This is part 5 of a series; The Selves is part 1.

In the past few lessons, you’ve heard that you have three fractions in yourself, the heart, spirit, and soul; and you’ve begun to glimpse just how much work there is to be done, to enthrone your soul as master of the self as God intended for it to be.

The process of salvation is not about doing, it’s about becoming; not about acts you must perform, facts about God you must know, but rather about changing your Self, and all of the parts of your Self, to function as much like God as possible.

Our soul must judge impartially and fairly, like His soul does. Our spirit must bear true witness, as His spirit does. And our beast must be humbled, with a converted heart which actually wants the law of God, as His beast was.

John 14:6 (KJV) Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

This verse sums up every word you’ve learned about the fractions so far; at least, it does if you actually understand it. But if you rip it out of the Bible, put it up on a billboard and say “Oooh! Ahhh!” it means absolutely nothing.

I mean, be real here for a minute; what does it ACTUALLY mean that Jesus is “the way”? You’ve no doubt heard many explanations, and… some of them might have even been right. But I guarantee that they were the most superficial lesson it is possible to glean from these words.

Try for a moment to lose the metaphysical, forget the metaphorical, and be metapractical; how is He “the Way”? Do you walk on Him? Do you walk to Him? Do you walk like Him? What does it even mean? And if no one really understands what it means, why do they talk about it as if they do?

The world, being ruled by their beasts and, at best, their spirits, only understand the external application of these words; but they’re meant to be understood internally, something only the soul can do. So what is a WAY? Think about it! What does it mean?

Psalms 101:6 My eyes will be on the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with me. He who walks in a perfect way, he will serve me.

So a “way” is a path, a road you walk down. Here, most people stop thinking and just say “of course!! We just walk like Jesus!!” and, well, obviously that’s true, and it is one – extremely obvious and simplistic – layer of meaning.

But it does not convey the depth of meaning that’s here for those who are willing to use their brain a bit. (Psalms 119:148). Because there are multiple ways; multiple paths to walk down in life. Some are wide and easy, and some are narrow and treacherous, and it is easy to miss the right path and get lost down some other path! Matthew 7:13-14.

Proverbs 4:18 But the path of the righteous is like the dawning light, that shines more and more until the perfect day.

“Sure,” you’re thinking, “Jesus is lighting the path for us! We are to walk like He walked!” And... well, yes, but that’s not all this is saying!

Proverbs 4:25-27 Let your eyes look straight ahead. Fix your gaze directly before you. Make the path of your feet level. Let all of your ways be established. Don’t turn to the right hand nor to the left. Remove your foot from evil.

Note that all of these words are about choosing your path; making it level; refusing to let your foot go down an evil path. These are all words, then, about the soul – whose job it is to look to the future and chart a path to a better place! (Hebrews 11:13-16).

Every road, every path, every trail you will ever walk has forks in the road. And at each fork, you must make a choice... a judgment! If you leave this up to the beast, the beast will always choose the path that goes to food, to rest, to his herd (Jeremiah 5:7-9).

The job of a rider (the soul) is to turn the horse down the correct path; at each fork in the road, the rider must give a nudge or a shift of balance to tell the beast which direction is the right path.

Jesus IS the way not merely because we are supposed to act like Him, but because He is the only one who made perfect judgments walking down this path! So what you don’t learn when you stop at “walk as He walked”, is that His soul was the perfect judge!

Jesus is the way because His soul always chose the right path and enforced His judgments on His body and spirit. If we want our soul to be restored in the resurrection, we must follow Him in the paths of righteousness (Psalms 23:3).

He IS the way because He made this path! (Psalms 25:4-5). He blazed this trail! Because of all men who have ever lived, only His soul’s judgments were capable of keeping Him on the straight and narrow path, and so if we want to enter into life, we should convert our soul to be like His, so we can make those same judgments (Psalms 143:8).

Thus, being like Him literally is the way to life. Not in the shallow way you thought you understood before, but in the much more meaningful sense that having a soul capable of judging as His judged is the only way to find life!

Proverbs 8:20 I walk in the way of righteousness, in the midst of the paths of justice;

THE TRUTH

By focusing on the superficial, the world misses not only the obvious connection to Jesus’ perfect soul, but also the obvious-in-hindsight connection to the three facets of our mind… that if Jesus meant His soul when He said “the Way”, then the Truth must be His spirit, and the Life must be His heart!

But how is He “the truth”? This is the sort of thing that makes Christians look stupid to the rest of the world. “Truth” is an abstract concept. I can’t BE “truth” any more than I can BE justice. I can teach justice, I can practice justice, but I cannot BE justice.

