John 14:6

The Sixth Verse

Context of the Verse

• Christ, in the preceding chapter, mentioned to His disciples that He will be leaving

• In this chapter, He addresses the distress of their hearts by describing Heaven and their ability to receive it

  • Jesues tells them:

    • Believe in God and Him

    • There is plenty of room in the Father’s house and these are for you

    • I will return and take you there, so that you will be with Him

    • You know how to get there

• Thomas asks a clarifying question: How do we get there, especially if we do not know where it is?

• Jesus responds by saying, the summary I am how you get there

• He says “I am the…”

  • “Way” i.e. the path/method/manner taken toward a goal/destination

  • “Truth” i.e. what must be known to live in reality, avoid the lies of the enemy, and thus to attain one’s ultimate/best good, the fullness of health, etc.

  • “Life” i.e. what is needed to exist, the supernatural principle that the way and truth require

• It is as though Thomas asked:

  • What does Christianity (the nature of participating in Christ’s life) look like? 

  • What does getting to heaven look like?

  • We find the answer to these in Christ

The Topic

• Ultimately the question that was asked was how are we saved?

• Each of these statements has grown in implication and significance producing a significant part of Christology but also an understanding of the Christian life and its essential contents

• Christ’s answer correlates not only to the structure of the Catechism but also to what the Catechism says about salvation

  • Grace

  • Justification

  • Grace

  • Merit

  • Holiness

The Way

Morality, Holiness, Virtue, Incantation/Sacraments

• CCC 459-460

  • The Word became flesh to be our model of holiness: "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me." "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me." On the mountain of the Transfiguration, the Father commands: "Listen to him!" Jesus is the model for the Beatitudes and the norm of the new law: "Love one another as I have loved you." This love implies an effective offering of oneself, after his example.

  • The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature": "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God." "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God." "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods.“

• There is a lot that can fit in this category but for now we will look into the conversion/salvation process

• Moral life is difficult since we are born into corruption (CCC 407)

• It is first God’s grace that works for our conversion (CCC 1987-9, cf. 405)

• Justification 

  • detaches us from sin (CCC 1990)

  • directs us to God’s righteousness (CCC 1991)

  • Was merited by Christ’s passion and death (CCC 1992)

  • establishes cooperation between God's grace and man's freedom (CCC 1993)

  • is the most excellent work of God's love (CCC 1994)

  • entails the sanctification of his whole being (CCC 1995)

  • comes from the grace of God (CCC 1996)

• Grace (Purification)

  • is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God (CCC 1996)

  • is a participation in the life of God. (CCC 1997)

  • Moves us toward our supernatural vocation to eternal life (CCC 1998)

  • is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it(CCC 1999)

  • is a habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God, to act by his love (CCC 2000)

  • The preparation of man for the reception of grace is already a work of grace(CCC 2001)

  • is first and foremost the gift of the Spirit who justifies and sanctifies us (CCC 2003)

  • escapes our experience and cannot be known except by faith (CCC 2005)

• CCC 1698 (the last verse of the Morality part of the Catechism)

  • The first and last point of reference of this catechesis will always be Jesus Christ himself, who is "the way, and the truth, and the life." It is by looking to him in faith that Christ's faithful can hope that he himself fulfills his promises in them, and that, by loving him with the same love with which he has loved them, they may perform works in keeping with their dignity

• CCC 2614

  • When Jesus openly entrusts to his disciples the mystery of prayer to the Father, he reveals to them what their prayer and ours must be, once he has returned to the Father in his glorified humanity. What is new is to “ask in his name.” Faith in the Son introduces the disciples into the knowledge of the Father because Jesus is “the way, and the truth, and the life.” Faith bears its fruit in love: it means keeping the word and the commandments of Jesus, it means abiding with him in the Father who, in him, so loves us that he abides with us. In this new covenant, the certitude that our petitions will be heard is founded on the prayer of Jesus.

