Christ the Way
I. If it be asked where this way begins, and whither it goes, the answer is evident. It begins in the cold, dark, desolate region, into which sin has thrown the moral and material condition of every living man. And it goes along a course of ever-nearing communion with God through many stages of prayer, and devout thought and humiliation and assimilation to the character of God, up to the many mansions of the Father's house.
II. There were three difficulties which had to be overcome in the return of a guilty creature to his God. (1) A road must be made clear before the love of God could travel without trespassing on God's justice. (2) The false and alien mind of man must be willing to occupy the road when it was made. (3) The returning man must be fit for the happiness to which he is restored. To remove the first obstacle, Jesus, in His own person, and by His own vile death, harmonised the attributes of God. To do away with the second, the commanding spirit works in His sovereignty, which makes willing in the day of His power. To destroy the third, the mediatorial throne is planted on the way, to shed beauty and glory on everything which passes by it, and which acknowledges its efficacy. But over each barrier, rased to the ground, Christ's banner floats, "I am the Way."
III. Immediately you are in the way, you find yourself in a state of progress. Marvellously you will feel your thoughts and affections begin to rise. Evidences you cannot mistake will tell you you are in the way. Old things will be dwindling behind you into insignificance in the distance, and new things will be brought to you in the present. You will understand the essential progressiveness of the grace of God, and you will need no human voice to explain to you what that means, "I am the Way."
J. Vaughan, Sermons,1868, p. 229.
Christ the Truth
I. The truth of Christ was an attribute above all others essential to the offices which He undertook to fulfil. I shall take five of these offices. (1) That of a witness. What is a witness without truth? (2) The substance of that of which the whole of the Old Testament was the shadow. But the substance of anything is the truth of anything. Therefore, Christ is Truth. (3) The founder of a faith very different from all others which ever appeared upon this earth. Its precepts are the strictest its doctrines are the loftiest its consolations are the strongest. Now what intense veracity did that require in Him. (4) Christ is His people's truth, His people's righteousness. And what must be the truth of Him who was to be the Truth of the whole world? (5) Christ is Judge. How unspeakably momentous it is that in the last great division of all human destiny, the Judge should be true.
II. There are three empires of truth the intellectual, the moral, and the spiritual. (1) I doubt whether any mind ever attains the highest order of intellect without an acquaintance with Jesus Christ. For if everything took its rise in the mind of Christ, then the true science of every subject must revert to Christ. (2) Christ is the Sun, the centre of moral Truth. In proportion as nations have departed from Christ, they have wandered out of the orbit of truth. And every man, as he dwells more with Christ, grows in rectitude of conduct and integrity of practice. (3) Christ is that "Amen" in the Revelation which clenches and ratifies to men the whole scroll of love. And every glimpse of joy, and every flood of sorrow in a believer's heart, coming and working its appointed purpose there, just according to the chart which God laid down from all eternity gives another and another evidence of the fact that Christ is Truth.
III. Let us draw one or two conclusions. (1) Repose upon Christ. No storms can shake a man when he has a promise, and feels it under him like a rock. (2) Cultivate the truth. Be real; get rid of phraseologies go deeper than words to facts. Go deeper than facts get thoughts. Go deeper than thoughts get principles. Be real wherever you are, be the same man a ray of light put into this dark world, to be clear, and make clearness all about it.
J. Vaughan, Sermons,1868, p. 237.
Christ the Life
I. We are accustomed to think and speak of life as issuing into death. And the thought is unquestionably true. But there is a yet deeper one, that death issues into life. Consider how many things that live had their cradle in death. The whole animal creation is full of the beautiful transformations of an inferior creature that dies into another formation of itself, much lovelier than the first. In the moral world means are continually dying for the ends to which these means were subservient and lived. In the spiritual and hidden life, every Christian knows too well what an inward dying to self there must be in daily mortifications and most painful crucifixions, that the Divine life may come forth in its power. And all this is leading us up to that great crowning doctrine of our faith, of which all this is only the allegory, that all life sprang first out of the death of Jesus Christ.
