John 14:6Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Why, you ask, did He also speak in this way to the disciples and to Peter? He knew Peter's great zeal. Otherwise Peter would have troubled Him still more.

Therefore, to turn him away from this, He speaks in a veiled manner. When He had achieved what He wished by the obscurity and veiling of His speech, He again speaks openly.

After saying that no one can come to the place "where I am," He added, "In My Father's house are many mansions." Again He says, "No one comes to the Father except through Me."

He did not wish to say this to them at the beginning, so as not to cast them into greater sorrow. But when He had comforted them, then He says it.

After the rebuke given to Peter, He truly removed much of their sorrow. Meanwhile they themselves, fearing lest they hear the same thing, became more humble.

"I am the way." This confirms the words, "No one comes to the Father except through Me." The words "the truth and the life" assure them that this will certainly be so.

If I am the life, then death itself cannot prevent you from coming to Me.

In other words, if "I am the way," you will have no need of a guide. If I am the truth, My words are not false.

If I am the life, then even if you die, you will nevertheless receive what I have said.

As for the way, they understood this and confessed it. The rest they did not understand, and yet they did not dare ask about what they did not understand.

Still, even from what was said about the way, they received great consolation.

If it is in My power, He says, to bring you to the Father, then you will surely come there. And it is impossible to come there by any other way.

By the words He had said earlier, "No one can come to Me unless the Father draws him" (Jn 6:44), and again, "And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all to Myself" (Jn 12:32),

and also by the words now spoken, "No one comes to the Father except through Me," He shows His equality with the Father.

When you walk in practical activity, Christ is the way for you. When you exercise yourself in contemplation, He is truth for you.

But many, though walking in practical activity and engaging in contemplation, still did not receive life. Either they practiced virtue out of vainglory and received their reward here, or in their dogmatic opinions they turned aside from the right path.

Therefore life is joined to the way and the truth, that is, to practice and contemplation.

Thus we too must walk and theologize while striving for the glory that lives forever, and not for perishing glory from men.

The meaning of this saying is deep, I think, and not easily reached. But this should not stop us from trying to explain it. I will say what comes to my mind, leaving a better understanding to those with sharper contemplation.

Through three things we enter the heavenly and divine courts and ascend into the church of the firstborn. I mean the practice of varied virtue, right faith, and hope of life.

Can there be another giver, author, cause, or source of our ability to do this, except our Lord Jesus Christ? Not at all. Do not even think it.

He legislated for us what is higher than the law. He showed the way which, I think, everyone must receive for the practice of virtue. He showed the accessibility and sweetness of works according to Christ's teaching.

Therefore He is "the truth." He is "the way," that is, the true definition of faith, the canon and rule of an unerring understanding of God.

Indeed, by truly believing in the Son, that is, in the One begotten from the very essence of God the Father, not imagined, not falsely named, and not a product or creature, we are clothed with the praise of true faith.

For whoever receives the Son as Son has, without doubt, also confessed Him from whom He is. He has known and must also receive God as Father.

Therefore He is "the truth." He is "the life," for no one else will restore to us the life we await, that is, life immortal, blessed, and holy.

He raises us up. Those who were subjected to death because of the ancient curse He will lead again to what we were in the beginning.

Therefore every beautiful and excellent thing has already appeared to us through Him, and will yet come through Him and in Him. Please consider again that the discourse on this is wholly suited to the subject.

Since the disciple still doubted and said, "How can we know the way?" He briefly indicated that, once they knew He is the cause, giver, and distributor of the good things that lead to heaven, they would need nothing more in order to know "the way."

Since He added, "No one comes to the Father except through Me," let us say something here from what will be said later. First let us examine how each one can come to the Father.

We come in two ways. Either by becoming holy in the measure proper to humanity, we are joined, as it were, to the Holy God. For it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy" (Lev 19:2).

Or we come to the knowledge of the Father through faith and contemplation, as in a mirror and in an enigma, according to what is written (1 Cor 13:12).

But no one could ever be holy and live a virtuous life unless Christ instructed him in all things. Nor could anyone be united to God the Father Himself without Christ as mediator.

He is the Mediator between God and men, joining humanity to God through Himself and in Himself. Since He is begotten from the essence of God the Father, as the Word, radiance, and impress of God, He is one with the Father.

He is wholly in Him and has Him in Himself. Since He became man like us, without our sin, He is united with those born of earth.

He became a kind of middle point, containing within Himself what had come together into unity and friendship. Therefore no one will come to the Father, that is, no one will be a partaker of the divine nature, except through Christ alone.

If He had not become man and become mediator, we would not have attained such blessedness. But if anyone comes to the Father through contemplation, that is, through faith and pious knowledge, he too comes only through our Savior Christ.

What I said a little while ago I will say again, because there is no other path of reasoning. Whoever truly receives the Son as Son must come to the knowledge of God the Father.

