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The Way

Week 4 of 4 in Through John's Gospel

Before anyone called them Christians, they called themselves something else. Saul, hunting them down, asked the high priest for letters "to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem" (Acts 9:2, ESV). The Way — Greek ὁδός (hodos, G3598), the ordinary word for a road. The name shows up six times across Acts. Behind it stands a word the Old Testament had used for a whole course of life for a thousand years, and a claim Jesus made about Himself the night before He died: "I am the way" (John 14:6).

In one sentence: God has opened the road to Himself in a person: Jesus is the way Isaiah said would be prepared for the LORD, the one way to the Father (John 14:6), opened through His own flesh (Hebrews 10:20), and His first followers named themselves after Him, "the Way" (Acts 9:2).

Key Takeaways

(This section follows the Key Takeaways format — see that page for what each part is for.)

Types & Prophecy

Prophecy. Isaiah 40:3 — "In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God" — is a direct verbal prediction of a forerunner. All four Gospels independently quote it and apply it to John the Baptist (Matthew 3:3; Mark 1:2-3; Luke 3:4-6; John 1:23). No other Old Testament "way" text is quoted by all four. In each, John's task is to prepare a road for someone else to walk.

Lessons about Jesus

  • He claims to be the way Himself: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6, ESV).
  • The claim is exclusive, and Peter later says the same of His name: "there is salvation in no one else" (Acts 4:12, ESV).
  • To know Him is to know the Father: "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9, ESV). The way and the destination are one person.
  • His death opens the way. Hebrews calls it "the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh" (Hebrews 10:20, ESV). Under the old covenant the curtain let only one priest through, once a year (Leviticus 16).
  • His earliest followers called themselves "the Way", His own title. To belong to the Way is to belong to Him.

Memory verses

✝️ John 14:6 (ESV)

6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

✝️ Acts 24:14 (ESV)

14 But this I confess to you, that according to the Way, which they call a sect, I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the Prophets.

Be Transformed

  • Think: a "way" is walked. The earliest believers named themselves for a road they were on, and the road is Jesus Himself; so you follow Him with your feet as well as your convictions.
  • Attitude: "Christian" began as an outsiders' label at Antioch, and Peter tells believers who suffer under it to glorify God in that name (1 Peter 4:16). Let that settle whatever labels get pinned on you for following Jesus now.
  • Do: name one place this week where "believing the right things about Jesus" and "walking His way" have come apart for you, and take one concrete step back toward the second.

Prayer

Father, your Son Jesus is the way, and the truth, and the life, and no one comes to you except through Him. Thank you for opening the road into your presence yourself: by His blood and His flesh He made a new and living way, and in Him I have seen you. Before your people had any other name, they were known simply as those who belonged to His Way.

So let me be one of them in more than name. Where I have settled for agreeing with the truth instead of walking in it, correct me, and let me walk the road your Son opened with the confidence His blood gives. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Study outline

Before "Christian": how this study is scoped

Hodos occurs just over a hundred times in the New Testament, and most of those are the plain word for a road. The sower's seed falls "along the path" (Matthew 13:4). Travelers take the Jericho road (Luke 10:31; 18:35). Two disciples walk to Emmaus (Luke 24:32, 35). Philip catches up to a chariot "on the road" (Acts 8:26, 36, 39). This study tracks the roughly one-third of occurrences where hodos carries figurative or titular weight: a course of life, a body of teaching, or a name for a movement. It traces that weight back to its Old Testament source, then into John 14:6 and Acts, where the New Testament pushes the word further than the Old ever did.

John's Gospel: Thomas's question in the Upper Room

John's Gospel. Chapters 13-14 sit inside the Upper Room Discourse, Jesus's farewell speech to the Twelve on the night of His arrest. Judas has just left to betray Him (13:30); Jesus has just told Peter he will deny Him three times before dawn (13:38). "Let not your hearts be troubled" (14:1) speaks to that trouble. Thomas's confused question, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" (14:5, ESV), draws out 14:6.

Acts: from persecutor to prisoner

Acts. Luke's second volume narrates the gospel's spread from Jerusalem to Rome, and "the Way" threads through nearly the whole of it: from Saul's mouth as persecutor (Acts 9:2) to Paul's own as a prisoner defending himself before the Roman governor Felix (24:14, 22). In between, it names the movement at a synagogue argument in Ephesus (19:9) and a riot there over lost silver trade (19:23).

