Thomas—true to the character elsewhere attributed to him in this Gospel, of anxious, intellectual striving after truth and reality, with a certain despondency and morbid fear of issues which he could not grasp, and yet with a great love to his Master—saith to him, We know not whither thou goest; i.e. we are still in vague perplexity. "Whither? oh, whither?" Art thou going to the dispersed among the Gentiles? Art thou going to restore the kingdom to Israel? Thou art to be "lifted up;" but how and where art thou to be lifted up? Thou art going—that is all we know, and this ignorance of ours makes us doubt "the way." £ How do we knew the way? Is not a knowledge of the goal absolutely necessary to bring into proper light for us the way, the strange mysterious way, thou art taking? There often seems in the language of skepticism much common sense, and in the dry light of science a straightforward honesty; and in reading the memorable reply of our Lord many have felt a lack of directness and recognition of the difficulty of Thomas. But is it really so?
Jesus saith to him, I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by me. If ye had learned to know me, ye would have £ known (absolutely) my Father also: from henceforward ye know (by personal experience) him, and (or, perhaps, even) ye have seen him. The whole sentence must be taken together. The whither of Christ is obvious enough, and throws consequent illumination upon the way thither. "The Father's house" is the whither no one cometh unto the Father (but) except through me. Christ explicitly says
—all the relations, not only those of saints and holy angels, but those of rebels and sinners, whose destiny he has taken upon himself. He is the Way because he is the whole Truth about God and man and concerning the way to the Father. More than this, and because of this, he adds, "I am the Life"—"the life eternal," the Possessor, Author, Captain, Giver, and Prince of life—the life in the heart of man that can never die; the occasion, germ, condition, and force of the new lath. It were impossible to imagine higher claim. But he leaves his hearers without any doubt as to his personal and conscious identification of himself with the Father. Hitherto he had not so clearly unveiled himself as in that which he has here said and is now doing. Hence his nearest and dearest only partially knew him. If they had seen all they might have seen, they would have seen the Father also. Then, as though he would close all aperture to doubt about the glory involved in his humiliation, and the way in which his human life had revealed the Father, he says ἀπάρτι—henceforward this must be a fact of your consciousness, that you do learn and come to know him by personal experience ( γινώσκετε); and as a matter of fact ye have seen him ( ἐωράκατε). Possibly in the ἀπάρτι, involving the notion of a period rather than a moment, the Lord was including the full revelation of the glory of self-sacrificial love given alike in his death and resurrection. And the important thought is suggested that neither the knowledge of God can ever be complete, nor the vision either. Is Thomas answered or no? He is silent, and perhaps is pondering the words, which will lead him, before long, notwithstanding his doubts, to make the grandest confession contained in the entire Gospel, the answer of convinced though once skeptical humanity to the question, "Whom say ye that I am?" The other apostles feel that Christ's words have met the mystic vague fear of Thomas, and that "henceforward" they all belong with Christ to the Father's house. They would go to the Father, and at the right time dwell in the place prepared for them; but how can they be said to know and have seen the Father already—to have passed into the light or received the beatific vision?