Jesus is the Door (John 10:9)

 ‘I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture’ (John 10:9).

 

Two of the seven ‘I am’ sayings occur in this passage in John, and both sayings refer to Jesus describing himself as a shepherd. In the first five verses, Jesus could be referring to a fold in a town or village where every shepherd took his sheep. That fold had a porter who opened the door of the fold so that the shepherd could lead his sheep in for the night and take them out again on the following day. Jesus then says that he fulfils the functions of the porter at the door as well as those of the shepherd who looks after the sheep.

 

Describing the Christian Life

People look for ways of describing the Christian life. Some may focus on what God does for a believer and others may mention what disciplines a believer should engage in to help his spiritual life. No doubt, they would want a description that is straightforward and short. ‘Fifty-two steps to healthy Christian living’ sounds a bit much even if we take them at one a week. I think we can see that in verse 9 Jesus gives a straightforward picture of the Christian life. We could call it ‘Safety and Sustenance from the Shepherd.’

 

The point of the gospel

Before we consider these two details, we need to look at how one becomes a member of the flock of Christ. In terms of the illustration, this stage happens before the sheep enters the fold for the first time through Jesus the door into the heavenly fold. Entering reveals they have responded positively to the gospel. What is the gospel or good news? One way to describe is to say that it is information about Jesus and an invitation from Jesus.

 

Information about Jesus explains who he is and what he did. We can say that he is the eternal Son of God who became a man to take the place of sinners on the cross. That sentence sounds quite simple, but it has vital details, each having a great degree of content. It is not possible to say everything about those details, but I will mention one matter connected to each.

• The eternal Son of God always existed as a divine person in the Trinity, and he was involved in all their plans and in their work of creation of all things.
• He became a man without ceasing to be God, and his humanity is real, normal, and sinless.
• As a man, he lived a perfect life and then offered himself lovingly on the cross as a substitute for sinners and paid the penalty that divine justice required of him as the sinbearer. He bore the wrath of God.
• His atoning death was successful in its intention, and the Father raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in heaven. He will be there until he returns to judge the earth.

 

The information is incomplete without an invitation. Merely giving exact information is not the gospel unless we say with it that all sinners are welcome to come to Jesus at once, to trust in him wherever they are. Of course, Jesus gave many gospel invitations to sinners, and elsewhere in the Bible there are many more. They reveal that any sinner can come to Jesus for mercy at once. When one does that, they enter the safe space that Jesus is.

 

The security found in Jesus

One could address this matter by considering various divine attributes that guarantee security for God’s people, or one could list many of the great promises found in the Bible about security. I would like us to consider several divine actions that provide the permanent security that God has designed for each of his people to experience.

 

The first is the Father’s pronouncement of justification that takes place when a sinner trusts in Jesus for the first time. It includes the forgiveness of our sins and the reckoning to our account of the perfect life-obedience of Jesus. What can be more secure than having both these irreversible benefits! It is good to think about the doctrine of justification because it speaks to us of certainty.

 

The second divine action is the Father’s pronouncement of adoption in which he declares that all who have believed in Jesus become members of the heavenly family and are now the heirs of an endless inheritance. If the inheritance is certain and endless, then they must be secure. It is good to think about justification and adoption together because they speak to us of certainty.

 

The third divine action is the Father’s provision of the Holy Spirit who comes to indwell every Christian. Recall the words of the apostle Paul about this benefit from God: ‘And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God’ (Gal. 4:6-7). The Holy Spirit, having come to indwell each of his people now works in the hearts of all believers to make each of them like Jesus, and the process keeps on going every day that they are in this world. It is good to think about our standing as justified sinners, our status as adopted sons, and our sanctification by the Holy Spirit. After all, according to Paul in Romans 8 the possession of the Spirit is a clear sign of salvation, as he engages in sanctifying his people.

 

The fourth divine action concerns the activities of the risen Jesus in heaven where he functions as the prophet, priest, and king of his people. As their prophet, he teaches them how to live; as their priest, he sympathises with them and helps them in their circumstances; as their king, he protects them and enables them to overcome hostile spiritual powers such as the world, the flesh, and the devil. The illustration of him as the entrance or door reminds us of the permanence of his presence and his nearness to his people, and it is good for us to think often about what Jesus does for us.

 

Those four divine actions should enable each Christian to discover and assess how secure they are in Christ. We could even think of them through the illustration of the shepherd as the door. When he called the sheep in for the night, he would count them in. That is how he could tell that one was missing (even as Jesus did in the parable of the lost sheep, when one out of a hundred had gone astray). He always knows where they are.

 

The sustenance given by Jesus

Every day, the shepherd would lead his sheep to a place of pasture beside a source of water. Where does Jesus provide sustenance for his people? It comes from God’s Word, even as he said when he rebuked the devil during the temptation by saying that man lives on every word of the Bible. Within the Bible, we can find the equivalent of the several courses of a meal. They provide us with a balanced diet, and it is important that believers have balance to their spiritual diet.

 

It is easy to focus on one aspect of biblical truth. At the time I believed in Jesus initially, there was a lot of interest in the second coming of Jesus, concerning the claim that he was to return soon because there seemed to be signs that the time of his coming was near. No doubt, it is good to think about the second coming of Jesus, but it is not good to only think about the second coming. In any case, much assumed at that time as connected to his return turned out to be only imagination.

 

When we feed our souls on the Word of God we are following the example of Jesus. He wants his followers to look for him in the Bible, and they find him throughout it. He appears in type and prophecy in the Old Testament; we see him in the Gospels and read about where he is now when we search the epistles. Searching does point to a sustained effort to find him.

 

In general, there are three occasions of feeding on Jesus in his Word. First, there are hearing of sermons; second, there are times of Christian fellowship; and third, there are personal devotions. As we feed on him on such occasions, there should be freshness in our experience and a sense of fullness like to that of the two downcast disciples on the road to Emmaus whose hearts burned within them because of his company. The illustration of a flock reminds us of the importance of being together.

 

Inevitably, it takes time for adequate feeding to take place. We can see this from the illustration of a sheep. Each sheep gathered in the pasture and then ruminated or chewed the cud. The spiritual equivalent of that practice is meditation, and we are all familiar with the practice, as described in Psalm 1, of a man who meditated in the law of God by day and by night. Another psalm speaks of the author meditating on God and his Word in the watches of the night. Our modern practices or way of living are often unhelpful to such prolonged meditation because we live in an age of distraction and instantaneous gratification. The fact is, feeding takes time.

 

As we close, I repeat the three details that I tried to explain. First, we noted that the door is open for sinners to go through. Jesus places to barrier on anyone coming to him as the door of salvation. It is a public door, of course, because it was a way of showing together the shepherd and the sheep. Second, we saw that the security provided is for all who come through the door. Every believer is safe from divine judgement and a lost eternity. He has passed from death to life. Third, we should remind ourselves of the spiritual feasts that we can enjoy through the shepherding care of Jesus and aim to have more today.