus in a clear and forceful way indicated important elements of His own identity. Elsewhere He declared, "I am the bread of life" (6:48); "I am the light of the world" (8:12); "I am the door (10:9); "I am the good shepherd" (10:11); "I am the resurrection and the life" (11:25); and "I am the true vine" (15:1). Now the Lord was to identify Himself using three different and important words. He declared, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life". Regarding this phrase from our key verse, J. C. Ryle observes:

It is one of those deep utterances which no exposition can thoroughly unfold and exhaust. (Expository Thoughts on the Gospels, St. John, vol. III, p. 70)

I have certainly been forced to agree with Mr Ryle as I have sought to understand these words, but we will seek to at least begin to trace out what the Lord meant here. Our understanding of these three "I am's" in one will be greatly aided if we remember that they each indicate ways in which the Lord Jesus is the answer to the deepest needs of the human heart. Let us consider each in turn. First, Jesus said:

a. "I am the way".

This description is most closely related to the preceding context, for Thomas had just asked, ". . . how do we know the way?" As we have already seen, the Lord Jesus was talking about the way to heaven. But now, the last part of verse six indicates that there was an even more fundamental goal in sight. It was that of coming to the Father. Heaven was not a goal in and of itself. It was vitally important because it was, in the language of verse 2, the Father's house. Heaven is the place where God the Father is specially present, along with His exalted Son. And Jesus declared that He Himself as the Son of God was the way to get to God the Father -- thereby ultimately dwelling in His house.

Now this language all assumes something. It assumes that man by nature is far distant from the Father, and from the Father's house.

The Word of God elsewhere explicitly affirms what is assumed here. Each one of us from our births are by nature like the prodigal son who in willfulness and lust for the things of the world turn our backs upon the heavenly Father (Luke 15:11-24; Romans 3:10-12). He made us -- knitting us together in our mother's wombs -- and in that He is our Creator Father (Psalm 139:13-15). Yet we have wanted to have nothing to do with Him. Before birth and since birth He has cared for us, nourished us and revealed Himself to us. Yet, apart from a work of God's grace in our hearts, we have refused to thank and worship Him (Romans 1:18-21). Instead we have been like stupid sheep, going astray from the only path to life, insisting each one on going our own way (Isaiah 53:6). Our natural, rebellious, sinful hearts have caused us to go anywhere but toward the Father's house. Therefore, it is all our own fault that we are far from the Father's house by nature. We are the only ones to be blamed.

But not only is there the problem of the sinful hearts which we have by nature. There is also the problem of the guilty record to which we continue to add as our days on earth continue. For the Father is a perfectly holy God Who cannot endure any spot of sin or wickedness abiding in His presence (Habakkuk 1:13a; Revelation 21:22-27). So not only do we by nature have hearts which run away from the Father's house. We also cannot on our own go waltzing into that house whenever we so please, even if our hearts wanted to. There is a huge debt of guilt which must be paid according to the perfect demands of God's justice. In some way our sin must be punished and thereby removed before we can ever hope to dwell in God's house (Romans 3:23; 6:23a; Job 9:2)

You see, here was a key problem which the man Tom on the airplane had. He did not really see first of all how bad off man is. He had too high of view of himself and other men. And as long as that perspective continued, he could never appreciate the Way to the Father's house and to the Father which has been provided.

But once we come to see our hopeless and helpless separation from the Father's house, then we begin to truly long for the way which has been provided to go there. And Jesus said that He Himself is that way. How is that true? It is because Jesus, while hanging on the cross, felt the wrath of God for the sins of others. He satisfied the offended justice of a perfectly holy God (Isaiah 53:4-6; 11). But He did not do it for all men lost in their sins. He did it only for those who would show that they were the ones for whom He died by responding as He commanded. This response was commanded a few verses before our key verse in John 14:1:

"Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me."

He calls all lost men, far separated from the Father's house, to believe in the Father, and to believe in Him. For when you come to Him believing the fact that He is the way, and trustingly throwing your whole soul upon Him to get you to the Father, He will certainly see that you get there. For He is the way.

But there is a second "I am" in our key passage as well. Jesus said to Thomas:

b. "I am . . . the truth".

A few hours after the Lord Jesus spoke these words in the Upper Room, He stood before the Roman governor, Pilate, on trial for His life (John 18:37-38). In the course of that trial, the Lord spoke of His bearing witness to the truth, and Pilate snorted in cynicism and even scorn, "What is truth?" He may have responded this way because he himself so often resorted to lies and deceit, and was surrounded by men who lied and deceived, all the while declaring that what they said was true. Pilate certainly did not act in accordance with the truth or uphold the truth in disposing of Jesus' case, for he admittedly allowed an innocent man to be crucified because of the pressure of the falsely accusing Jews. Pilate may have also responded with such cynicism and scorn because he, like modern men, did not believe that there was any such thing as absolute truth which rightly demands our belief and obedience.

Yet the divine irony is, that even as Pilate retorted with his, "What is truth?", the One standing before Him was the only man in the universe who could ever legitimately say, "I am . . . the truth". What did the Savior mean by this language? In a real sense He was saying that He was the truth incarnate -- in human, fleshly form. Other uses by the Apostle John of the word "truth" help us to understand further what this meant. Notice some of these passages:

"Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth." (John 17:17)

Here the Lord Jesus in a prayer to His heavenly Father again equated something with truth. He said that the Father's word is truth. The revelation that has come from God the Father is truth indeed. Now this statement sheds much light on our key verse when we remember the first verses of this Gospel.

¹In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was in the beginning with God. ³All things were made through Him, and without him nothing was made that was made. ⁴In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. ⁵And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

⁹That was the true Light which gives light to every man who comes into the world.