• Merit (Illumination)

  • refers in general to the recompense owed by a community or a society for the action of one of its members (CCC 2006)

  • arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace (CCC 2007)

  • Filial adoption, in making us partakers by grace in the divine nature, can bestow true merit on us as a result of God's gratuitous justice. (CCC 2009)

  • no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification, at the beginning of conversion… [but] we can then merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification (CCC 2010)

  • The charity of Christ is the source in us of all our merits before God (CCC 2010)

• Holiness (Unification/Communion)

  • "We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him . . . For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.“ (CCC 2012)

  • "All Christians in any state or walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity." All are called to holiness: "Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.“(CCC 2013)

  • Spiritual progress tends toward ever more intimate union with Christ. This union is called "mystical" because it participates in the mystery of Christ through the sacraments - "the holy mysteries" - and, in him, in the mystery of the Holy Trinity. (CCC 2014)

  • The way of perfection passes by way of the Cross. There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle. Spiritual progress entails the ascesis and mortification that gradually lead to living in the peace and joy of the Beatitudes (CCC 2015)

  • "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Matthew 16:24).

The Truth

• Orthodoxy, Clarity, Authenticity

• CCC 74 God "desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth": that is, of Christ Jesus. Christ must be proclaimed to all nations and individuals, so that this revelation may reach to the ends of the earth:

  • God graciously arranged that the things he had once revealed for the salvation of all peoples should remain in their entirety, throughout the ages, and be transmitted to all generations.

• CCC 2466

  • In Jesus Christ, the whole of God's truth has been made manifest. "Full of grace and truth," he came as the "light of the world," he is the Truth. "Whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness." The disciple of Jesus continues in his word so as to know "the truth [that] will make you free" and that sanctifies. To follow Jesus is to live in "the Spirit of truth," whom the Father sends in his name and who leads "into all the truth." To his disciples Jesus teaches the unconditional love of truth: "Let what you say be simply 'Yes or No.'"

• LIVING IN THE TRUTH

  • “Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” (John 8:31-32)

  • Christ's disciples have "put on the new man, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." By "putting away falsehood," they are to "put away all malice and all guile and insincerity and envy and all slander.” (CCC 2475)

  • The Old Testament attests that God is the source of all truth. His Word is truth. His Law is truth. His "faithfulness endures to all generations." Since God is "true," the members of his people are called to live in the truth (CCC 2465)

  • Man tends by nature toward the truth. He is obliged to honor and bear witness to it (CCC 2467)

• TO BEAR WITNESS TO THE TRUTH

  • Before Pilate, Christ proclaims that he "has come into the world, to bear witness to the truth." The Christian is not to "be ashamed then of testifying to our Lord.“ (CCC 2471)

  • Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate asked him, “What is truth?” (John 18:37-38a, cf. John 10:11, 18)

  • The duty of Christians to take part in the life of the Church impels them to act as witnesses of the Gospel and of the obligations that flow from it. (CCC 2472)

  • Martyrdom is the supreme witness given to the truth of the faith: it means bearing witness even unto death. (CCC 2473)

Life

• Redemption, Healing/Resurrection, Joy, Peace, and Harmony brought all often received  Prayer

• I ask you to consider that our Lord Jesus Christ is your true head, and that you are one of his members. He belongs to you as the head belongs to its members; all that is his is yours: his spirit, his heart, his body and soul, and all his faculties. You must make use of all these as of your own, to serve, praise, love, and glorify God. You belong to him, as members belong to their head. And so he longs for you to use all that is in you, as if it were his own, for the service and glory of the Father. “For to me, to live is Christ”. (CCC 1698)

• The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for:

• The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God. This invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon as he comes into being. For if man exists it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his creator.(CCC 27)

• Unlike the other principles, we will rely on the next statement to expand the above principles, since we are unterly dependant on God for existence…

The Rest

• Christ seems to assert that there are no other means of getting there than Him (verse 6)

  • This seems to point toward the necessity of the sacrifice He was about to undergo

• Christ asserts to know Him one also knows the Father because He and the Father are one (verse 7)

  • Philip, also confused, asked to see the Father (verse 8)

  • Jesus elaborates on this further (verses 9 to 11)

  • Jesus takes it further promising that, in His absence, those who believe will be called to continue His work (verse 12)

  • He then gives the promise of answering prayers (verses 13 thru 14)

  • He continues to describe life in His absence mentioning the Holy Spirit