I have a terrible sense of direction. I get turned around easily and often—and in very familiar places too. My wife suspects there’s a part of my brain that never quite formed; I retort that we all have a limited amount of brain circuits to deploy, and I just choose not to use any of mine on mundane matters like knowing how to find my way in the world.
We’re probably both wrong. But the bottom line is that I live with a perennial consciousness of getting turned around lost.
One of my earliest childhood memories is of the first time my dad took me camping in the woods. I was about 5 years old. We slept in a tent, and I remember feeling terrified that I would wake up with my dad missing. It was dark and scary in those woods, and I wouldn’t have any idea how to get back to the road.
My dad remembers waking up in the middle of the night several times because my little 5-year-old hand was on his chest. Every time he would wake up, he’d move my hand off of him. But he would wake up a few minutes later and sure enough, my hand was right back on him. He moved it off again. He went to sleep. And we repeated this little charade again and again.
Eventually, he figured out that my hand was there intentionally. I needed to feel that my dad was there, because he was my safety, my guidance, my protection. He wasn’t there to tell me the way to those things—he was the way. And I just wanted to be close to him.
“How can we know the way?” the Apostle Thomas asked Jesus. Meaning, How can we live our lives so that we end up at the right place—safe, happy, and at peace? While we might not all be philosophers, we’re all driven by these questions. We’re all looking for the set of things we’ve determined will make us happy and complete. Is it found in romance? Marriage? Family? Financial security? Realizing our maximum potential? Leaving a legacy?
Jesus tells us it’s none of these things. We only know the way by knowing him, the great “I AM.” The happiness and contentment that we seek is not found in some place over the horizon, out there in the “someday” of our lives. It’s found with the I AM in this place, today. Jesus is our only way to God. He’s the one way to salvation—because he is our salvation.
It’s popular these days to say that God is like a mountain. There may be many paths up the mountain, but in the end, all of them lead to the top. The trouble is, even on a mountain, not all roads lead to the top. Some lead tragically right over the edge of a cliff.
Salvation is the way to God’s house, and it’s something only God can provide. To get it, we have to come through his door. If we don’t, we’re as lost as 5-year-old J.D. in the woods.
I remember hearing about a pioneer missionary in Africa years ago who wanted to take the gospel into a remote, completely unreached tribe deep in the jungle. To get there, he had to go through dense and deep forest. There were no roads and no paths. He appealed to the chief of the village to send a guide with him. The chief said there was only one man who could do it.
The chief summoned a large man with an ax. The man was covered with all kinds of scars on his face and arms. The next day, they set off together through the bush. At first, they walked along several trails, but as they progressed, the way became increasingly rough and the path all but disappeared.
At this point, they hacked their way through thick bush and climbed down over rocky cliffs. Occasionally, the missionary would see a mark blazed on a tree, but he could discern absolutely no path. Eventually, the missionary said to the man, “Are you sure this is the way?” The man smiled and said:
Do you see this ax in my hand? And do you see these scars on my body? I am from this tribe, and with this ax, years ago, I blazed the trail out of my village. No one has ever been to this tribe, and no one else has ever come out of it. You ask me if I know the way. Before I came, there was no way. I am the way.
Jesus is the way because he’s the only one from heaven—the only one with the ability to cut down the barrier between man and God, and he did it by dying on a cross.
That’s the whole point of the Bible: We couldn’t save ourselves by being good enough or knowing the way on our own. When it comes to God, all of us are about as directionally capable as my 5-year-old self. We’re lost in the woods.
God had to provide salvation for us. And thank God, he did. He sent his Son, Jesus, to live the life we should have lived—a life without sin—and then to die the death we should have died—under condemnation, in our place.
That’s the only way to salvation. That’s our way out of the woods. That’s Jesus’s answer to Thomas’s question, which still resonates today: “How can we know the way?”
