This is human nature-on the one hand, an obvious and universal susceptibility to the influence of the person and, on the other, such influence at all times and in all directions at work, moulding character and gradually determining the great changes that mark our history. If anything is obvious in our everyday experience, and in the history, both secular and religious, of mankind, it is that in the formation of character, in great social changes, in shaping the destiny of our race, the great factor is not abstract truth, system, or form, but living, thinking, willing beings-mind acting on mind, heart on heart, life on life. Man’s need is satisfied only by a person. “No man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” It is this presentation of a Person, as concentrating within Himself all that can be embraced in the all-comprehensive words, “the way, and the truth, and the life,” that constitutes the grand peculiarity and the chief wonder of the text.ġ. The special force of the utterance lies not in the words, “the way, and the truth, and the life,” but in Christ’s resolving their whole meaning into Himself. The distinguishing feature and the chief glory of this wonderful declaration of Christ lies in its personal element. Jesus means to say: “I am the means of coming to the Father, because I am the truth and the life.” ![]() The phrase may be interpreted, according to Lightfoot and others, as a Hebraism equivalent to “the true and living way” but it is better to take the two latter phrases as explanations of the former. beginning, middle, end neither do they express a single notion, as Augustine’s vera via vitae nor does Reuss seem to express quite accurately their relation when he combines them, by defining the way as the means of arriving at truth and life. Some people find it hard to trace the connexion between way, and truth, and life and that difficulty was well expressed by Maldonatus in the pithy saying, “If Christ had been less liberal in explanation, we had less labour in exposition.” The three terms, way, truth, and life, are not co-ordinate, as Luther and Calvin hold, i.e. And when He thus challenges them candidly to say whether they understood where He was going, and where He would one day take them also, Thomas at once replies, “Lord, we know not whither thou goest how know we the way?” This interruption by Thomas gives occasion for the great declaration, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”Ģ. And when He sees their bewilderment written on their faces, He tentatively, half interrogatively, adds, “And whither I go, ye know the way.” Unless they knew where He was going, there was even less consolation in the promise that He would come for them after He had gone and prepared a place for them. ![]() His assuring words, “that where I am, there ye may be also,” therefore fell short. Apparently they were not yet persuaded that their Master was shortly to die and, accordingly, when He spoke of going to His Father’s house, it did not occur to them that He meant passing into the spiritual world. The words of Christ immediately preceding the text seem to have been obscure and puzzling to the Apostles. Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life.- John 14:6.ġ.
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