I am the Way, the Truth and the Life” – The deeper meaning

“I am the Way, the Truth and the Life”

The deeper meaning

 

This article is by the late Neville Jayaweera, my faithful and godly spiritual mentor for almost four decades.  More of Neville’s writings, and his autobiography, are freely available to read on his website: http://www.from-the-unreal-to-the-real.com

 

As I sat in meditation this morning, I was filled with the Spirit and He unfolded to me a vision of the deeper meaning of Jesus’ statement in John 14:6: “I am the way, the truth, and the life”.

The Holy Spirit said that it should really read as: “I AM (is) the Way, I AM (is) the Truth and I AM (is) the Life”.

Imagine if an angel came down from heaven and gave you a block of clay of the sweetest fragrance and told you, “Here, take this. Whatever your need is, you can convert this into the answer”. That block of sweet-smelling clay is the great I AM.

If I AM is the Way, the Truth and the Life, it can only mean ONENESS. It can only mean that, in fact, there is only One Way, One Truth, One Life.

Let us explore these three great I AMs. They constitute the Gospels in capsule form.

I AM (is) the WAY – the one Way, the only Way. The Way is not simply Jesus Christ the person, but all that He achieved for us through His Death and Resurrection (D&R). It is not sufficient merely to say, “I accept Jesus as my personal saviour”. There must be a clear understanding of what that means, and it means much more than merely accepting His teachings. The teachings of the other great religious teachers are as good and as lofty and as impractical (!) as those of Jesus Christ.

What Jesus Christ has that other religious teachers do not have is the D&R, which alone can make His teachings practical, and make the Sermon on the Mount and the Golden Rule useful guides to living.  Otherwise they remain unattainable to the first Adam.

It is the D&R that defines the essential Jesus Christ. There must therefore be a deep understanding of His D&R. All theological doctrines, all rituals, all Bible-based fundamentalism, all our so-called piety and righteousness and all evangelistic endeavours at winning souls for Christ, which sidestep, or minimise, or ritualise the awesome meaning and grandeur of the D&R, are loud-sounding cymbals signifying nothing. The D&R is the way. The Only Way. Every other way (whether Judaism, the Old Testament, the Ten Commandments, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, mysticism or science) are the robbers of the parable, trying to climb in over the fence of the sheep pen.

I AM (is) the TRUTH, the one Truth, the only Truth. There aren’t several billion different truths (population of the world) but One Truth. Here, Truth does not mean just the truth about God and Spirit but the truth about every person, about every relationship, about every problem, about every activity, about every situation, about everything in heaven, on earth and under the earth.

The truth about all these things, about every person, every thing, every activity and every relationship, and about every nation and every society, is lodged in God’s mind. They constitute the DNA of creation. However, this DNA, these truths, cannot be accessed except through the D&R. Accessing the One Truth is possible only through the D&R and therefore having a correct understanding of the D&R is again the key.

At the D&R, multiplicity was annihilated and we were all reconciled into the One Body. Therefore, after the D&R there is no longer a separated “you” and a “me” but I AM is in all, through all and is All in all. The apostle Paul expresses it this way:  “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all” (Eph. 4:4-6).

We live and move and have our being in Christ. Hence the metaphor of seeing ourselves as cells in the body of Christ. Criticism, judgement and condemnation have no place after the D&R, because Christ is in all and through all. Now, HE is the ONLY Truth.

 

 

I AM (is) the LIFE – the only Life. After the D&R, since the Risen Lord fills all things, and is in all, through all and is All in all, there cannot be any other life, and there is only the one Life – the Life of the Risen Lord. The claims that are constantly coming to us of “separated-from-God” lives called Dick, Tom, Harry, Jane, Jill and Mary are a denial of the D&R. They are Satan’s trick to lure us back under his influence.

What does this one Life consist of? This one Life takes an infinity of different forms which are all characterised by:

(a) The same Spirit who raised Christ Jesus from the dead. This Spirit contains God’s perfect programme for every person. It is the Holy Spirit and in Him all things are constituted. The task of the Holy Spirit is to replicate the Risen Christ in each one of us, the One Christ manifesting in an infinity of forms.

(b) The same Mind that was in Christ Jesus. Paul commands, “Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:5) but that mind will never come to us unless we have a deeper understanding of the D&R. That is why some of us still labour under the mind of the first Adam, manifesting ego, aggression, an argumentative nature, defensiveness, anger, etc. When the same mind that was in Christ Jesus comes upon us we should manifest love, gentleness, kindness, forgiveness, humility, selflessness, joy and peace, regardless of the circumstances.

(c) The one Body and Blood of Christ Jesus. The Lord did not forget that in order that His DNA may take form as the new creation, it needed a body. The body of the first Adam, which the believer was carrying around with him, like a corpse strapped to his back (Paul’s own metaphor), had to be discarded and Paul says that only the Christ can do that for us. That was why the Lord left us His own Body and Blood. “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you shall not have life”, the Lord said. Therefore, out of love for us He also said, “This is my body. Take, eat! This is my blood. Drink ye all of it.” That is the basis of the Eucharist.

There are certain characteristics of the Body and Blood of the risen Lord which the body and blood of Adam never had. The Lord’s Body and Blood had been through the world, had absorbed all of the sins of the human race and had overcome them, even unto overcoming death. That was why the Lord said, “Fear not. I have overcome the world”.

Therefore, this Body of the risen Christ is not subject to corruption and is not subject to disease, decay and death. In other words, the Lord has left for us His own Body and Blood as a vehicle – the only vehicle capable of delivering eternal life, the abundant life, the overcoming life, the resurrected life and the victorious life.

That is why Paul refers to those who have accepted the Lord and are genuinely born again as the Temple of God and as the Temple of the Holy Spirit. God/Holy Spirit will not adopt as His temple any being who still claims links to the old Adam, whether in mind or body. It is logically and spiritually impossible.

Every form shall bow and every tongue shall confess that He is Lord. Christ is the substance, the fragrant lump of clay with which I started this meditation, but He is not any of the forms into which the clay is moulded. The Christ manifested on earth as Jesus of Nazareth (as form) but He was before Abraham (as substance). HE was before all things (as substance) and all things were made in Him (as form). The Christ is the limitless I AM (substance) waiting to take over the form that is you, but only if you will agree to have your ego, your earthly identity, nailed to the cross along with Him.

There is but One Way, One Truth, One Life, One Spirit, One Mind and One Body, and the great I AM is that Way, that Truth, that Life, that Spirit, that Mind and that Body. There is none other.

 

*******

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