Neither can I be the color magenta. I can be colored magenta, but I cannot BE magenta! I also cannot be Kilogram. Does it make sense to say “I am the Kilogram”? (Not “I weigh a kilogram”, or “I am like a kilogram”… just “I AM the kilogram”.)

Of course not. It’s absurd. I also cannot be Rap, Communism, Cloud, or Palmolive. I cannot be Neutrality, War, or Daisy. These are things, ideas, or groups that no conceivable person can BE. A person can be like those things, or among those things, but it is irrational to claim to BE truth!

And yet it is precisely because it is mystical and irrational that Christianity loves it; for anything that sounds holy and special and mysterious allows them to believe whatever they want. And yet… Jesus did say it, and therefore it is true. But what did He mean?

It’s much easier than you might think to make a real, solid answer out of this if you just try, instead of pretending you understand it and mounting it on a billboard! As always, break it down to the symbols and ask yourself “what is truth?”

Jesus was asked this by Pilate (John 18:38), but He didn’t bother to answer because that same night He had already given the answer to His disciples, saying to God “Your word is truth” (John 17:17). This tells us that God’s word, the Father’s word, is Truth. What is that… or rather, who is that?

John 1:14 The Word became flesh, and lived among us. We saw his glory, such glory as of the one and only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.

This tells us that The Word of the Father was Jesus; you might be tempted to think this IS the answer, but if you look closely it’s not an answer at all, it’s simply rephrasing the question; is it really any more helpful to say “Jesus IS the Word” than “Jesus IS the Truth”?

Most Christians settle for answers like this, which are no better than the original question – if even as good. For it’s clearly no easier for Jesus to be an abstract concept like the “Word” than it is to be the “Truth”. For a real answer, read

1 John 5:6 This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ… It is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.

See the difference? Speaking of Jesus it says that HIS SPIRIT testifies because that spirit IS TRUTH! How is that any better, you might ask? Because it means that His spirit had a perfect record of right and wrong! Because everything His spirit contained WAS truth!

John 16:13 However when he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak from himself; but whatever he hears, he will speak. He will declare to you things that are coming.

Like you and I, Jesus’ judgments were only as good as the information His soul was given. If His conscience gave Him bad information, the soul would come to the wrong conclusion even with the best of intentions!

But in Psalms 119:105, we are told “Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light for my path”. It was Jesus’ Word, His conscience, His spirit, which shined the light on the soul’s PATH! So that it could judge perfectly!

Our spirits are prejudiced for or against most ideas before we even hear them. Our spirits are full of false sins like eating sheep’s heads, but allows real sins like saying “it’s good to see you!” to someone you don’t like; it wrongly forbids us from judging someone (John 7:24), yet encourages us to lie to spare people’s feelings.

So our spirit is not truth, because it doesn’t have an accurate copy of the full statutes of God’s law on file. And because it is not broken, it arrogantly assumes it has the right answer before it even hears the other side!

So knowing His spirit couldn’t be trusted, His soul demanded facts from it; His soul educated it in the law; forced it to be an objective observer of truth; challenged it, again and again, until it was able to hear what it’s told, and say what it means.

It was His perfect spirit that recorded TRUTH, in every sense; and it was those TRUE WORDS which gave Jesus’ soul the necessary information to choose the correct WAY to walk! It gave His soul what it needed to judge perfectly!

And because of that, His spirit literally was Truth, because it contained only Truth; every single Word it could ever say, therefore, would be Truth!

JESUS’ BEAST

Our beast is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). It will give absolutely anything, and do absolutely anything, to get what it wants – and what it wants more than anything else, is to save its own life.

Job 2:4 Satan answered Yahweh, and said, “Skin for skin. Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life.”

Job suffered the loss of his children and all his possessions with a certain amount of objectivity; and Satan said – perhaps correctly – that Job was willing to sacrifice all of them for his own life, their skin for his. Because he knew, of all people, that a man will give up EVERYTHING he has to save his own life.

That is, a man ruled by his beast will. But what of a man ruled by the soul?

No matter how good your soul, your beast will think it is better qualified to preserve your life than you are. It requires not only ruling your heart, but reasoning with it; persuading it; convincing it, and ultimately showing it that life is better even for it when you are in charge.

If you lead well, it will learn that your choices, your judgments, are good for it. It will learn that you are better able to find good pastures, better able to defend it, and better able to guide it than it can guide itself.

And as proof of that, we have the record of Jesus’ beast, written in first person, in

Psalms 23:1-2 A psalm by David. The LORD is my shepherd. I am never in need. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside peaceful waters.