The Hebrew and Greek word: derek and hodos

דֶּרֶךְ (derek, H1870, TWOT root 453a) is one of the most common nouns in the Hebrew Bible. It means "way, road, journey," and constantly a course of life or conduct: a person's derek is how they live. ὁδός (hodos, G3598) carries the same double sense in Greek, and the Septuagint regularly renders derek with hodos. So a New Testament author using "way" in a moral or theological sense uses vocabulary the Hebrew Bible had stretched that direction for a thousand years, and that Greek-speaking Jews read that way in their own Bible.

Three Old Testament uses carry through the rest of this study:

  • The way as a person's conduct. "What does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways" (Deuteronomy 10:12, ESV) — obedience is walking a path, an idiom so basic to the Old Testament that Deuteronomy uses it as shorthand for the whole of covenant loyalty.
  • Two ways. "The LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish" (Psalm 1:6, ESV). Psalm 1 closes on a stark either/or that later Jewish and Christian literature returns to often (the Didache opens with the identical "two ways" framework), and that Jesus Himself restates: "the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few" (Matthew 7:14, ESV).
  • A way that can be lost and asked for again. "Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, 'We will not walk in it'" (Jeremiah 6:16, ESV). The good way is known, and the sin is refusing to walk in it.

In Hebrew idiom, derek is what a life looks like from the outside. The New Testament inherits that sense, which is why a group of believers could later be called, without further explanation, people "of the Way."

"Prepare the way of the LORD": Isaiah's forerunner text

✝️ Isaiah 40:3 (ESV)

3 A voice cries: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God."

Isaiah's own setting is Judah's coming return from Babylonian exile. The prophets elsewhere describe that return as a new exodus, with God leading His people through the wilderness as He once led their ancestors out of Egypt (compare Isaiah 11:16; Hosea 2:14-15).6 All four Gospels quote this verse and apply it to John the Baptist:

Gospel Reference (ESV)
Matthew 3:3 — "Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight"
Mark 1:2-3 — same quotation, prefaced by Malachi 3:1's messenger oracle
Luke 3:4-6 — extends the quotation through Isaiah 40:5, "all flesh shall see the salvation of God"
John 1:23 — put in John the Baptist's own mouth: "I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness"

John clears a road for someone else to walk, the task of Malachi's messenger (Malachi 3:1, quoted at Mark 1:2). Isaiah 35:8 extends the picture:

✝️ Isaiah 35:8 (ESV)

8 And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Way of Holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it. It shall belong to those who walk on the way; even if they are fools, they shall not go astray.

The redeemed walk this road and the unclean are kept off it. At John 14:6 Jesus claims the same exclusivity for a person. Luke's Gospel puts the link between forerunner and fulfillment in Zechariah's mouth, prophesying over his infant son John:

✝️ Luke 1:76-79 (ESV)

76 And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, 77 to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, 78 because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high 79 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Isaiah's "way of the LORD" is a road prepared for God Himself to arrive on, and a first-century Jewish hearer brought that background to Jesus's claim. This shows that God kept His promise to come to His people Himself: the LORD whose way John prepared arrived as Jesus, which is the incarnation. So when you come to Jesus, you meet the God Isaiah said was coming.

"I am the way, and the truth, and the life": Jesus as the Way

Jesus's answer to Thomas repeats the definite article before each of the three predicate nouns: ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ὁδὸς καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια καὶ ἡ ζωή. "I am the way, and the truth, and the life." The grammar makes an exclusivity claim before the following sentence states one outright.

The way as destination

The way is a destination. Thomas asked "how can we know the way" (14:5), wanting a route, the kind of information a map gives. Jesus answers with a person, and to know Him is to know the destination: "If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him" (14:7, ESV). When Philip still asks to be shown the Father, Jesus answers plainly: "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (14:9, ESV). This shows that God has made Himself known in the face of His Son: to know Jesus is to know the Father. So everything you need in order to reach God is found in knowing Jesus.

