Christ, though, came to do so much for us, however, and here we get a glimpse of that. He is the Way. That is, the Way to salvation, to wisdom, to righteousness. He lives a perfect life, revealing to us what it means to live holy lives before our God. Not only is He perfect as God, but He is the only man Who is perfect, having submitted to the law while on earth and living as we do, feeling the sufferings of this earth, yet perfectly living. We then see a holy life set out before us. He shows us wisdom. For John, He is the very Logos itself, the thing by which everything else makes sense. Because of Christ, the nature of God as Trinity is revealed in much greater fullness and clarity then it had been previously. God’s love is so immensely expressed and revealed to us in Christ’s death for sin. And we see that Life, Life itself is granted to those Who follow Christ as their Lord and King, to those who trust in Him and His promises.

So Christ becomes far more than the Way to get out of going to hell. He becomes the Way by which we actually begin to understand everything. “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom” Solomon tells his son in proverbs. So often the great thinkers of the world, even those who are part of a good church, put God at the door when it comes to their intellectual careers. They leave Christ behind when they write their dissertations, or even their self-help books as they proclaim with great fervor that they have found “the Way,” and speak endlessly about what they have “discovered.” Though they may profess Christ, Christ stays in the “religion-box” so they can then move to other compartments of their lives and interact so freely with atheists, Muslims, Jews, and others who have denied Christ as Lord.

But when Christ calls Himself the Way, He couples this with being called the Truth and the Life. Everything we do must have Him as our foundation. Now, as Martin Luther quipped, does this mean that the shoemaker must put little crosses on every pair of shoes he sells? Of course not. But the shoemaker does create his shoes as unto the Lord, doing it out of love for his neighbor as Christ commands, and doing for the glory of God. The scientist, likewise, attempts to make discoveries about a world that He knows God designed, that has order and law, and that reflects God’s beauty. And the great thinkers? They are to put away the silly notion that truths can have sinful man as their foundation. Christian thinkers ought to know that even our thoughts can be obedient to God or disobedient, and that as we attempt to find the deep truths of this world, nothing can be deeper than the profound mysteries of God Himself, and such mysteries begin to be unveiled for us in Scripture.