Join me tomorrow for my Sunday Message in the ongoing series "Last Words, The Last Super Discourses: "Which Way Did He Go?"

In His early remarks to the disciples, Jesus has stated He will be leaving them, but He also promised He would be preparing a place for them that they may join Him later on. He states plainly that they know both where He is going and how to get there. Thomas suddenly speaks what undoubtedly everyone else was thinking: “How do we get there if we do not know where you are going?”

Jesus throughout His ministry had been showing them the “way” but Thomas’ question indicated they remained clueless as to His real mission and Kingdom. Thomas question invokes a response from Jesus that is given as the sixth of the "I am" statements John uses in his Gospel to illustrate the place of Jesus as Messiah and the Son of God. "I am the way the truth and the life." And then He adds, "no one comes to the father except through me."

Jesus is here indicating that He alone is the way to achieve eternal life. Simply put, Jesus is the “way” to heaven and eternal life because He is the “Truth and the Life.” Since the Father is the only source of genuine truth and the author of all life, Jesus is stating definitively that HE also is embodiment of God making access to God intimate and personal. No longer at a distance. (Genesis 20:18-21) Jesus is also teaching here that He is not simply teaching the way or even pointing the way to God, He is the WAY.

Of course, this understanding of the "exclusive" nature of Christianity draws all sorts of venom and rhetoric from the lost world around us. Bigotry, prejudice and intolerance are a few of the words thrust in our direction. However, if we do truly believe He is the only way to salvation, we will only be able to convince them and prove them wrong about us if we live according to the Master's single command: "Love one another (and the others) as I have loved you."