This is a song sung by Jesus’ beast. The speaker actually describes himself as a beast, because the Lord is his shepherd which, logically, makes him a sheep, and therefore… a beast! And since Jesus is Lord, and the Lord is my shepherd, then clearly, “I” am Jesus’ beast!

And think about it… what human cares about lying down in green pastures, beside still waters? What human is comforted by someone else having a rod and staff? So then this whole song is, in effect, a love song from a beast to its soul; to Jesus’ soul!

But this song is not from Jesus’ childhood; this is a grown up Jesus, one who has convinced His beast that with a soul like His, “I shall not want”. That no matter how dark the path looks, nor how close His enemies lurk, His soul can figure this out and keep them safe!

This beast has realized that His soul can be trusted, and He need “fear no evil”! This beast has LEARNED faith! This is a beast who has learned to trust His lord! Because His beast was absolutely convinced that His Lord “regardeth the life of His beast”(Proverbs 12:10 KJV).

Is yours?

THE LIFE

2 Samuel 12:3 …the poor man had nothing, except one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and raised. It grew up together with him, and with his children. It ate of his own food, drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was to him like a daughter.

Here was a beast with such a close relationship with its soul that it dwelt with him in his own house. A beast who ate his table, and was like one of his own children. Jesus didn’t have a hundred beasts to rule, or a thousand, just the one; but that one mattered to Him.

He cared for the life of His beast and the beast trusted and loved Him in return – trusted Him enough to die for Him, to go “as a lamb to the slaughter” (Isaiah 53:7, Philippians 2:8). Because that is the greatest challenge of all, the ultimate mastery over the beast; to ask it to die for no other reason than because you said so (Isaiah 53:4-5).

Jesus’ beast went to an unjust death like an ignorant lamb to the slaughter, even though it knew what it was doing, and why! Even though it was no dumb lamb! It died when it didn’t deserve it, when it wasn’t fair, and when it didn’t even have to, for it knew His soul could simply ask the angels for help! (Matthew 26:53).

In John 13:1, the day before Jesus’ sacrifice, there’s an odd phrase “having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end”. Now clearly, the obvious meaning of these words is the disciples; they were, in a sense “His own”. But God’s words are true on every level.

If that was an external meaning of these words, there surely is an internal meaning as well, for there always is. And here, it simply means that Jesus loved His own heart and spirit! He was proud of them, and justly proud of His, and their, accomplishments!

And He loved them unto the end of His life, because it was His beast who suffered the next day – for a spirit cannot be harmed by whips or thorns, and men are not able to kill a soul! (Matthew 10:28).

So it was not Jesus’ soul who suffered these particular things, it was His beast that suffered and bled for us! And it made this ultimate sacrifice because Jesus’ soul had been such a good soul that it had earned absolute trust.

His beast gave up His life because it had faith that God would “restore His soul” (Psalms 23:3), and that not only would the beast get “goodness and mercy… all the days of my life”, but also that, like the lamb of Nathan’s parable, its heart would “dwell in the house of the Lord for ever”.

And that is the ultimate test for all of us. If you can not merely command, but convince, your heart into going willingly and cheerfully to the slaughter simply because you said so, you will have proven there is nothing your soul cannot do. Nothing and no one your soul cannot rule, cannot convince, cannot overcome.

Jesus convinced the most selfish creature in the universe – the human heart – of the goodness of the unselfish way of God. He persuaded a beast to die that most of us can’t even make pay attention, stay awake, or stop eating.

And being able to persuade a beast who loves its own life above all else to walk willingly, with eyes wide open to its own death so that unborn strangers might live… that was the great accomplishment that brought us life.

Without it, there is no life, for any of us, so it is no stretch then to say that Jesus’ beast is the Life of all flesh.

WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE

Now you see how much truth is really contained in these few words. Jesus does not merely have life. He does not merely represent the perfect life. Jesus actually IS the Life because the willing death of Jesus’ beast gave life to the world!

The continued existence, both now and in the resurrection, of all life is only possible because of the death of His body. Thus His body quite literally IS LIFE (John 6:51).

Likewise, Jesus does not merely have truth. He doesn’t merely know or understand truth. His spirit IS truth, because it is the only once-human spirit in the universe that can be trusted to keep a perfect record of all it sees, and all it hears – and repeat it back faithfully.

We all learn the Truth, the only trustworthy, fully objective truth in the universe, through our contact with His spirit. Through the Words that He left us in the Bible; and through the witnesses of the things He made (Job 12:7-11).

