The Way
Scripture: John
14:5-6 (ESV) 5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are
going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, . . .
Devotion:
It may be apparent that I have not
quoted the entire verse. Many of you perhaps have John 14:6 memorized. “Jesus
said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life no one comes to the father
but through me.” My reason for taking only the way for this discussion is
because I fear it gets passed over as we seek truth and eternal life with Jesus.
That tiny word odos in the Greek gets trampled underfoot on the way to
the seemingly more important words for us. After all, don’t we all know and
understand what the word way means here in the gospel. Let us, put all
knowledge aside for a minute or two, and consider the meaning of the word way in
today’s scripture. Remembering that all scripture is inspired by God even our
tiny word “way”
First, let us consider how the word
was used by Jesus in the gospels: 13 “Enter
by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads
to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is
narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are
few. (Matthew 7:13-14 ESV) Jesus is using our word way to mean the path on
which we take either to destruction and hell or to life everlasting with Him in
heaven. When Jesus calls his earliest disciples, he invites them to follow him.
The way that Jesus walked and talked with his disciples was the way in which
they were to walk and teach the people after Jesus’ departure. Let us consider
now how the earliest church used the term way.
The word way became an identifying
name for the newly formed religion. From Acts
9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22 we learn that ‘the Way’ was the oldest
designation of the Christian church for itself. [1]
For example, Acts 9:2 reads “[Paul] asked him for
letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the
Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.” Later after his
conversion Paul used the same term to denote that he was a follower of the Way.
“14 But this I confess to you, that according to the Way, which they call a
sect, I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the
Law and written in the Prophets,”(Acts 24:14 ESV) Even the Roman rulers knew
this religion by that title as we see is Acts 24:22 “22 But Felix, having
a rather accurate knowledge of the Way, put them off, saying, “When Lysias the
tribune comes down, I will decide your case.”
So, as we can see the
lowly term way has been turned into a proper noun in the span of 15 years or
so. It became shorthand for the path that leads to salvation and eternal life. May
we all become followers of the Way, by believing and confessing Jesus as Lord
and Savior and then follow him in the Way that leads to eternal life.
Comments
Post a Comment