Theology
Jesus the Truth and the Life
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Jesus the Truth – “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’” John 14:6. To confess Jesus as the truth is to accept his way as totally authentic, true in the sense of trustworthy.
He is trustworthy because Jesus is God’s truth. He knows God the Father, corresponds to God the Father, and reveals God the Father. “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).
Jesus’ way is the Father’s way. “No one comes to the Father except through me” (14:6).
Such claims lie behind what has come to be known as the scandal of particularity, the outrageous thesis that the God who is too great to comprehend and too terrible to see is somehow present, hidden/revealed, in the frail Palestinian: “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Heb. 1:3, NIV).
Ultimately, the path is trustworthy because Jesus is the truth of humanity. Following the path of Jesus promotes human prosperity (shalom) and leads to the summum bonum: eternal and abundant life.
Jesus is life, and this is more than a matter of biology.
Scripture portrays life as something that goes beyond mere physical existence. Life is being in the gracious, life-giving presence of God.
The supreme covenant blessing in ancient Israel was being with God, represented by the cloud covering the tabernacle:
“Then the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting because the cloud had settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.
Whenever the cloud lifted from over the tabernacle, the Israelites would set out on their journey; but if the cloud did not lift, they would not continue; they would only set out on the day it lifted.
By day the cloud of the Lord was over the tabernacle, and by night fire was in the cloud in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys” (Ex 40.34-38).
However, sin alienates us from God and thus from the source of life. To have “life,” in the theological sense, is to be in a relationship of communion with God; to have life is to be included in the life of God.
Certainly, doctrine is not something alien to life in this sense.
In fact, it is precisely because doctrine is always related to life and only to life – vital communion with the triune and one God – that it results in doxology.