The curtain that once barred access

The way fulfills what the Old Testament's own barred access had only pictured. The ESV Study Bible's note on this verse traces the claim back through a set of Old Testament restrictions on approaching God directly. The tabernacle curtain shut everyone but the high priest out of the Most Holy Place (Exodus 26:33; Leviticus 16). Unauthorized approach was rejected (Leviticus 10:2). Aaron alone was chosen to represent Israel in God's presence (Numbers 17:5).1 Hebrews uses hodos for both the problem and its answer. The problem: "The Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the holy places is not yet opened as long as the first section is still standing" (Hebrews 9:8, ESV). Under the old covenant, the hodos itself doesn't yet exist for anyone but the high priest, once a year. The answer:

✝️ Hebrews 10:19-20 (ESV)

19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh.

Hebrews identifies the curtain that barred entry with Christ's own flesh. Isaiah 35:8's guarded highway pictured the same restricted access; here Jesus opens the road Himself. This shows that God Himself removed the barrier His holiness had set: the atonement Jesus made in His own body is the road into God's presence. So you may enter the holy places with the confidence Hebrews 10:19 names, "by the blood of Jesus."

A personal exclusivity

The exclusivity is personal. First-century Judaism already had groups that claimed exclusive access to God. The Qumran community is the sharpest case. Its members believed they alone followed the true path, and that other Jewish groups, the temple establishment included, were lost.2 Qumran's exclusivity rested on correct teaching and practice: the right community, the right calendar, the right interpretation of the Law. Jesus places it in Himself. In the words of the Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, "He does not teach a way to God, but rather is the way to God."2 Peter says the same of Jesus's name in Acts 4:12: "there is salvation in no one else." In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus had already said it of the road: "The gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few" (Matthew 7:14, ESV), Psalm 1's two ways again. This shows that God has placed salvation in one person, His Son Jesus. So your standing before God rests on one thing: whether you have come to the Father through Him.

Walking in "the way": the moral-life idiom across the epistles

Outside John 14 and Acts, most of the New Testament's figurative uses of hodos continue the Old Testament's "way of life" idiom:

Taught rightly, or lost entirely

  • A way that can be taught rightly or wrongly. Apollos "had been instructed in the way of the Lord" but knew only John's baptism; Priscilla and Aquila "took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately" (Acts 18:25-26, ESV) — lower-case here and descriptive, but related to Acts's "the Way." A slave girl in Philippi cries that Paul and Silas "proclaim to you the way of salvation" (Acts 16:17, ESV).
  • A way that can go entirely missing. Paul indicts humanity in Romans by quoting Isaiah 59:7-8 almost verbatim: "in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known" (Romans 3:16-17, ESV), Isaiah 59:8's derek shalom.

Corrupted or abandoned by false teachers

  • A way that false teachers corrupt or abandon. Peter warns that some "will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed" (2 Peter 2:2, ESV); that others, "forsaking the right way," have "followed the way of Balaam" (2:15, ESV); that it would be better never to have known "the way of righteousness" than to know it and turn back (2:21, ESV). That exact phrase — ὁδὸς δικαιοσύνης, "the way of righteousness" — is the same one Jesus uses of John the Baptist: "John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him" (Matthew 21:32, ESV). Peter's false teachers abandon the very way John walked in and the religious leaders refused to believe. Jude names another figure who left it: those who have gone "the way of Cain" (Jude 11, ESV).

A way that reveals character

  • A way that describes character. James calls the double-minded man "unstable in all his ways" (James 1:8, ESV). Someone who "brings back a sinner from his wandering" (James 5:20, ESV) is, in the underlying Greek, bringing him back ἐκ πλάνης ὁδοῦ αὐτοῦ, literally "from the straying of his way." The ESV drops "way" here; the more literal ASV keeps it: "converteth a sinner from the error of his way." Paul uses the same idiom of his own example: he sends Timothy "to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church" (1 Corinthians 4:17, ESV) — an apostle's manner of life offered as the pattern. Hebrews, quoting Psalm 95 of the wilderness generation, says they "always go astray in their heart" and "have not known my ways" (Hebrews 3:10, ESV) — heart and way named together, as one thing.

