We can walk in that road

Picture the disciples at the last supper, their final meeting with the Master before his crucifixion. In his tender “farewell discourse,” Christ Jesus washes his disciples’ feet and confides that he’ll be leaving them soon, because one of the disciples will betray him. Heartsick, the disciples question him: Where’s Jesus going? Why can’t they follow him? Thomas says, “We have no idea where you are going, so how can we know the way?” (John 14:5, The Way).

The Master’s straightforward reply to Thomas’s question is the Golden Text for this week’s Bible Lesson on “Christ Jesus”: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6 ). Or as Phillips’s New Testament puts it, “I myself am the road .… No one approaches the Father except through me” (John 14:6, 7 ). The Lesson then proceeds to explore the “road” of Jesus’ life and Christly character, showing how any of us—not just the original disciples—can walk in that road. And why should you and I follow “the way” Jesus walked more than 2,000 years ago? Because, as Section 1 points out, Jesus represents the Messiah, or Christ, the fulfillment of Bible prophecy. His lifework embodies the “Immanuel” figure Isaiah envisioned in the eighth century bc , “God with us” forever—so purely “good” that he would be born of a virgin (see Isaiah 7:14 , citation 1). And as New Testament writers later confirmed, Jesus’ unprecedented healing mission proved him to be this divinely anointed “Son” of God, delivering humanity from every form of “iniquity” (see Hebrews 1:1–5, 9 , cit. 3).

Because of “his divine nature, the godliness which animated him” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 26 , cit. 2), Christ Jesus is the supreme role model for Christian Scientists. And Sections 2 through 5 in this week’s Lesson offer vivid examples from the Gospels of the Master’s Christliness—his healing wisdom, grace, courage, compassion. 

In Section 4, for instance, Jesus boldly shows he’s willing to violate Jewish law prohibiting work on the Sabbath in order to relieve the suffering of a man whose hand is paralyzed (“withered”). As the Master approaches the man, the Pharisees eye Jesus, ready to “accuse” him. Moved to “anger” (the only time the word anger is connected with Jesus in the Gospels) that the Pharisees place rigid tradition above helping the man, Jesus immediately restores the man’s hand (see Mark 3:1–5 , cit. 12).

You and I don’t have the historical Jesus in our midst to show us “the way” in 2013. But we’ll always have the Christ he lived, as recorded in the Bible. And as the Apostle Paul wrote shortly before his martyrdom, we can “let this mind be in [us], which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5 , cit. 17). As the sixth tenet of Christian Science urges us to do, you and I can recommit daily to stay in “the way.” We can “solemnly promise to watch, and pray for that Mind to be in us which was also in Christ Jesus; to do unto others as we would have them do unto us; and to be merciful, just, and pure” (Science and Health, p. 497 , cit. 25).