¹⁴And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

¹⁷For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (John 1:1-5; 9; 14; 17)

Another name for Jesus is "the Word". Jesus is the personal, in-flesh revelation of God. He in His person is the bright light of absolute, redemptive truth shining out into a spiritually darkened world full of lies and error. For He is the Word. The writer to the Hebrews brings this out in a little different way. In 1:1-2a, we read:

God, who at various times and in different ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by (literally "in") His Son . . .

When we see Jesus, we see God speaking to us in His person -- we see God's Word incarnate. And since God is always true, Jesus is in His very person, the truth.

Because of this reality, several other realities follow. Jesus is full of truth (John 1:14). Truth came (was realized) through Him (1:17). He told men the truth which He had heard from God, even though wicked men wanted to kill Him as a result (8:40). He declared that He had been born and come into the world to bear witness to the truth, and that everyone who is of the truth hears His voice (18:37). He also stated that if someone abides in His word and thereby proves that He is truly a disciple of Christ's, he will know the truth, and the truth will make him free of slavery to sin (8:31-32).

What a blessed reality is this fact that Jesus is the truth. In this He meets the deepest needs of men as they are born into this world. For everyone by nature enters this world speaking lies (Psalm 58:3). We enter this world exposed to the blinding light of God's general revelation in His creation around us, yet we suppress and shove down that truth rather than thank and worship the God revealing Himself to us. As a result, our minds are darkened and blinded, so that we are self-deceived -- not seeing the truth already around us (Romans 1:18-25). In all this we fit in perfectly into a wicked world around us which hates and despises the truth of God -- which casts it down in the streets (Isaiah 59:9-14). And we reveal that we indeed have the Devil as our father. We manifest that we are the spiritual children of that evil being who does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him, so that whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44). Remember that it was the Devil's lies which first led Eve astray in the Garden and brought all the misery in the world into it. This horrible, wretched, malicious being is our spiritual father from birth.

To men who are by nature children of a lying Devil, blind, willingly deceived by lies swirling around us, deceiving others, and ignorant of that which is genuinely and eternally true -- to them, to us, the Lord Jesus comes and presents Himself as the truth itself. He confronts us with that which we as deceivers and deceived so desperately need -- the blazing revelation of God which shows us who God is, who we are, and the only way by which we may be saved. He is the truth -- and He rightly calls us to believe Him, and to believe in Him, as a result, for only the truth is worthy of being believed.

But now we come to the third and final "I am" of our key verse. Jesus also said of Himself:

c. "I am . . . the life". He declared Himself to be the life incarnate -- in human form.

What was the great need of man for which He here declared Himself the answer? We are clearly told in Scripture that man is by nature spiritually dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1). He is in a real sense lifeless spiritually from the day he is born. But if that were not enough, the Word of God also declares that men by nature are heading certainly toward death -- first of all, toward physical death which is part of the curse of sin, and is the certain end of every man who is born (unless Christ comes first) (Genesis 3:19; Ecclesiastes 2:14, cp. 16). And God's Word declares that man's physical death is but the entrance into eternal death in hell if men die in their sins (Romans 6:23; Luke 16:19-26). Hopeless and helpless indeed are dead and dying men in a world filled with death.

But into that dead and dying world came the One who is the life. Therefore, we read in John 1:4, "In Him (Jesus) was life, and the life was the light of men." In John 5:26, the Lord said of Himself, "For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself . . ." Because of His identity, and because of the life resident in Him, He is able to give life to men.

He gives enduring, eternal life to men -- beginning with their present earthly lives. Notice how Jesus brought this out in John 6:35; 51-54:

^6:35And Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst."

^6:51"I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world." ⁵²The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, "How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?" ⁵³Then Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. ⁵⁴Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day."

If you come to Jesus, if you believe in Him as the crucified Savior of men (thereby eating and drinking of Him), you will not only live forever spiritually. You will not even get close enough to spiritual death to hunger or thirst in your soul again. What was Jesus whole purpose in coming? He declared it in John 10:10 where He said, ". . . I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly". Abundant life now and forever will be the result for those who believe in Christ. But the good news does not end there. That abundant, eternal life is a secure possession of those who believe, for in John 10:28, Jesus said regarding His sheep, ". . . I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand". Once you have life from Christ, you can never lose it.

Furthermore, not only does this enduring, eternal life begin to be the possession of men who have Jesus by faith in this life. It is the promise of the resurrection of the body which is to come. We have already seen in John 6:54 the promise:

"Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day."

Consider also another portion of God's Word where we again see Christ's self-identity as "the life" tied in closely with the future resurrection hope of the believer -- John 11:23-26.

²³Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." ²⁴Martha said to Him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day." ²⁵Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. ²⁶And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?"

Jesus not only declares Himself to be the life here. He also identifies Himself as the Resurrection. As a result, the one who believes in Him will live again physically in the resurrection even though he dies physically. Furthermore, he who lives spiritually by faith shall never die spiritually in the second death involving eternal separation from God in hell. What a blessed hope for the believer.

But notice, that hope of abundant, secure, eternal life -- body and soul in heaven -- is only for those who first have the Christ who is the life. There is no other way. Both Christ and this life are inseparably bound together. This truth is underscored in the later inspired words of the same Apostle John who wrote the Gospel we are studying:

¹¹And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. ¹²He who has the Son has life (literally, "the life"); he who does not have the Son of God does not have life (literally, "the life").

These then are the three "I am's" of the key verse which we have been studying -- a verse in which Jesus told us much about His identity. He declared that He is the way, and the truth, and the life. But then He went on to say more which brings us to our fifth and last question:

5. What was the conclusion which Jesus drew from His identity?