John 14:6 - Forerunner Commentary

John 14:6

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Articles, Bible studies, and sermons that contain John 14:6:

John 14:5-6
Excerpted from: Holiness (Part 1)

Tie that together with Matthew 11:27. Those who can know the Father are those who are having the Father revealed to them by the Son.

It is through the life, the works, and the words of Jesus Christ that we come to know the names of God. Moses asked God to show him His way. "If you want to see what God is like, if you want to see the mind of God, if you want to see the nature of God, if you want to see God's whole attitude," Jesus Christ is saying, "look at Me!" He is the way because, of all of mankind (all who have ever lived), He is the only one who has intimate knowledge of the Father that is totally, completely, unmarred by sin. His vision of God is absolutely perfect and accurate.

Jesus Christ shows the way men should walk. Actually, I should not say, "should." The way men must walk. He shows us the direction, the manner, the method of doing things. The way to God lies in knowledge of the Son. This is exactly what Christ has done, in declaring the glory of the Father to mankind.

In addition to that, He is truth. There are people who can speak truth. They can teach us truth. I can teach you truth. Many others can teach us truth. But Jesus Christ was truth. He embodied it! Everything that He did and said was absolutely right on the mark—every time, without fail. No misleading, no shadow of turning. No time, at any time in His life, was there ever even the tiniest hint of deception about God, about what He is, or the way to go, or the way to do things. Everything is right on the mark.

That is important, because I could get up here and I could teach you things—let us say about geometry. Whether I am a man of integrity, of responsibility—and what my character is like—does not matter a great deal. It does not affect the mathematical truth of geometry. But if a person is going to teach you moral and spiritual and ethical truth, what that person is makes all the difference in the world.

Would you like to receive a lesson on purity from an adulterer? There is an inborn resistance to that kind of thing. But it is awfully hard to refute and to find fault with the words of a person who embodies truth, and he is teaching truth—because you know that person is living it. Then those words carry weight and authority.

John 14:6
Excerpted from: The Ninth Commandment

Let us add to this a verse in John 14:6, where Jesus said of Himself: "I am the way, the truth, and the life." We have got three things linked here: (1) Deuteronomy 32, where God used "true and faithful," (2) Revelation 19 where Jesus Christ is "Faithful and True," and (3) John 14:16, where Jesus is "the way, the truth, and the life." All of these are in contrast to the people who call themselves by the name of God, saying that they are Christians.

So Jesus is "Faithful and True"—and that second word, true, seemingly doubling the affirmation that He is faithful. That is, He always sticks by His Word. His character never deviates from that which is true. In Revelation 19, "faithful" means reliable, trustworthy. He is one of unswerving integrity. In actual practice, He is trustworthy.

Jesus is the truth, and we are given the spirit of truth to dwell within us, to take up residence within us, and there is a practical reason why that is done. Jesus is the Second Adam. He is the beginning of a new order of an entire race—a Family of beings just like Him. Right now all of mankind is in the image of our forefather—the first Adam.

Many people can say, "I told you the truth," but there is a difference between them and Jesus. Many people can tell the truth, but Jesus did not just tell the truth, He embodied it. Notice He said, "I don't tell you the truth. I am truth." This becomes very important. In His life He put truth into a visible, concrete form so that all who want to see it can. What accountability that gives to anybody who follows the same order in their life.

John 14:6-9
Excerpted from: Defining Grace

The prospect of any man, at any time, ever seeing God in His glory, is virtually non-existent. But for those who were privileged to live back then, they had a flesh and blood witness—God incarnate. And for those of us who live now, we have His Word that is based upon eyewitnesses of His glory, of His grace. This is why Jesus said what He did, in John 14, when He was asked to show us the Father. In John 14:6, Jesus said:

Grace incarnate arrived before men. The great gift, you see, that gives us delight from which we receive salvation; from which, as we just saw, we receive the calling. No one can go to the Father except through Him.

So God uses this introduction to the book of John to make clear a very important fact and concept. The fact and concept are one and the same, and that is that God is not a being detached and separated from His creation. He is not merely exalted and worshipped, but God is involved. He takes part in the process. He loves, He yearns, He suffers, He gives, He corrects, and He saves. He enters right into the storms and conflicts of life on earth, and in the life of Jesus, He was subject to all of its conditions and He rose above it. He conquered sin and Satan. It says in Hebrews that "He was tempted in all things like as we are, yet without sin."

And so in Christ, then, in a life lived, God ceases to be an abstraction and becomes a reality. The incarnation, then, was the fullest manifestation of grace and truth because it was the greatest expression of God's concern and compassion for people, and the clearest way of conveying for our understanding. No one can ever forget the power of an example.

John 14:6
Excerpted from: John (Part 14)

Another way of looking at it is this: as light is to a flower. Flowers will not bloom without sunlight. They open up and become beautiful. It is the same with light in relation to our life. We cannot really blossom as a human being; we cannot have an abundant life unless the light shines in.

Light is nothing more than a symbol of God’s truth. Jesus put it another way in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” In the place of truth, He could have put light. “I am light.” But He said there “truth.” He is truth; He is light. It is the truth of God, in relation to life, that gives form, shape, and substance to our lives.

