The dudes at Homebrewed Christianity are about to do a podcast on John 14:6. The "I am the way the truth and the life" text. This passage often gets used against more peace love and mung bean Xns when they are doing their "God love everyone man" thing. Kind of like a trump card to discount of God being overly inclusive. When someone pulls this trump card what they usually mean is not "Jesus is the way the truth and the life" but, if you haven't said a prayer to invite Jesus into your heart and then followed that up by attending a church whose theology roughly coincides with that big selling books at that persons favourite cheesy Xn bookshop, then you are not in with God.
Here are my thoughts on this verse. Following Jesus would have been theologically confusing for the disciples. Tax collectors and prostitutes were in but the Pharisees were out. The first were made last and the last, first. In Jesus' Sheep an Goats parable even those who call Jesus lord don't even get in.
At the beginning of John 14 Jesus announces that he will be leaving the disciples and they want some assurance. In John 14:6 Jesus tells them that he is the gate keeper it is he who decides who is in and out. There is no magic prayer to get Jesus in your heart. There is no ritual or sacrifice to be made to make sure that you are in with God, just the assurance that Jesus is the way and that he will continue to declare the tax collector, the prostitute and people like the sheep in the sheep and goats parable who don't even know Jesus as part of the kingdom of God.
So, yes I fully embrace John 14:6. But, any theological ideas that come from what we think John 14:6 means must concur with Matthew 25:31-46 (the sheep and the goats parable) and not from our own desire to be the gatekeepers of who is in and out with God. That we are not that gate keep is precisely what we learn in both passages.
Here are my thoughts on this verse. Following Jesus would have been theologically confusing for the disciples. Tax collectors and prostitutes were in but the Pharisees were out. The first were made last and the last, first. In Jesus' Sheep an Goats parable even those who call Jesus lord don't even get in.
At the beginning of John 14 Jesus announces that he will be leaving the disciples and they want some assurance. In John 14:6 Jesus tells them that he is the gate keeper it is he who decides who is in and out. There is no magic prayer to get Jesus in your heart. There is no ritual or sacrifice to be made to make sure that you are in with God, just the assurance that Jesus is the way and that he will continue to declare the tax collector, the prostitute and people like the sheep in the sheep and goats parable who don't even know Jesus as part of the kingdom of God.
So, yes I fully embrace John 14:6. But, any theological ideas that come from what we think John 14:6 means must concur with Matthew 25:31-46 (the sheep and the goats parable) and not from our own desire to be the gatekeepers of who is in and out with God. That we are not that gate keep is precisely what we learn in both passages.
3 comments:
I'm really glad for that verse these days. The way I hear it is Jesus and everything he did and said and represents trumps Paul, doctrine, the Bible, the Church, culture, government and anything else that claims authority or diminishes or ignores him
How do we read John 14:6? Specifically, where do we put the emphasis? Either naturally or by conditioning most of us probably stress the "I" in "I am the way..." But how about stressing the "am"? The Homebrewed Christianity post interprets this sentence in its context of Jesus conversing with his disciples. In this context the emphasis on "am" makes sense: in reply to Thomas ("Show us the way") Jesus says "I AM the way". (You know me. You already know the way.) And in v7, knowing Jesus comes (for these disciples anyway) before knowing the Father. Could this also be true of other disciples, then and now?
In the sheep and goats passage (I don't see it as a parable) Jesus tells the religious goats that he never knew them. Inference: he knows the sheep, even those who don't know him - although he does expect his sheep to know him (John 10:14).
Nice article, thanks for the information.
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