God's own ways, and a still more excellent one

  • God's own ways, set apart from human ones. Paul's doxology marvels at "how unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!" (Romans 11:33, ESV) — hodos used of God's own manner of acting, as in Isaiah 55:8's "my ways are not your ways."
  • A "way" that outranks every other gift. After a long list of spiritual gifts, Paul closes with "I will show you a still more excellent way" (1 Corinthians 12:31, ESV) — introducing the love chapter that follows. Love is the hodos every gift ought to be exercised inside of.

So when Luke picks the same word to name the Jesus movement itself, his readers already understood it figuratively.

"Any who belonged to the Way": the name before "Christian"

Six times, always with the definite article — ἡ ὁδός, the Way — Acts uses this as a name for the movement:

Reference (ESV) Context
Acts 9:2 Saul asks the high priest for authority to arrest "any belonging to the Way" in Damascus
Acts 19:9 Some in Ephesus's synagogue speak "evil of the Way," so Paul withdraws to teach separately
Acts 19:23 The silversmiths' riot over Artemis idols: "no little disturbance concerning the Way"
Acts 22:4 Paul's own testimony: "I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering to prison both men and women"
Acts 24:14 Before Felix: "according to the Way, which they call a sect, I worship the God of our fathers"
Acts 24:22 Felix, "having a rather accurate knowledge of the Way," defers Paul's case

The name spans Paul's career inside the narrative, from persecutor before his conversion (Acts 9:2, and his own later confession at 22:4) to prisoner defending himself at the end of it (24:14, 22). Luke never introduces or explains the term; he uses it as a name his readers already know.

Qumran's own use of "the Way"

A name already in use. The Qumran community, the group behind the Dead Sea Scrolls and roughly contemporary with the earliest church, used the same self-designation. It was convinced that it alone preached the true divine path.3 Each group believed it walked the one road to God. Qumran's road led to a strict community rule; the church's led to the person whose coming Isaiah 40:3 announced.

Two names for one movement

Insiders' name against outsiders' name. Acts records both sides of the naming at once. Paul's own word before Felix is "the Way", and in the same sentence he reports what his accusers call it: "according to the Way, which they call a sect" (24:14, ESV). Sect translates αἵρεσις (hairesis, G139). Tertullus, the prosecutor, had already used it moments earlier: "a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes" (24:5, ESV). The Jewish community leaders in Rome use the same word of Paul years later: "with regard to this sect we know that everywhere it is spoken against" (28:22, ESV). Every occurrence of hairesis applied to the church in Acts comes from a hostile or outside speaker. "The Way" is the movement's word for itself, or a narrator's or official's neutral report of it.

"Christian": an outsider's label

"Christian" was somebody else's word first. The label that eventually displaced "the Way" in common usage appears only three times in the New Testament: twice as outsiders' usage (Acts 11:26; 26:28), and once in Peter's letter as the name believers were suffering under (1 Peter 4:16).

✝️ Acts 11:26 (ESV)

26 And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.

Luke does not say who did the calling. The ESV Study Bible reads this as a label "applied by the unbelieving public in Antioch." It marks the point where the disciples "were beginning to have an identity of their own apart from other Jews."4 The Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible is more specific about the word's shape. Χριστιανός follows the pattern of a political nickname, the way partisans of a named leader were tagged elsewhere in the empire — "Pompeiians" for followers of Pompey. Antioch in particular had a local reputation for this kind of mocking label.5 King Agrippa, unconvinced by Paul's defense, uses it of what Paul is trying to make him: "In a short time would you persuade me to be a Christian?" (Acts 26:28, ESV). By the time Peter writes, the label is a social and legal liability: "If anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name" (1 Peter 4:16, ESV). The name was being used against believers before they wore it with pride.

Luke's own narration inside Acts never adopts the outsiders' word. He keeps calling the movement "the disciples," "believers," "brothers," or "the Way", the name that points back to the man who said, "I am the way." Both names mark God's people by whom they belong to: "the Way" by the one who said He is the way, "Christian" by Christ's own title. So whatever you are called for following Jesus, you are called by His name, and you may glorify God in it (1 Peter 4:16).

