I Am the Way

Little children, I am with you a little while longer. You will seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Simon Peter said to Him, “Lord, where are You going?” Jesus answered, “Where I go, you cannot follow Me now; but you will follow later.” Peter said to Him, “Lord, why can I not follow You right now? I will lay down my life for You.” Jesus answered, “Will you lay down your life for Me? Truly, truly, I say to you, a rooster will not crow until you deny Me three times. (John 13:33-38)

“Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way where I am going.” Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. (John 14:1-6)

Don: What did Jesus mean when he told the disciples at the Last Supper, as cited in the passage above, “I am the way”? Jesus said that the disciples could not yet follow his way, but would be able to do so later. He also said that the way on which he was embarked was covered by a new commandment: To love one another as he had loved his disciples. There seems to be confusion, at least in Thomas’s mind, over his statement that the disciples knew the way where he was going.

“The Way” as mentioned in scripture is a road, a path, a continuum with a beginning and an end, an alpha/omega, a first/last. God’s “way,” as we well know from Isaiah 55, is not man’s way. The way is not just a path but also a movement:

Now Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest, and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. (Acts 9:1-2)

After being converted and becoming Paul, he said:

I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and putting both men and women into prisons,… (Acts 22:3-4)

Isaiah made a prophecy about the way:

A highway will be there, a roadway,
And it will be called the Highway of Holiness.
The unclean will not travel on it,
But it will be for him who walks that way,
And fools will not wander on it.
No lion will be there,
Nor will any vicious beast go up on it;
These will not be found there.
But the redeemed will walk there, (Isaiah 35:8-9)

He also said:

Your ears will hear a word behind you, “This is the way, walk in it,” whenever you turn to the right or to the left. (Isaiah 30:21)

The idea that the wanderer has his back to God and that God approaches the wanderer from behind suggests that the way back to God is accomplished only through God’s prerogative.

Psalms also talks about the way:

Good and upright is the Lord;
Therefore He instructs sinners in the way.
He leads the humble in justice,
And He teaches the humble His way.
All the paths of the Lord are lovingkindness and truth
To those who keep His covenant and His testimonies.
For Your name’s sake, O Lord,
Pardon my iniquity, for it is great.

Who is the man who fears the Lord?
He will instruct him in the way he should choose.
His soul will abide in prosperity,
And his descendants will inherit the land.
The secret of the Lord is for those who fear Him,
And He will make them know His covenant.
My eyes are continually toward the Lord,
For He will pluck my feet out of the net.

Turn to me and be gracious to me,
For I am lonely and afflicted.
The troubles of my heart are enlarged;
Bring me out of my distresses.
Look upon my affliction and my trouble,
And forgive all my sins.
Look upon my enemies, for they are many,
And they hate me with violent hatred.
Guard my soul and deliver me;
Do not let me be ashamed, for I take refuge in You.
Let integrity and uprightness preserve me,
For I wait for You.
Redeem Israel, O God,
Out of all his troubles. (Psalms 25:8-22)

What did Jesus really mean by “I am the way”? How can we know what way we are on? Who is responsible for the way, for keeping us on it? How do we know the way? What are we to make of Jesus’s statement that the disciples knew the way, when they clearly didn’t think so?

David: As one much inclined to Daoist philosophy, parts of this biblical scripture about the way—the Dao—resonated with me. The Daoist believes that all we need to know about the way is not to fight with it but to accept it, to follow it no matter where it may appear to be leading us. The biblical passages about the way also resonate with passages about the inner light—the spirit set inside us, in our hearts, from birth. We know it’s there but we often deny it, fight it, veer from it.

It seems to me the disciple’s question was not about the nature of the way but about the destination—where would the way lead to? Daoists are less concerned with the destination—enlightenment—than with the journey. The destination is a given; but whether you can stay on the Dao is not. Daoists would disagree with the scriptural view that the way is only for those who deserve it. It is for everybody, and any obstacles on it or diversions from it are self-imposed.

Robin: Maybe it means different things, but to me one of the possibilities is that Jesus is the way back to reconciliation with the Father. He’s not very specific about it, but the comfort of being reconciled with God is something we all want.

Don: That would certainly be consonant with the statement “Let not your heart be troubled”. There’s a certain assurance that there will be some sort of bridge over troubled waters.

Kiran: Jesus’s statement to Thomas “You know the way” was made in the context of the sermon on the mount in which Jesus overturned the “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” principle and replaced it with turning the other cheek. It represented a radically new way of living, and Jesus demonstrated that way through his own life and his sacrifice of it.

David: That too is redolent of the Dao, which in a sense is the way of least resistance. Much of Chinese philosophy, including Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, reflects something like that principle—absorbing the enemy’s blows rather than resisting them head-on, etc.

Charles: I take a different view. I think Jesus was speaking to the new covenant. There are many covenants throughout scripture but specifically, in the Mosaic covenant the law was a mirror showing that Man is fundamentally wicked, which ultimately traces its origin back to the Fall. I don’t think we are programmed to do good or that we will do good of our own accord if we just follow our hearts. History shows the unspeakable abominations of which, without God, we are capable.

The old covenant led to death. The new covenant leads to life—specifically, eternal life—through faith and “abiding in” Jesus and following his way of righteousness and his way of life. It is the only way back to the Father. At the Transfiguration, which preceded the “I am the way” statement, Moses and Elijah were there but only Jesus was glorified.

