W K Tweedie
John 14:6. No man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.
I can draw near by the blood of calves and of goats, exclaimed the Jew, who could not penetrate further than the letter of his religion. I can draw near with a mangled and mutilated body, exclaims the Hindu, gasping out his life in the frantic attempt to appease his bloody god. I can approach in the strength of an incantation or by means of my fetish, rejoins the heathen African. My penance, my fasting, my self-inflicted anguish, will open the way for me, re-echoes the deluded Romanist. My sound creed will throw open a path for me into the presence of God, is the whisper of the formalist, or the man who thinks there can be religion without conversion, or salvation without a new heart. But He who has the key of David, who opens and no man shuts, and shuts and no man opens, comes among these deluded ones and says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by Me”.
The way is exclusive. There is absolutely no other. Even to attempt to find another is sin; it is dishonouring to the Son of God.
It is a blood-marked way. For it was opened through the rent veil of a Mediator’s flesh.
It is a living way. The dead cannot walk there. The first step in it is taken when the life-giving Spirit turns our feet into the way of peace.
It is a little-frequented way. “Few there be that find it.” The invitation is free to all; but as men must drop the love of sin when they enter on that path, it is shunned by countless myriads. Yet it is a way in which men walk with God – a way which leads to something better than the city of refuge, even the city of our God. It is a path in which our companions are all they that fear Him, or have turned their faces Zionward, and in which the Spirit of God is our guide. He is like a voice behind us saying, “This is the way, walk ye in it”.
1Taken, with editing, from Tweedie’s volume, Glad Tidings of the Gospel of Peace.
And such being the way, am I walking there? “It shall be called the way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it;” is that verified in me? Have I brought my sins into the holy path, or did I through grace forsake them at the entrance?