The Way To the Father

If you come to know Jesus, He will bring you to know the Father. When I began my Christian life, my awareness of the One with whom I was dealing was that of the Lord Jesus. He filled my horizon. I remember how I loved the hymns which sang of the cross and of the work of Christ, and I loved to think about Him as the Savior, the One who redeems. But as I have lived as a Christian, gradually the Father has come into focus. More and more my thoughts are drawn to the Fatherhood of God, and I revel in the glory of that relationship, in the closeness of my sonship with the Father.

This is what Jesus says: He is the way to the Father. You know the Father through Him, for He is also the truth—as Paul puts it, “The truth is in Jesus” (Ephesians 4:21). All the knowledge of God for which we human beings hunger is revealed in the words of Jesus about the Father. He unveils the Father’s heart, what kind of a Father He is—His power and His wisdom and His love.

He is the life of the Father. That is a most amazing claim! The Father has given all life into His hands, that He may give it to whomsoever He will. This is Jesus’ claim recorded in the fifth chapter of John. Only those who come to the Father by the Son can receive life. Jesus also said that no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him (Matthew 11:27). This meets fully the need of man. He is the way, in order that the will of man may choose it; He is the truth, in order that the mind may comprehend it; He is the life, in order that the heart of man can experience it. Thus to know Christ involves the whole person and leads to the full expression and experience of the fullness of God.

—Excerpted with permission from The Cure for Troubled Hearts, © 2019 by Ray Stedman Ministries. All rights reserved.