Annie
Scriptures:
John 14
John 18:37-38
1 John 1:5
1 Peter 2:22
Jesus said, I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, a wonderful, glorious promise. But, how does this impact us in our every day lives? We know we are to follow the Way to reach the Life, but, as we do, we discover that we need to go through Truth Himself. Pontius Pilate is possibly best known for what he said when questioning Jesus, “What is truth?”. What Pontius Pilate could not understand, was that he was standing before the One who has always been the absolute witness to the Truth. Jesus Himself is Truth. When He lived among us on earth, He was completely and utterly transparent, in everything He did, everything He said, there was no duplicity, no guile. Jesus Christ was the only sinless man to have ever walked this planet, the only Truth there has ever been for humankind to see and be confronted with.
Jesus Christ alone is our Saviour, our Redeemer, our Lord. He is the One whose character and way of living as the Truth we must emulate, this is the only Way to Life. And, in the Truth that He is, we see that the only way that we can ever see Him face to face is in his Love, in His Mercy, in His compassion for us.
He laid down His life for the whole world, for every person who has ever lived, no matter who or what they are. He left His throne in glory, born the poorest of the poor in earthly terms. He was laid in a feeding trough here, because there was no room, not only at the inn, but also in the hearts of men and women. For God, Creator of all, the One who sustains the universes and holds them in their places, there was no room. Why? Why would we reject the One who is our only hope of everlasting life?
We are all duplicitous, there is guile in every one of us, and no-one can hide from God, which our enemy knows well. He will try every ploy that he can to get us to lie, to live a life of falsehood, pride and criticism. Jesus is the only transparent pure Truth and only by us laying down our lives can we ever hope to emulate that transparency, that guilelessness, to reach the goal of being as transparent as Christ Himself. Jesus Christ was, in the eyes of man, a nobody who was born and lived in an insignificant part of the world, a part of the world that was under the heel of Rome. Their lives were, in many cases, a living hell. If they didn't comply with Rome, then they faced death. Jesus came to free, not only His own race, but the whole world from what ever oppression there is that holds us in chains. If it's the oppression of being subjected to persecution, if it's the oppression of living in a society that wants us to fit (where the only way to reach that goal of fitting is to be duplicitous, trying to please everyone by bending the truth even just a little), or even the insidious oppression of looking at the world through our own eyes, not the loving, compassionate eyes of God.
But that's not the Way, that is not Jesus Christ who is Truth, and we will never reach Life by trying to avoid Truth. Truth Himself blessed the cursing crowds, prayed for those torturing Him, loved the broken souls behind the sin that covered them.
When we seek Him with our whole hearts. He will always be found by us, because He is seeking for us. It is His overwhelming desire to know us and for us to know Him. Truth is achievable, but only through the sacrifice of Christ. Only within our reach when we sacrifice our lives, when we give up our pride, our narrow, human vision and when we realise that we cannot fool God. It is, and always has been, His infinite, extreme, extravagant joy to lead us by the Way, through Truth into everlasting Life with Him. This is the Gospel of Truth, granted to us by the Grace of Almighty God.
Prayer: Abba Father, we can never come to You, save through Your Son, Christ our Lord. As we walk with Him - the Way, in Him – the Truth, we will know Life, everlasting Life in and with You, by the power of Holy Spirit. Holy God, we surrender now, Amen
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