The Only Way.........

The uniqueness of Jesus as the only Way to Heaven, the only Way of salvation, comes out of His own claim as stated in John 14:6- "I am the way, the truth and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me". This most outstanding claim of Jesus Christ comes within the context of His nouncement that He is going to Heaven where He originally came from. Let us consider this entire assage from vs. 1 to 10. In verse 1 Jesus says: "Let not your heart be troubled: you believe in God, believe lso in me". The words "You believe in God believe also in me" make up an outstanding claim of Christ equality with God and of His own deity. Only God could put Himself on par with God and claim to be the object of man's faith as God is. It is not enough to say that we believe in God-one has to believe in Jesus Christ as well. To believe in Jesus Christ is to believe in God. To believe in God is not necessarily to believe in to Jesus Christ. The Jews of Jesus' day made vehement refused to believe in Jesus. "We believe in God" they said. "but not in you". What Jesus apparantly means is that no one who refuses to believe in Him can really claim to believe in God. There is no God apart from Jesus. Is it not enough to believe in God? It is; but Jesus is not an addition to God. He is God Him-self. Verse 2: "In my Father's house are many mansions... I go to prepare a place for you". "Father's House" is another name for Heaven. "Many mansions" speaks of the complexity of Heaven. For us Heaven is a place, but not for God. God is infinite. He can not be localized or circumscribed to a place as we are, unless He so chooses for a specific period of time. The Hebrew Shamaim(plural) lends itself to spatial connotations, but only with respect to creatures, such as angels and disembodied human spirits. The centre of Heaven is marked by the presence of God's glory. This must be identical to the "third heaven" (or "innermost Heaven") or 2 cor 12:3, which is comparable to the holy of holies in the Tabernacle. While there are many mansions or dwelling places in Heaven there needs to be apreparation or reservation made for a particular ccupancy. Jesus promises each one of His believers a particular place in Heaven. We do not just go and ccupy any unreserved or vacant rooms in Heaven. All rooms in Heaven are reserved. Our names are ritten in Heaven, in the Lamb's book of Life, we are told (Luke 10:20 and Rev. 13.8). We do not fully nderstand what all this preparation involves. Our salvation is prepared of God. We did not plan if, but God did. He sent His Son to atone for our sins. We are bought with a price. We are redeemed by the blood. e indwelt and sealed by the place for us in Heaven. And we can be sure it is not just an empty place, but a place filled with all of God's fulness for us in Christ "Eye has not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love Him"(ICor2.9). I recognize this applies to the spiritual bounty God has in store for us in Christ at this present time. But I believe it can also be applied to what God is yet to lavish upon us. When we get to Heaven. God will have many happy surpises for us when we get Home-" Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when He will appear, We shall be like Himm; for we shall see Him as He is" (I John 3.2). V. 3: Then the Lord goes on to say that after He has prepared the place He will come again and receive us to Himself, that where He is there we may be also. It is like a youngman who betroths a young woman to himself and goes back home to prepare a place for his bride to be and all that he knows she needs. He gives the young woman a ring, a guarantee that on the appoingted day he will return and marry her and take her to his father's home, to the place he has and marry her and take her to his father's home, to the place he has prepared for her. This exactly what the Lord Jesus has done with us. As believers we are engaged or espoused to our Lord Jesus (2 Cor. 11.2) He has given us the ring of the Holy Spirit, the guarantee of our final redemption at the coming of the Lord. He is now gone back Home to prepare a place for each one of us, His redeemed. At the appointed time He will surely come and receive us to Himself that where He is there we may be also. In What manner is the Lord coming to take us to Himself? Paul in 1 Thes. 4:13-18 describes the event: "For I would not have you to be ignorant brethern, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others whcih have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep, For the Lord Himself shall descend from the Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these word". In other words when the Lord comes He will bring with Him the souls of all those saints who have slept in the Lord form Pentecost till that very moment. These souls then will put on their bodies raised from the dust, and the living saints, changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, joining them, they together will be raptured or caught away into the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And from there the Lord takes us to the Father's House and we shall forever be with the Lord. This is the Lord's promise to His saints and this is the Blessed Hope of all true Christians. V.4 ff, In verse 4 The Lord goes on to say to His disciples: "You know where I am going and you also know the way to that place".Then Thomas, one of His disciples, says, "Lord we do not know where you are going, and how can we know the way". It is at this juncture the Lord Jesus make the most stupendous claim ever made by anyone on this earth" "I am the Way, The Truth and the Life: no man can comes unto the Father, but by Me" (V6). The main thrust of Jesus claim concers the WAY. Jesus calims to be the only WAY to Heaven. He is not only the WAY, but the TRUTH and the LIFE. But truth and the life here seem to quality the WAY. Jesus is the true and the living WAY toHeaven, much less the true and the living way. Jesus alone is the true and the living WAY. All other ways are necessarily false and dead. What makes Jesus the only True and the Living WAY to Heaven? Jesus came from Heaven