A translation note: Isaiah's "Way" in capital letters

Both the ESV and the WEB render Isaiah 35:8 with a capitalized "Way," treating the phrase almost as a proper name. The ESV has "the Way of Holiness"; the WEB has "it will be for those who walk in the Way." The underlying Hebrew doesn't demand that: דֶרֶךְ הַקֹּדֶשׁ (derek haqqodesh) is an ordinary construct phrase, "a way of holiness," grammatically no more a title than "the way of peace" at Isaiah 59:8. The capital is a translator's choice. The link between Isaiah 35:8 and Acts's "the Way" is thematic, and the capital letter makes it visible in English.

Then and now

The exclusivity claim carries over unchanged. John 14:6 and Acts 4:12 state who gives access to God, and nothing later in the canon qualifies them. The vocabulary belongs to its moment: "the Way" as the movement's working name gave way to "Christian" and "the church."

A "way" is walked. Derek names how someone lives, and calling the movement "the Way" made following Jesus a road under a believer's feet. Paul's "still more excellent way" (1 Corinthians 12:31) is love, practised.

Discussion questions

  1. The language. "The LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish" (Psalm 1:6, ESV). The Septuagint renders דֶּרֶךְ (derek) there with ὁδός, the word Jesus takes for Himself in John 14:6. What changes about following Jesus when the word for how a person lives becomes His name for Himself?
  2. The text in its context. The earliest believers were named "the Way" by themselves (Acts 24:14) and "a sect" by their accusers (Acts 24:5; 28:22), before either label was replaced by "Christian" (Acts 11:26). What does it change to know the name you now wear wasn't the church's own first choice for itself?
  3. Christ. Thomas asks, "How can we know the way?" (John 14:5, ESV), expecting directions; Jesus answers with Himself (John 14:6). Where in your own faith are you still asking for directions when Jesus offers Himself?
  4. The hard part. Jesus says "the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few" (Matthew 7:14, ESV). Isaiah says of the Way of Holiness, "even if they are fools, they shall not go astray" (Isaiah 35:8, ESV). How do you hold those two descriptions of the road together?
  5. Be transformed. Qumran and the earliest church both claimed exclusive access to God, but located that exclusivity in different places: a community's correct practice, and a person (John 14:6; Acts 4:12). Which is easier to drift toward in your own walk, and why?
  6. Be transformed. Jeremiah 6:16 pictures a "good way" that already exists and is simply refused: "We will not walk in it." What way do you already know to be right that you are currently declining to walk?
Group study sheet for a 40-minute group: two A4 sheets, or one with the guided path

The point, the passage, the questions and the response, from this study. Print on both sides of two A4 sheets, flipping on the long edge. While this block is open, printing the page prints the sheet; close it to print the study.

Group study · 40 minutes

The Way

John 14:6; Acts 9:2

The point God has opened the road to Himself in a person: Jesus is the way Isaiah said would be prepared for the LORD, the one way to the Father (John 14:6), opened through His own flesh (Hebrews 10:20), and His first followers named themselves after Him, "the Way" (Acts 9:2).

0–5min

Ask: what comes to mind when you hear The Way? Hear a few answers before anyone reads.

5–12minRead it aloud BSB

John 14:6 6Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

Acts 9:2 2and requested letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any men or women belonging to the Way, he could bring them as prisoners to Jerusalem.

12–25minLook closer
What does it say?
What did it mean to them?
What does it mean for us?
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The Way

The study in brief
  1. How this study is scoped. The figurative third of hodos's uses, and the settings of John 14 and Acts.
  2. The Hebrew and Greek word. Derek and hodos, and three Old Testament uses of "way".
  3. Isaiah's forerunner text. Isaiah 40:3 in all four Gospels, Isaiah 35:8's highway, and Zechariah's song.
  4. Jesus as the Way. John 14:6 in three parts: the way as destination, the curtain that barred access, and a personal exclusivity.
  5. Walking in the way. The moral-life idiom in Acts and the epistles: a way taught or lost, corrupted, revealing character, and God's own ways.
  6. The name before "Christian". The six uses in Acts, Qumran's parallel, the accusers' "sect", and where "Christian" came from.
  7. A translation note. Why Isaiah 35:8 has a capital "Way" in the ESV and WEB.
  8. Then and now. What carries over from the first century and what stays there.
Notes
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The Way

12–24minStep 1 · How this study is scoped

1The language. "The LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish" (Psalm 1:6, ESV). The Septuagint renders דֶּרֶךְ (derek) there with ὁδός, the word Jesus takes for Himself in John 14:6. What changes about following Jesus when the word for how a person lives becomes His name for Himself?