Thus He quite literally IS truth, for everything His spirit recorded, every statute His spirit made, every conclusion His spirit drew was objective Truth (John 14:17), and nothing else in the universe is!

And finally, Jesus does not merely know the way; we are not simply meant to imitate or follow Him on the way. He IS the Way to life “and few there be that find it”. Because without His soul conquering His heart and converting His spirit and showing us how, there would be no Truth and Life for us.

Hebrews 10:19-20 Having therefore, brothers, boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by the way which he dedicated for us, a new and living way, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh;

Without that Truth and Life He brought to us, there would be no WAY for us to find life! Thus He IS the Way, because without Him blazing the trail, there would BE no way! And now that there IS such a way, it is our duty to judge as He judged; to see and hear and speak as He saw and heard and spoke; and to offer our bodies as living sacrifices.

We need His soul to lead us in righteousness, and make our paths straight before us; we need His spirit to be a lamp to our feet, and we even need His beast to show us how a proper beast ought to act – and how a proper soul ought to rule them both.

And yes, “He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked” (1 John 2:6 KJV). But as you see now… it’s so much deeper than that. Because that is strictly an external understanding… and this, like all things, primarily applies internally.

Jesus was the perfect judge, the perfect witness, and the perfect servant. The perfect soul, the perfect spirit, the perfect beast. And He said this so that we can be too. That just as He was the Way, the Truth, and the Life, so shall we be.

Psalms 103:1 (YLT) …Bless, O my soul, Jehovah, And all my inward parts – His Holy Name.

Because when ALL of your inward parts bless His name, you, too, will be the way, truth, and life.

THE WRONG PATH, THE LIE, AND THE DEATH

Because Jesus is the way, truth, and life, because He perfected His soul, spirit, and heart, He is qualified to judge those who don’t measure up to His stature. Until He did that, there was an argument that His expectations were unreasonable, and impossible (Job 4:17-19).

But the statement that He was the way, truth, and life, was an acknowledgement that He had arrived. That He was ready. That, unlike Paul, He had attained, and there was no longer a need to “press on for the high mark”(Philippians 3:12-14).

Because now He had proven once and for all that He has asked nothing of us that He hasn’t already done. With that in mind, read John 16:7-13. The prince of this world is, of course, Satan; which literally means “the adversary”. But our greatest adversary is not an angelic devil, it is within – our own heart.

So Jesus’ first accomplishment was to reprove the world for their JUDGMENTS, because their souls are respecters of persons, and always favor their hearts or their own spirits in judgment! Which is why they can’t find the straight and narrow WAY!

And He reproves the world “of righteousness”, because their RIGHTEOUSNESS is wrong (Romans 10:1-3). Their conscience is poorly educated, and their spirit is ill-equipped to be a lamp to their soul, incapable of helping it choose the right WAY even if it wanted to! Which is why they are not capable of knowing TRUTH! (John 3:19-20).

And finally, He reproves the world of sin, because it did not BELIEVE Him! Because their beast was not willing to submit itself to Jesus’ soul, much less their own, He condemns it because it will only keep sinning!

Thus this condemnation is an indictment against all those who are not yet the WAY, TRUTH, and LIFE! And He said this then, on His last night on Earth, because He was finally qualified to condemn them because He DID make His beast submit willingly to its forthcoming martyrdom!

And He was qualified to say this now, because He HAD made His conscience a perfect mirror of the law of God, and a lamp for His soul! And His soul HAD ALWAYS made righteous judgments based on that same mirror because He LOVED righteousness more than His fellows (Hebrews 1:9).

Jesus was the way – the perfect example of how to judge righteous judgment. And Jesus was the truth – the perfect conscience, the perfectly objective witness for His soul. But Jesus was the life because He convinced His beast to be obedient even unto death – and in so doing, showed us ALL how to find life (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

That is why all beasts of the heavens and the Earth – the human beasts, the beasts of the evil angels (dragons) – will honor Him, because He has conquered His own beast (Isaiah 43:19-21) and is now qualified to rule all other beasts!

And if we are to rule with Him, we must walk the same path He walked. Like Him, we must learn that the only way to rule the universe is to be the servant of everyone in it.

Like Him, we must convince an arrogant, bullheaded spirit that the only way to always be right is to admit that it knows nothing.

We must convince a selfish beast that the only way to get everything it wants is to give up everything it has.

We must convince them both that the only way to overcome fear, is to fear God.

And finally, we must convince our heart that the only way to live forever is to die.

If we can do these things, we can do quite literally… anything.

Continue to Part 6: The Antichrist