In telling the disciples they knew the way, he was simply saying they knew him—Jesus—and that believing in him rather than in the old covenant was the way to salvation.

David: None of that is inimical to the Dao of Daoist belief; it is just a matter of nomenclature, of calling the Dao “Jesus”. The essence of Jesus and the essence of the Dao—which is to say, care and concern for one’s fellow wo/man, love, peace, turning the other cheek, and so on—are fundamentally identical.

Alice: In Ezekiel God said “I will write my laws on your heart.” So everyone knows the truth, knows the way, knows how to live. Jesus told the disciples that to be his disciples they had to love one another. So the way is love, a lifestyle of love.

Charles: It’s easy to say it’s a matter of how we live our lives and it doesn’t matter whether we choose to accept Christ. I think scripture is more proscriptive: That it demands the active, free-willed exercise of the very specific choice of Jesus. The human heart is prone to err and to sin. The scripture does not make it optional to choose a Jesus lookalike: It has to be Jesus. Our hearts may be programmed not to do good but rather, because of free will, to do the opposite. We need to have that moral authority and we need to make a decision of faith as opposed to believing that we’ve all got it. The new covenant, unlike the old, has the spirit, which is received as a gift in return for choosing to accept Christ. At that point, one’s heart is open to the way and the fruits of the spirit, and to becoming a channel for God’s grace and mercy. I feel that this is not something hard-wired into our hearts or that if only we would listen to our hearts we would do good. On the contrary, scripture suggests that when we listen to our own hearts we tend not to do good; that we must choose to reside in faith, to choose to surrender to God, to choose—very specifically—Christ as the way.

Kiran: Yes, scripture does say that evil is our default mode and that we must choose the other way. But there are is a passage in scripture where someone performed miracles but not in the name of Jesus, and when the disciples asked Jesus if he wanted them to take care of this interloper he replied that the man could not have performed the miracles if he were not in fact “of Jesus” even though he might not know the name Jesus. Elsewhere, Jesus also remarked that he has sheep in other flocks that know his voice—he did not say they know his name—and respond to it, listen to it, follow it. In a third passage, in Revelation, a multitude of gentiles that has been admitted to heaven don’t recognize Jesus and wonder at his stigmata. How did they get there without knowing him?

I agree that no-one can get into heaven without following the way that Jesus taught us, but I believe we can follow it without knowing his name.

Don: One of the most controversial statements of this passage is that “No-one comes to the Father but through me.” This has been taken for two millennia as a mandate for Christians only. But is that what Jesus really meant? Does that then exclude from God’s kingdom people who don’t know anything about Jesus, have never even heard his name, never mind his “way”? Was the statement proscriptive or descriptive?

Robin: It seems possible that he was not talking about the mortal body that walked this earth but about the spirit. He may be talking about the spiritual recognition of the character of the Godhead—father, son, and holy spirit. In the Old Testament, God said “I am” also, but was not yet identified as Jesus. So it must flow from the old to the new covenant to maintain continuity. It’s not as though God the Father suddenly said “I am going to step down now.” The trinity always was and always will be. It might explain why some people can behave as Jesus would behave yet never have been schooled about the human form of God.

Jay: More scripture talks about God’s knowing us than about our knowing God, so the distinction can be presumed important. We seek to understand “the way” at three levels: Intellectual (rational analysis), spiritual (feelings of guidance from the inner light, and so on), and behavioral or exemplary (what would Jesus do?) At the Judgment, nobody—whether judged approvingly or disapprovingly—understood why the way they lived qualified or disqualified them. But the way of life of the qualified was most exemplary of the way of Jesus.

Charles: We have to deal with three groups: Jews, gentiles, and the Christian Church. I think it is fundamentally a spiritual issue but there is a physicality to our existence, to the existence of Jesus, and to Jesus again when he returns. Throughout scripture and on through the millennial kingdom there is always a role and a place for the nation of Israel. There is a reunification of the nation of Israel with Jesus. The way through Jesus for the faithful is what this particular passage is speaking to. It is not inconsistent with the spirit being connected to the free choice of faith and a path to salvation by virtue of that choice. That does not exclude some judgment, because even the faithful have done less-than-exemplary things. I don’t think what Jesus said excludes him from judging the gentiles and the pagans; perhaps, by their works. But at the end of the day it still could be the case that there is no path except through him and that he is the ultimate judge. If scripture is taken at face value rather than analyzed for hidden true meaning, there is still the possibility that by faith, an act of free will, there is a path to salvation and that Jesus is the way. I don’t see why Jesus can’t make decisions related to salvation for people who never had the opportunity choose him and his way. I think there is a path through Christ for Jew and non-Jew as well as for the faithful.

Don: The points about spirituality and physicality are well taken. Many of us, though, remain perplexed that, taken at face value, the statement seems to leave a lot of people out. It doesn’t seem to reflect the spirit and the message of Jesus.

David: The Jew-Gentile divide was a much bigger issue in Jesus’s time, but I think today it serves as a universal metaphor for the faithful and the non-faithful. When Jesus said “You can’t come where I’m going” even though “You know the way”, I think he meant we all (no exceptions!) know in our hearts what is right and what is wrong but we are totally incapable of following him in doing what is right. We cannot be Jesus because we are not capable of being him. So our inability to go where he is going is not because of a divine prohibition but because of mortal shortcomings.

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