2Christ. Thomas asks, "How can we know the way?" (John 14:5, ESV), expecting directions; Jesus answers with Himself (John 14:6). Where in your own faith are you still asking for directions when Jesus offers Himself?

Step 2 · The Hebrew and Greek word
Step 3 · Isaiah's forerunner text
24–29minStep 4 · Jesus as the Way

3The hard part. Jesus says "the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few" (Matthew 7:14, ESV). Isaiah says of the Way of Holiness, "even if they are fools, they shall not go astray" (Isaiah 35:8, ESV). How do you hold those two descriptions of the road together?

Step 5 · Walking in the way
29–35minStep 6 · The name before "Christian"

4The text in its context. The earliest believers were named "the Way" by themselves (Acts 24:14) and "a sect" by their accusers (Acts 24:5; 28:22), before either label was replaced by "Christian" (Acts 11:26). What does it change to know the name you now wear wasn't the church's own first choice for itself?

Step 7 · A translation note
Step 8 · Then and now
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The Way

35–40minBe transformed

5Be transformed. Qumran and the earliest church both claimed exclusive access to God, but located that exclusivity in different places: a community's correct practice, and a person (John 14:6; Acts 4:12). Which is easier to drift toward in your own walk, and why?

6Be transformed. Jeremiah 6:16 pictures a "good way" that already exists and is simply refused: "We will not walk in it." What way do you already know to be right that you are currently declining to walk?

  • Think: a "way" is walked. The earliest believers named themselves for a road they were on, and the road is Jesus Himself; so you follow Him with your feet as well as your convictions.
  • Attitude: "Christian" began as an outsiders' label at Antioch, and Peter tells believers who suffer under it to glorify God in that name (1 Peter 4:16). Let that settle whatever labels get pinned on you for following Jesus now.
  • Do: name one place this week where "believing the right things about Jesus" and "walking His way" have come apart for you, and take one concrete step back toward the second.
Memory verse

Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

John 14:6 (ESV)
Pray together

Father, your Son Jesus is the way, and the truth, and the life, and no one comes to you except through Him. Thank you for opening the road into your presence yourself: by His blood and His flesh He made a new and living way, and in Him I have seen you. Before your people had any other name, they were known simply as those who belonged to His Way.

So let me be one of them in more than name. Where I have settled for agreeing with the truth instead of walking in it, correct me, and let me walk the road your Son opened with the confidence His blood gives. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Notes
The whole study, with every verse a tap awayhttps://the-way.lewy.au/jesus/the-way/
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Group study · step by step

The Way

John 14:6; Acts 9:2

Open Ask: what comes to mind when you hear The Way? Hear a few answers before anyone reads.

Read it aloud John 14:6; Acts 9:2

Step 1How this study is scoped — The figurative third of hodos's uses, and the settings of John 14 and Acts.

1The language. "The LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish" (Psalm 1:6, ESV). The Septuagint renders דֶּרֶךְ (derek) there with ὁδός, the word Jesus takes for Himself in John 14:6. What changes about following Jesus when the word for how a person lives becomes His name for Himself?

2Christ. Thomas asks, "How can we know the way?" (John 14:5, ESV), expecting directions; Jesus answers with Himself (John 14:6). Where in your own faith are you still asking for directions when Jesus offers Himself?

Step 2The Hebrew and Greek word — Derek and hodos, and three Old Testament uses of "way".
Step 3Isaiah's forerunner text — Isaiah 40:3 in all four Gospels, Isaiah 35:8's highway, and Zechariah's song.
Step 4Jesus as the Way — John 14:6 in three parts: the way as destination, the curtain that barred access, and a personal exclusivity.

3The hard part. Jesus says "the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few" (Matthew 7:14, ESV). Isaiah says of the Way of Holiness, "even if they are fools, they shall not go astray" (Isaiah 35:8, ESV). How do you hold those two descriptions of the road together?

