Dear Friends in Christ,
How do you plan your trips? How do you decide what highways to travel? Do you use a GPS, or like I do, use a MAP? We surely don’t just turn the key, back out of the garage, and start driving. We plan the way very carefully.
How about the way to heaven? How are we going to get to that most important destination? We know and confess, “There is only one way.” Each of us knows those important words of Jesus, “I am the way. . . . No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn 14:6). Tonight, in our series of sermons on Jesus’ name of wondrous love, we look at this important name for Jesus, the Way. For sinners who have lost their way, Jesus is the only way
The two men crucified on either side of the Savior belonged on their crosses. Scripture describes them as criminals. One of them put it this way: “We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve.” Some have suggested he was a member of Barabbas’ gang. Whatever the crime, the man recognized that his punishment fit his crimes. He and his partner were sinners who in the eyes of God and of human law had lost their way.
But not the One on the center cross! When the other criminal began his cruel mockery of Jesus, he rebuked him saying, “This man has done nothing wrong.” He had paid attention to Jesus’ silent suffering. He heard Jesus’ remarkable prayer seeking forgiveness for those who so afflicted him. He and Jesus may have shared a private conversation. The criminal had reached a conclusion. This Jesus was not a sinner who had lost his way.
Yet Jesus belonged on that cross. “We all, like sheep, have gone astray,” the prophet Isaiah reminds us, “each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa 53:6). The holy Son of God was so guilty that his Father turned his back on him. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46). God heaped the sins of the whole world were upon him and hell was extracting its full dues from him. Guilty because he who had never lost his way was paying for every wayward thought, word, and deed of every sinner.
We stop to think how much like the penitent criminal we really are. In God’s judgment there is no scale of values when it comes to sin. Murder and robbery are not at the top of the list and immorality and idolatry down on the bottom. The heavenly judge doesn’t raise his eyebrows in horror at adultery and abortion but merely wink at gossip and greed. Sin is sin in his eyes. Each time we have done such things, we, like that dying criminal, have fully earned hell. The more we realize how lost in sin we were, the more we will appreciate the wondrous love that held the Way, the innocent Jesus, to that center cross.
2. That criminal not only saw that Jesus was innocent. With eyes of faith, he also saw that Jesus was his only way to heaven. The Holy Spirit does not reveal to us the specifics in this. We do know that through the Word of God the Spirit created this faith in his heart.
The penitent criminal looked at Jesus with those new eyes, and prayed, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He asked for just a share in Christ’s kingdom, not the top position on the highest throne, just a thought of remembrance from Jesus. He prayed, “Don’t let my sins bar the door, but remember me in your mercy.” Alone he had to be deathly afraid to enter eternity and face the judgment of a holy God. But with Jesus remembering him, with his hand in the hand of Jesus, he would dare to face his God. This repentant criminal saw Jesus as the Way to heaven, the ONLY way to heaven.
Look what the Lord gave him. “I tell you the truth, Today you will be with me in paradise.” That very day, his cross would be exchanged for a crown and his soul would be lifted up to heaven’s glory. “With me,” the Savior said. All heaven is in those two words. For what more do we need to know.
That morning the Romans had led the criminal of his prison cell to pay his final debt to society. That afternoon he was dying on the cross and fast approaching hell’s yawning jaws. Soon he would enjoy paradise with his Savior. This was the promise from the Savior, who is the only way to heaven.
They would put his bloodied body, legs broken later that day to shock him into quicker death, into an unknown grave. To this day that body waits there for the resurrection to eternal life. This is the glorious promise we have from the Savior, our only way to heaven. On that last great day when he returns, his mighty shout will empty all graves, glorify the raised bodies of all believers, rejoin them with our souls to be with him forever in heaven.
“I am the way. . . . No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn 14:6). Jesus is not just some marker pointing us in the right direction like the ones out on our highways. He is the road itself. He is the way, the only way to the Father’s house above. With his death and resurrection as payment for all sin, he made himself the freeway to heaven, one that asks nothing from us because it took everything from him. Amen. <SDG>