Deeper Reflection
Truth is often understood as propositional in nature. In Christianity, a prior and more important understanding of truth is that it is relational in nature. In other words, before we examine the propositional truths in the Bible for doctrine, we need to recognise that truth is found in the person of Jesus Christ, the God-man who came to redeem us from our sins.In today’s Scripture passage, Jesus was hours away from the cross. He was “troubled in His spirit” because of His forthcoming betrayal by Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve disciples (Jn 13:21). Yet Jesus spoke to the disciples of His impending departure and addressed their anxiety. He comforted and assured the disciples by His promised return to take them to be with Him in His Father’s house (vv.1-3). Following this, Jesus made another amazing “I am” truth claim: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (v.6).¹² Jesus is the way to God because He is the truth and the life of God. Jesus is the truth in that He embodies divine truth and is the supreme revelation of God. As the Word, Jesus is God’s gracious self-disclosure, divinity who became a human being (cf. Jn 1:14).¹³When we believe in God, we do not believe in a set of propositions. We believe in a person – the divine-human being, our Lord Jesus Christ. Sadly, many non-Christians have difficulty believing and accepting the exclusiveness of Jesus’ claim.¹⁴ They have yet to accept Jesus as the truth and respond to His invitation to have a relationship with Him.

¹² Right after that, Jesus reiterated His deity in a conversation with Thomas and Philip: “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also…” (v.7); “Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father…I am in the Father and the Father is in Me…” (vv.9-11). ¹³ John 1:14 depicts Jesus as the “Word” – God’s powerful self-expression in creation, revelation and salvation in the Old Testament – who made His dwelling among humanity and who is the “glory” (revelation) of God Himself: see Carson, The Gospel According to John, p.116. ¹⁴ Such exclusiveness is considered arrogant and parochial in an age which values inclusiveness and acceptance. But this is to fail to understand the nature of truth: to have two different claims to be the same truth is untenable; truth, by definition, is exclusive.