I Am: Who Jesus Said He Was

Ryrie

• (1) “In view of His departure from them, Christ gave the disciples (in this chapter) specific encouragements. These include the provision in the Father's house (v 2), the promise to return (v 3), the prospect of doing greater works (v 12), the promise of answered prayer (v 14), the coming of the Holy Spirit (v 16), and the legacy of peace.”
• (2) “The same word [used here for rooms] is used elsewhere in the NT only in verse 23, where it is translated 'home.'”
• (3) “This is not the coming of the Spirit nor the believer's death, but Christ's personal return.”
• (6) “There are not many ways to the Father in heaven, only One – through Jesus (Acts 4:12).”
• (9) “Since God is Spirit, no man has ever seen God in His essence, His Spirit-being. Yet He assumed visible form, which men saw in OT times, and in Jesus men could see God.”
• (12) “Greater in extent (through the worldwide preaching of the gospel) and effect (the spiritual redemption and placing in the Body of Christ multitudes of people since the Day of Pentecost). These will be done through prayer in His name (v 13).”
• (13) “in my name... is not a formula to be tacked on to the end of prayers but means praying for the same things that Christ would desire to see accomplished. It is like using a power of attorney that a very dear loved one has given you.”

Henry

• After being told that Jesus was going to prepare for them a place in heaven and that they would know how to find him there, Thomas challenges the notion by confessing plainly that he doesn't know the way. Henry points out two things:
• Thomas' “confession of his ignorance was commendable enough. If good men be in the dark, and know but in part, yet they are willing to own their defects.”
• Conversely, “the cause of his ignorance was culpable. They knew not whither Christ went, because they dreamed of a temporal kingdom in external pomp and power, and doted upon this, notwithstanding what he had said again and again to the contrary.”
• “When Christ spoke of going away and their following him, their fancy ran upon his going to some remarkable city or other, Bethlehem, or Nazareth, or Capernaum, or some of the cities of the Gentiles, as David to Hebron, there to be anointed king, and to restore the kingdom to Israel; and which way this place lay, where these castles in the air were to be built, east, west, north, or south, they could not tell, and therefore knew not the way.”
• “we think ourselves more in the dark than we need be concerning the future state of the church, because we expect its worldly prosperity, whereas it is spiritual advancement that the promise points at.”
• “By [Jesus'] doctrine and example he teaches us our duty, by his merit and intercession he procures our happiness, and so he is the way.”
• “In him God and man meet, and are brought together.”
• “We could not get to the tree of life in the way of innocency; but Christ is another way to it.”
• “By Christ, as the way an intercourse is settled and kept up between heaven and earth; the angels of God ascend and descend; our prayers go to God, and his blessings come to us by him;”
• Jesus is the truth as opposed to figure and shadow. All the things of the OT which are figures or types of Christ are fulfilled in Him.
• Jesus is the truth as opposed to falsehood and error; the doctrine of Christ is true doctrine.
• Jesus is the truth as opposed to fallacy and deceit. “He is true to all that trust in him, as true as truth itself”
• Jesus is the life in that “we are alive unto God only in and through Jesus Christ.”
• “Christ formed in us is that to our souls which our souls are to our bodies.”
• Of our journey to heaven, Jesus “is the beginning, the middle, and the end. In him we must set out, go on, and finish. As the truth, he is the guide of our way; as the life, he is the end of it.”
• “He is the true and living way (Heb. x. 20); there are truth and life in the way, as well as at the end of it.”
• “He is the true way to life, the only true way; other ways may seem right, but the end of them is the way of death.”
• “Fallen man must come to God as a Judge, but cannot come to him as a Father, otherwise than by Christ as Mediator.”
• “A tacit rebuke to them for their dulness and carelessness in not acquainting themselves with Jesus Christ, though they had been his constant followers and associates.... They knew him, and yet did not know him so well as they might and should have known him. They knew him to be the Christ, but did not follow on to know God in him.”
• “Christ tells his disciples that they were not so ignorant as they seemed to be; for, though little children, yet they had known the Father.”
• “Many of the disciples of Christ have more knowledge and more grace than they think they have, and Christ takes notice of, and is well pleased with, that good in them which they themselves are not aware of; for those that know God do not all at once know that they know him.”

Reflecting God

• (1) “The apostles had just received disturbing news” that Jesus was going to leave them.
• (2) my Father's house = heaven.
• (2) rooms is literally “'dwelling places,' implying permanence.”
• (3) “Jesus comes in many ways, but the primary reference here is to his second advent.”
• (5) Thomas “was honest, and plainly told the Lord he did not understand.”
• (6) “In the Greek the words [I am] are solemnly emphatic and echo Ex 3:14.”
• (6) “Jesus is not one way among many, but the way. In the early church, Christianity was sometimes called 'the Way.'”
• (6) “A key emphasis in this Gospel” is truth.
• (6) life is “one of the great concepts of this Gospel. The term is found 36 times in John, while no other NT book uses it more than 17 times. Life is Christ's gift, and he, in fact, is 'the life.'”
• (6) “Very likely the statement means 'I am the way (to the Father) in that I am the truth and the life.'”
• (7) “Once more Jesus stresses the intimate connection between the Father and himself. Jesus brought a full revelation of the Father, so that the apostles had real knowledge of Him.”
• (10) “Jesus' teaching was not of human origin, and there was an inseparable connection between his words and his work.”
• (11) “Saving faith is trust in a person, but it must also have factual content. Faith includes believing that Jesus is one with the Father.”
• (12) “greater things” is a reference to the miracles that the disciples would perform. “These depend on Jesus' going to the Father, because they are works done in the strength of the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus would send from the Father.”
• (13) “in my name” is “not simply prayer that mentions Jesus' name but prayer in accordance with all that the person who bears the name is. It is prayer aimed at carrying forward the work Jesus did – prayer that he himself will answer.”