Just What Is A "Way"

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From the prophet Isaiah’s writings we read,

“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6 – NKJV)

It may sound like a weird question I’m addressing, but when one reads the Scriptures, both old and new, there is a word that is so very prevalent: “Way.”

Think about it, and I’ll bet you can think of a myriad of Bible texts that use the word, “Way.”

So . . . Just what is a “Way?” How does one define this word that is so prevalent in Scripture?

Our text informs us that each of us, “all we . . . everyone” of us has “turned . . . to” his or her “own way.” The Hebrew word for “way” here is derekh. This word “is a noun,” and “it means a going, walk, journey, path, road, course, a way of life . . . More often it refers to the actions and behavior of men, whether wicked or righteous” (Zodhiates).

Writing according to the leading of the Holy Spirit, Isaiah makes it clear that all of humanity, whether past, present, or future, are “like sheep” who (go) astray,” choosing for ourselves a “way” to live and walk we think to be right, yet as is implied by our text, is the wrong “way.” It is not the “way” that the Creator would have us ” journey.

Mankind has chosen to go in a “way” that the Creator God has not ordained for him and the word “astray” confirms to us that this “way” that we choose is not a right one! The psalmist says it is a “way” that has severe consequences, for those who take it . . .

“. . . shall perish” (Psalm 1:6 – NKJV)

I might give an example of this “path” that is so detrimental to one’s eternal well-being. My own life bears witness of the wrong “way.”

I did not grow up in a Christian home and church attendance was not something we did. But that did not mean that I never heard about God. The Public school system of my day did not exclude Him, so we were aware of prayer and the Ten Commandments and the Bible. Yet, the gospel was not proclaimed as if it were a necessary “way” to God but we were left to deal with religious matters as our personal families dictated to us. Along the “journey” of life, I set in my mind the “way” I thought God was and how I should subsequently deal with Him. In short, I created a god that fit my lifestyle and approved of all the “ways” I chose to do things and the “paths” I chose to “walk.” A god of my own making, strikingly fit for approving of my every “journey.”

It wasn’t until much later in life that I came to understand the truth of what the Proverb so profoundly stated,

“There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Proverb 14:12 – NKJV)

Wow! The “way” I was going, a “way” that “seemed right to” me, was the wrong “way,” the wrong “path,” and I was dead-headed to destruction, and as I came to understand, to an eternal hell. A “way” of my “own” choosing as I “strayed” from my Creator.

The “way” that was “right” to God became known to me, by God’s mercy and grace as enlightened by the Holy Spirit through His Word, and I abandoned my deathly “journey” for a “path” whereby I could be reconciled to our Creator God, the only true God, the One I had chosen to go “astray” from. I found the “right . . . way . . .”

“Jesus said . . . ‘I am the way . . . No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6 – NKJV)

Oh hallelujah! I am on the “right . . . way!” Praise be to God who has corrected my “straying!” My “journey” is yet to be fulfilled, but it is one that is on the “right . . . path.” How about you? Are you on this “way?”