I am the way, the truth, and the life (4)
I am the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6).
It is wonderful to realise that the Creator entered His creation. Billy Graham told the story of walking with his young son through some woods. They came across an anthill which had been partly destroyed. The ants were rushing about trying to repair their broken world. Billy Graham asked his son what he would like to do for the ants. The young boy replied, “I’d like to become an ant and help them repair their home.”
When God looked down on His creation, so damaged by sin and its effects, His heart responded by sending His Son. When He came, He brought life (John 1:4). God spoke as the “I am” to Moses about redeeming His people (Exodus 3:8). I think God, in promising His people deliverance from slavery in Egypt, also looked on, in His mind and heart, to the time when Jesus would come down, as the Saviour of the world, to deliver.
In Luke 4:16, we read about Jesus coming to Nazareth, where He had been brought up (Luke 4:16). It is astonishing that Jesus, the Son of God, is referred to as being brought up in Nazareth. This was the place which Nathaniel doubted could produce any good thing (John 1:46). But it was in that lowly place that Jesus showed He was the life. In the synagogue on the Sabbath day He read from the book of Isaiah:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He has anointed Me To preach the Gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives, And recovery of sight to the blind, To set at liberty those who are oppressed, To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:18-19).
At last, the One who was the life was here and demonstrated its power. When He touched the leper, he was clean (Luke 5:13). When He spoke to the sea, it was calm (Luke 8:24). When He cast the demons out, there was peace (Luke 8:35). When He gave thanks for the five loaves and two fishes, thousands of people were fed (Luke 9:17). When He called to Lazarus in the tomb, he came out alive (John 11:44). Wherever Jesus went, He brought life (John 1:4).
The Lord Jesus said of His life, “I have power to lay it down and power to take it again” (John 10:18). God is light and God is love. The nature of God was manifested in the light of the life of Christ and in the love in which His life was laid down. But the Lord Jesus had power to take it again. In resurrection, we see life in all its victorious power. The book of Hebrews reminds us that Christ lives now for us in the power of an endless life (Hebrews 7:16). We share in that eternal life. “He who hears My words and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgement but is passed from death into life” (John 5:24).
This life is to be expressed (1 John 2:6). The Lord Jesus lived for His Father when He was on earth. Now Christians are to live like Him on earth: “You were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:20). How do we glorify God? By living like the Lord Jesus did until the day when we shall live with Him.