So what Jesus was in effect saying, “You look at Me, and you look at the way that I live, and you will be able to avoid running into many of the obstacles of life. You will have proper guidance.” Another way of saying it is, “If you listen to what I say, you will be guided around life’s difficulties or you will be able to handle life’s difficulties.”

Somebody must have understood, at least in a surface way, what He was getting at, when He said, “I am light.” He was claiming to be the Messiah. He was claiming to be the embodiment of truth.

John 14:6
Excerpted from: Remaining Free

Verse 32 mentions knowing the truth as a result of abiding in God’s word, and that leads to the truth making us free. The Greek word under truth is alethia (Strong’s 225). It signifies the essence or the reality of a thing, which goes beyond just having facts. One may have the facts about an event, but that isn’t going to make one free. The spiritual reality that Christ is talking about is understood through living His way, as He says, but ultimately, it is talking about knowing Him. He says in John 14:6 that He is the way, the truth, and the life.

So, it is not some sort of abstract, Zen enlightenment we should seek in order to be free, but rather the divine embodiment of what is real, which is Christ. This is why, in verse 36, He says that if the Son makes us free, we will have true freedom. The truth that leads to freedom, and which keeps us from returning to the house of bondage, comes from and through the Son. Seeking truth and seeking spiritual freedom means seeking Him.

John 14:6
Excerpted from: When Tolerance is Intolerable

He draws the direct contrast and the comparison to what the world and these false teachers are offering, which is absolutely nothing, to what God is offering to us for acknowledging and living the way of the Father and the Son. What it really amounts to is this: there is no real doctrine of the Father, and of God, except in terms of Jesus Christ.

Without this truth we would be living with some vague belief in God as a power or force, or someone who could intervene for us in a moment of need, but the teaching of Jesus Christ and the apostles is that there is no such thing as a true knowledge of God apart from Jesus Christ.

We can believe in a Creator, we can believe in some unseen influence, but we will never know the Father except through the Son. "He that has seen Me, has seen the Father," Christ said. That is why John calls this strange teaching a lie, and that is why he brands these people as liars.

John 14:6
Excerpted from: Let the Saints be Joyful in Glory!

So on Pentecost, Peter made it clear from the beginning that it is a calling from God through Christ and that it fulfills what Jesus said in John 6:44, "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day." And later, Jesus clarified it further in John 14:6, "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.'" So Jesus declares Himself as the way, the truth, and the life, meaning He is the sole path to the Father through relationship, through justification, following His example in obedience and submission.

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The Miracles of Jesus Christ: Walking on the Water (Part One)
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Knowledge and the Truth (Part One)
Living the Life of God
Overcoming Troubled Hearts (Part Two)
Patterns of Resistance (Part Two)
The Clock Stopped and the Whole World Changed
The Root of Jesse
The Subtle Power of Bias (Part Two)
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The Work of the Firstfruits
Using Our Spiritual Vocabulary

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Jesus the Door
A GPS for our Spiritual Pilgrimage
The Danger of Trusting in Oneself
What's Wrong With Christmas?
The Trinity and the Holy Spirit (Part 1)
Do You Recognize This Man? (Part 2)
Approaching God Through Christ (Part 7)
Approaching God Through Christ (Part 5)
Approaching God Through Christ (Part 4)
God of Our Salvation
Approaching God Through Christ (Part 1)
The Post-Resurrection Last Words of Christ (Part One)
Jesus in the Feasts (Part Two): Firstfruits
Jesus in the Feasts (Part Two): Firstfruits
Hebrews (Part Fifteen): Chapter 2, A Mind Bending Purpose (Part Four)
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Confronting the Field of Battle
Running God's Marathon With Christ
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The Healing of a Man Born Blind (Part Three)
Conforming to This World
Sincerity and Truth (Part Three)
The Resurrection: A Central Pillar
Troubling the Household of God
Malachi's Appeal to Backsliders (Part Two)
Mightier Than the Sword (Part Three)
In Search of a Clear World View (Part Three)
All Sifted Like Wheat (Part Three)
Our Trusted Source of Truth (Part One)
All Sifted Like Wheat
Christ Our Standard
Why We Tithe (Part 2)
All in All
Let's Get Real!
Elements of Motivation (Part 7)
The Nature of God: Elohim
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Spiritual Minefields
Leavening: The Types
Spirituality and True Conversion
Firstfruits to God
Life in the Church
To the Glory of God
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Who Do You Trust? (Part One)
Who Do You Trust? (Part One)
Jesus and the Feast (Part One): Alignment With God
Jesus and the Feast (Part Two): Belief in the Spirit
The Father-Son Relationship (Part One)
All in All (Part 2)
Ask, Seek, Knock
The Third Commandment: Idolatry
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Glorify You Me
All Sifted Like Wheat (Part Three)
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Man's Greatest Challenge (Part 1)
John (Part 22)
John (Part 21)
The Apostle Thomas
Principled Living (Part 1): Imitating Christ
The Five Paraklete Sayings
All Sifted Like Wheat (Part Two)
Does Doctrine Really Matter? (Part 10)
Does Doctrine Really Matter? (Part 3)
The Commandments (Part Four)
The Commandments (Part Two)
Words Versus Images
Psalm 23 (Part 2)

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