Step 5Walking in the way — The moral-life idiom in Acts and the epistles: a way taught or lost, corrupted, revealing character, and God's own ways.
Step 6The name before "Christian" — The six uses in Acts, Qumran's parallel, the accusers' "sect", and where "Christian" came from.Key verses: Acts 11:26

4The text in its context. The earliest believers were named "the Way" by themselves (Acts 24:14) and "a sect" by their accusers (Acts 24:5; 28:22), before either label was replaced by "Christian" (Acts 11:26). What does it change to know the name you now wear wasn't the church's own first choice for itself?

Step 7A translation note — Why Isaiah 35:8 has a capital "Way" in the ESV and WEB.
Step 8Then and now — What carries over from the first century and what stays there.
Be transformed

5Be transformed. Qumran and the earliest church both claimed exclusive access to God, but located that exclusivity in different places: a community's correct practice, and a person (John 14:6; Acts 4:12). Which is easier to drift toward in your own walk, and why?

6Be transformed. Jeremiah 6:16 pictures a "good way" that already exists and is simply refused: "We will not walk in it." What way do you already know to be right that you are currently declining to walk?

  • Think: a "way" is walked. The earliest believers named themselves for a road they were on, and the road is Jesus Himself; so you follow Him with your feet as well as your convictions.
  • Attitude: "Christian" began as an outsiders' label at Antioch, and Peter tells believers who suffer under it to glorify God in that name (1 Peter 4:16). Let that settle whatever labels get pinned on you for following Jesus now.
  • Do: name one place this week where "believing the right things about Jesus" and "walking His way" have come apart for you, and take one concrete step back toward the second.
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The Way

The point God has opened the road to Himself in a person: Jesus is the way Isaiah said would be prepared for the LORD, the one way to the Father (John 14:6), opened through His own flesh (Hebrews 10:20), and His first followers named themselves after Him, "the Way" (Acts 9:2).

The whole study, with every verse a tap awayhttps://the-way.lewy.au/jesus/the-way/
Page 2 of 2 · print double-sided, flip on long edgeScripture: BSB, public domain · ESV® © 2001 Crossway, used by permission
  • ESV Bible (Crossway) — primary translation quoted throughout, per this site's translation conventions. World English Bible (WEB), queried from this repo's own text database, used for Isaiah 40:1-5 in initial research and for the Isaiah 35:8 capitalization comparison. American Standard Version (ASV) consulted for the James 5:20 translation comparison — its more literal "the error of his way" keeps the Greek hodos visible where the ESV's "his wandering" drops it.
  • MACULA Greek Linguistic Datasets (SBLGNT) and MACULA Hebrew Linguistic Datasets (WLC), queried via this repo's references/build/bible-text.db — source of the full New Testament concordance for hodos (G3598) behind this study's scoping, and of every Strong's number, gloss, and Greek/Hebrew form cited above, including the hairesis (G139) contrast at Acts 24:5, 14 and 28:22.
  • Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (TWOT), ed. R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke (Moody Publishers) — root 453a (derek), consulted via this repo's committed TWOT Strong's-number map.
  • ESV Study Bible (Crossway, 2016) — the Acts 9:2 reading of "the Way" against Matthew 7:14 and John 14:6, the Leviticus/Numbers background to John 14:6's exclusivity claim, the outsider-applied reading of "Christians" at Acts 11:26, and the Isaiah 40:3/Malachi 3:1 background to Matthew 3:3.
  • NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible and NKJV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible (Zondervan, ed. John H. Walton and Craig S. Keener) — source of the Qumran self-designation parallel at Acts 9:2 and John 14:6, the "political nickname" reading of Χριστιανός at Acts 11:26, and the new-exodus background to Matthew 3:3's quotation of Isaiah 40:3.
  • NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible (Zondervan, 2018), gen. ed. D. A. Carson — the outsider origin of "Christian" at Acts 11:26 and noted Luke's own preference for "the Way," "disciples," and "believers" over that label throughout Acts.
  • Related study on this site: Jesus, Priest in the Order of Melchizedek — traces the same tabernacle-curtain access problem this study's Hebrews 10:19-20 section touches, in full.

  1. ESV Study Bible, note on John 14:6. ↩

  2. NKJV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on John 14:6. ↩↩

  3. NKJV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Acts 9:2. ↩

  4. ESV Study Bible, note on Acts 11:26. ↩

  5. NKJV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Acts 11:26. ↩

  6. NKJV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Matthew 3:3. ↩