II. The supremacy of Christ over the whole history of life, or rather, I would say, the identity of Christ with the life of every soul, will be the more apparent, if we look at the subject in one or two of its bearings. (1) Let us take the life of nature. "By Him all things consist," i.e.,are kept together, are held in their places and being. And thus the heavens and the earth, and all that are left in them of order, and promise, and stability, and sweetness, is kept against that day when by Him again, by His promise in the midst of them, they shall be restored to more than their original dignity and loveliness. (2) Turn now to things spiritual. Christ is life not for Himself but for His Church. For whatever God gives to the Son, He gives Him for the Church's sake. The first Adam was a being of real, inherent, energetic life; but he could not communicate it, he was not intended to communicate it to another. But the Second Adam was not only to live, but to diffuse life to live in other lives, to be a fountain of life, to be the life of the whole world. That is what it means; "The first man, Adam, was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit."
J. Vaughan, Sermons,1868, p. 245.
Union with Christ
I. It is not given to us to know the beginnings of anything, much less of the deep process of union between the soul and Christ, but this much I can say, the great power of the Holy Ghost comes forth in its sovereignty and lays hold of a man's thoughts and the desires and feelings of his mind, and under its influence draws it and makes it come near to Christ. That thought, having come near to Christ, becomes impregnated with a new principle, "life." All other living things shall have their death. The stars will go out, the world will cease, but without the cessation of a single moment from that date, stronger, happier, brighter, intenser, gladder, it will go on through time into eternity, and through eternity rising everlastingly. And why? It has in it all the immensity and all the eternity of Him who says "I am the Life."
II. Look now alone on two points concerning this life of Christ, so begun in a man's soul. See (1) its completeness; (2) its security; "Your life is hid with Christ in God." What God hides who shall find? (3) its strength. An infant's hand, held by a giant's arm, assumes gigantic force. The very seaweed, with the ocean at its back, is borne with something of the ocean's might. And what duty is too high, what trial too heavy, what attainment inaccessible for a man who has and realises that he has Christ in him. (4) Its peace. Surely where He dwells no wave of troubled thought can roll heavily. (5) Its expectation. Christ in you the hope of glory. (6) Its finality, its end of ends God's glory. That makes and will make for ever and ever your soul a paradise to God, when He can behold everything which He has made in you, and behold it is very good, because Christ is the life thereof.
J. Vaughan, Sermons,1868, p. 253.
In these marvellous words our Lord has grappled with the question of all questions, and has answered the enquiry of all times and of all ages. He has told us how we can be accepted with God.
I. "I am the Way." What does that mean? Our Lord takes Thomas' last question and answers it first. He tells him first that He is the Way, before He tells him whither He is going; and therefore seeing that that was the method adopted by Him who knew what was in man, we may be quite sure that this answer of our Blessed Lord is the one that first appeals to the questionings of the human heart. The first question which the soul asks when it becomes anxious about its eternal state is, "Lord, what must I do to be saved?" Our Lord says, "I am the Way," and therefore the first thing we must do is to place the living Christ before us. If it is possible for Christ to be with us now, as His own word promises that He would be, then we cannot understand how He is to be the way unless we first have the eyes of our mind opened to behold Him. If I am to come into the presence of God, there must be some person who can come between me and God, who can lay his hand upon us both and make us one. That person is the Lord Jesus Christ. He it is who has joined together in Himself heaven and earth, God and man.
II. But even when we have the first question answered, then comes another question, What is truth? "I am the Truth," says our Lord; and if we would know the truth, then we must ask the Holy Spirit to lead us to Christ, who is Himself the Truth. Thus, you see, the words of our Blessed Lord appeal first to the timid, to those who are anxious about their eternal state; and secondly, to the thoughtful, to those who are perplexed by the conflict of opinion.