For it is impossible to think of a son existing unless one also receives the one who begot him. Knowledge of the Father is joined to knowledge of the Son, and conversely knowledge of the Son to knowledge of the Father.

Therefore the Lord is true when He says, "No one comes to the Father except through Me." The Son is the natural and essential image of the Father.

He does not become His image by acquired dignities, as some thought, while being and being conceived as something else in essence.

Again, the Savior says somewhere, "I am the life." Thus one must believe in Him, unless God lies. But He certainly does not lie, for He is true.

The Son is Life by nature. Therefore He is neither made nor created, but rather Life from Life, possessing existence essentially and always. This is most contrary to createdness.

For of what has been made, γεγονός, one must say generally that it does not exist always. Rather, it was brought in time into becoming in being, εις γένεσιν.

Christ is the truth because, as God incarnate, He communicated to men the revelation of divine truth.

Christ is the life (cf. Jn 1:4), because, as God, He is the source of life. Whoever does not receive Him into himself by faith (cf. Jn 6:50 and following; Jn 11:25 and following) is subject to death.

"No one comes to the Father," and so forth: since Christ is the Redeemer, and salvation is possible only through faith in His redeeming merits, only through Him can blessedness be attained.

This is the same as coming to the Father.

He is not only the way to the highest goal. He Himself also leads to that goal. Whoever follows Him will not err and will not go astray.

He "will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life" (Jn 8:12). How, then, is this so? How is Christ Jesus our way?

"I am the truth and the life," He says. By falsehood humanity departed from God and lost both truth and life (Jn 8:44). However much it tried by itself to find the truth, the truth was not found.

There is no need to speak of the teachers of worldly vanity. They are empty and pitiable men. Philosophers, legislators, and founders of religions sought the truth.

Their teachings are more or less permeated with falsehood, errors, delusions, and prejudices. They expose their own insufficiency by their mutual contradictions. Truth is in God. God is truth.

Christ Jesus is the Son of God. He is in the Father, and the Father is in Him. Therefore He is truth in Himself and truth for men.

He is pure, clear, unclouded light. Therefore in His teaching there is not even a shadow of falsehood or misunderstanding.

He is the light for every man (Jn 1:9), whoever he may be, wherever he may be, and whenever he may be. He is light in every land, every society, and every age.

Without His light, men cannot be freed from falsehood. Their mind has been damaged by inherited sin, by hereditary falsehood (Jn 8:44).

Christ Jesus is not only truth, but also life. The most important deficiency of human teachings is that they do not give life to humanity corrupted by sin.

They do not give the strength to change oneself as one ought to change for the highest goal of human existence. Sick humanity remains sick, despite all human remedies.

Christ Jesus, as the Son of God and true God, is life in Himself and life for all men. He is the bread of God who came down from heaven and gives life to the world (Jn 6:33, 35).

He goes to death on the Cross. Yet not only will He Himself rise, but His death on the Cross will reconcile heaven with humanity. It will open streams of life for humanity corrupted by sin (Heb 10:20).

Thus the Savior says of Himself in the hearing of the Jews: "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life."

"He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life" (Jn 5:24). "If anyone keeps My word, he shall never see death" (Jn 8:51).

"No one comes to the Father except through Me."

This explains the name the Lord gave Himself when He called Himself the way. It therefore defines the bounds of the meaning of truth and life.

As a way serves as the means for reaching a goal, so the heavenly Father, the highest goal of man's best desires, cannot be reached except through Christ.

Thus, if Christ is truth, He is the truth without whom no one can pass into heaven. If He is life, He is the life without whom no one can live, and outside whom all are dead to God.

And this cannot occur without the Incarnation of the Son of God, as He Himself declares: "No one comes to the Father except through Me."

If you ask, why could man not come to God by his own will alone, since it is free, I answer: at a good hour, make the attempt.

But if you are attentive, you will undoubtedly find and acknowledge what those better than you and me have acknowledged: "To will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.

"For the good that I will, I do not do; but the evil I do not will, that I practice" (Rom 7:18-19).

However strange to the eyes of reason this self-contradictory phenomenon in human nature may be, it was long ago observed even by those whom Christianity did not teach to make this observation.

If one looks more deeply into its cause, one can be assured that it must be so under the known circumstances.

The source of good and strength is God alone. If man stands in good, and thereby in communion with God, he continually draws from God the strength to do good.

Therefore, as he is free to desire good, so he is strong to do it.

But if he has allowed himself to fall into sin and thereby entered into separation from God, then, according to the measure of his distance from God, his capacity to draw strength from God diminishes.

Therefore, when his will, according to its natural freedom, makes a reverse movement toward good and toward God, the strength to do good does not answer the desire to do it.

Man cannot come to God by himself without a special and extraordinary descent of divine power to him.

He cannot come without such mediation by which the distance between God and man would be filled, the separation abolished, and communion restored without interruption.

This mediation must touch, with perfect unity, both separated sides, God and man. And such mediation is the God-Man.