John 14:5-9

Jesus is saying that His life is the example of how you can get to where He was going. That is how the chapter began. Where was He going? He was going into the Kingdom of God and so He said, "If you want to get there where I am going, then you follow what I did." It will produce the right things.

If the Father and the Son's positions had been reversed, we can understand from this that the Father would have lived exactly the same way that Jesus did. Do you know why? Because it is the only way that will produce what God is working toward producing. It is the only way to live that makes life worth living eternally. Any other way—conforming to any other teaching or doctrine—will not produce a life that is worth living eternally and that is why God wants conversion.

He wants to share eternity with people who live the way that will produce the things that we want out of life: Joy, a sense of well-being, peace, happiness. You see, those things are fruits of a way. If they are pursued, which is what the leaven of this world teaches us to do, they will not be produced except superficially and for a brief span of time, and then they will dissipate.

Now, sin is deeply-rooted leaven and it is not tolerable to the Kingdom of God because it will not produce the right things and because it has the property of effecting the whole lump.

Look what happened when Helel sinned. Even among those of spirit composition, leaven spread. It does not matter whether one is physical or spirit, leaven has that property. Sin has that property. So God has constituted His purpose so that our character, our heart, our mind has to be set before He gives us eternal life. And then He knows that we will not be tempted to go into a way of living, or to follow a doctrine that will produce the wrong thing. Our mind, our character, will be set so that we will not go that way. We will just automatically reject it should the opportunity present itself.

Again, thinking back on Israel's experience, you can see that they never got rid of it because their mind was not changed while they were in the wilderness.