III. But there is yet another class to whom these words are addressed; and that is the practical, to those who want to know what is the life.Christ is Himself the Life. He is not only our mediator with God, He is not only our redemption from sin, but He is also our sanctification. He is not only the life which we must all live, if we would serve Him, but he is Himself the centre of life to us. He is the source of our spiritual life. If we feel that we are dead, if we feel that our heart within us is dull and lifeless, then what is the reason? It is because we do not know Christ as our Life. Thomas did not believe in his Master, therefore he did not understand, and therefore he did not know his Master. If, therefore, we would find in the Lord Jesus in ourselves the fulness of His meaning when He said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life," we must ask of Him to give us that grace which the doubting Thomas needed, and we must ask Him to help us to believe in Him.
S. Leathes, Penny Pulpit,No. 701.
The Patient Master and the Slow Scholars
I. This question of our Lord's seems to me to carry in it a great lesson as to what ignorance of Christ is. Why does our Lord charge Philip here with not knowing Him? Because Philip had said," Lord, show us the Father and it sufficeth us. And why was that question a betrayal of Philip's ignorance of Christ? Because it showed that he had not discerned Him as being the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth; and had not understood that "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father;" not knowing that all his knowledge of Christ, howsoever tender and sweet it may have been, howsoever full of love and reverence and blind admiration, is the twilight knowledge, which may be called ignorance. Not to know Christ as the manifest God is practically to be ignorant of Him altogether. You do not know a man if you only know the subordinate characteristics of His nature, but not the essential ones. The very inmost secret of Christ is this, that He is the Incarnate God, the sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.
II. These words give us a glimpse into the pained and loving heart of our Lord. We very seldom hear Him speak about His own feelings or experience, and when He does it is always in some such incidental way as this. There is complaint and pain in the question, the pain of vainly endeavouring to teach, vainly endeavouring to help, vainly endeavouring to love. But the question reveals also the depth and patience of a clinging love that was not turned away by the pain. Let us remember that the same pained and patient love is in the heart of the throned Christ today.
III. Let us look at this question as being a piercing question addressed to each of us. It is the great wonder of human history that after eighteen hundred years the world knows so little of Jesus Christ. In Him are infinite depths to be experienced and to become acquainted with, and if we know Him at all, as we ought to do, our knowledge of Him will be growing day by day. Let us seek to know Christ more, and to know Him most chiefly in this aspect, that He is for us the manifest God and the Saviour of the world.
A. Maclaren, A Year's Ministry,2nd series, p. 59.
References: John 14:6. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. v., No. 245; vol. xvi., No. 942; H. P. Liddon, Advent Sermons,vol. ii., p. 362; Bishop Monkhouse, Church of England Pulpit,vol. i., p. 191; Homilist,vol. vi., p. 326; E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation,vol. i., p. 174; R. Lorimer, Bible Studies in Life and Truth,pp. 315, 333; G. Moberly, Plain Sermons at Brightstone,p. 101; Contemporary Pulpit,vol. v., p. 54; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iii., p. 154; Preacher's Monthly,vol. viii., p. 179; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 331; R. W. Pearson, Ibid.,vol. iv., p. 157; J. T. Stannard, Ibid.,vol. x., pp. 340, 373, 383; J. C. Gallaway, Ibid.,vol. xiii., p. 42; Outline Sermons to Children,206; E. Bersier, Sermons,2nd series, p. 367; J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,8th series, pp. 292, 300, 308, 314.John 14:7; John 14:8. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iv., p. 519. John 14:7; John 14:9. W. Roberts, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 209. John 14:8. F. Wagstaff, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiii., p. 390; Homilist,3rd series, vol. ii., p. 301. Joh 14:8-9. H. Melvill, Voices of the Year,vol. ii., p. 427; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines,p. 239; Homilist,vol. v. p. 42; Christian World Pulpit,vol. viii., p. 128; J. C. Gallaway, Ibid.,vol. xii., p. 346; Homiletic Magazine,vol. viii., p. 8; Ibid.,vol. xiv., p. 215.John 14:8-11. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ii., p. 148; Homilist,3rd series, vol. vii., p. 61. Joh 14:8-14. A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve,p. 401. Joh 14:8-16. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iv., pp. 224, 225.