and is gone back to Heaven. Jesus often reminded His hearers that He had come down from Heaven-- "Ye are from beneath. I am above; Ye are of this world, I am not of this world" (Jn 8:23). Jesus cam down into the world, I am not of the this world"(John 8:23). Jesus came down into this world with a mission from Heaven. The mission was the atonement of the sins of the the world. And having accomplished this Jesus returned to Heaven. Secondly, Jesus is the true and living WAY to Heaven, because, as the God-man, Jesus is the only Mediator between God and man. Jesus is Incarnate God. God manifest in the flesh. He is God who for oursake has become a Man. He is not a man who has become God. But in Jesus Christ God has become a Man. Jesus is both God and Man in one person. The Mediator between God and Man has to be both God and man at the same time. No mere man could be the mediator between God and man. Every man without exception is sinful at the same is God and man. Every man without exception is sinful and needs a mediator between himself and God. But only the Man who and needs a mediator between himself and God. But only the Man who at the same is God can be the Mediator. This is Jesus Christ. "For there is one God and one Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus"(I Tim2:5). Jesus is the ladder between Heaven and the earth. Jacob in His vision saw a ladder that was set on the earth, the top of which reached heaven. And the angles of God ascended and descended upon the ladder (Gen 28). Jesus in John 1:51 Claims He is that ladder He says; "Verily Verily I say unto you, hereafter ye shall see Heaven open and the angles of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man". The ascending on the ladder is Ascension of Jesus Christ to Heaven and the descending is His Second coming. The ladder being set on the earth speaks of the humanity and historicity of Jesus Christ, while its top reaching Heaven speaks of His divinity and Himself being the WAY to heaven. Thirdly, Jesus is the true and living WAY to Heaven, because by His atoning death on the Cross of Calvary He has made the way for us into God's holy presence-"Having therefore, brethern, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He has consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say. His flesh; and having a High Priest over the hous of God; let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water"(Heb 10:19-22). The veil in the Temple that was rent from top to bottom when Jesus gave up His life on the Cross was only symbolic of Jesus' body that was rent in two to make the way for us sinful people into the presence of a holy and righteous God. Fourthly, Jesus is the true living way, because He not only died for our sins, but He has risen fromt he dead and He is living. And today millions of lives all over the world, changed by His grace and transforming power, bear witness to this fact. "No man cometh unto the Father, but by Me"- The ture and the living WAY is the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ by virtue of what He is and what he has done for man on the Cross of Calvary. The WAY is not a religious system it is a Person. Christianity cannot replace Christ As a sociological phenomenon there is much in christianity that is false and dead. Christiany can only represent Christ to the extent it conforms to the Biblical revelation of Jesus Christ as God -Incarnate, the saviour of the World. Christ is God's personal revelation and the Bible is the inspired and infallible withness to that Revelation.(John5.39). Christ is the Incarnate- Word of God and the Bible the written Word of God. The Bible is the ideological construct of what Christ is the ontological reality. There is no Christ apart from the Christ of Revelation. God by His grace has revealed Himself to us in Christ and this revelation is communicated to us in the Bible. Our encounter with God is only through knowledge and faith. The Lord Jesus Himself in His claim to be the only WAY to Heaven. Our acceptance of Jesus, calim to be only ture and the living WAY, however, does not call for any comparison between Jesus and some one esle. Jesus is the WAY to Heaven; Jesus is the WAY to to the Father. Vs 7-10 Now Jesus goes on and says "If you had known me, Yous should have known my Father also; and from henceforth you know Him and have seen Him". The disciples do not understand what Jesus saying. Then Philip one of the disciples says to Him, "Lord show us the Father and it sufficeth us". With this , I am sure the disciples were thrown into a bewildering and anxious suspense and they spontaneously beamed at Philip and nodded their heads approvingly for what they thought was the ultimate quest. Then says Jesus to Philip. "Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father, and how sayest thou then, show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?" These words come to Philip and all the disciples as a bombshell, totally unexpected. Might they not have thought that Jesus would immediately rend the skies and give them a glimpse of the Father in Heaven? Yes, but what Jesus unmistakably affirms is If we have seen Him, We have seen the Father. The Father is in Him and He in the Father, He and the Father are one. This was exactly what Jesus had said on another occassion, which prompted the Jews to take up stones to kill Him, because they said, "Thou, being a man, makest thyself God"(John 10,30-33). What does this amount to ? Precisely This: The Father is God: So is Jesus the Son. The Father is God invisible; The Son is God made Visible - "Nobody hath seen God at any time but the only Son who is is in the bossom of the Father, He hath declared HIM." (John 1:18). Again, The Father is God the Spirit; The Son is God-Incarnate. By "Son' is not meant that Jesus is the Son because He is identical with God: He is of the same nature as God, He is the Son because He is the perfect Revelation of God. We see the Father in the Son. The language is analogical of the human filial relationship. Now, trying all this up with verse 6, what comes out unambiguosly is: Jesus Christ is not only the WAY to God but is God Himself