John 10

Jesus is the Good Shepherd and we who hear His voice gladly are His sheep. One of the features of this life is that His voice is not the only one that we hear making a claim to be our shepherd. In fact there are those who claim to be serving the world and even the church who are nothing but thieves and robbers. They would go into the sheepfold of the church by some other door than Christ, their path to glory would be something other than the cross, and their hope for the sheep is not the fullness of love, but to turn them away from the Good Shepherd, and even to devour them, dragging them down with themselves to eternal judgment.

The first fact for us to consider is that Jesus is the Door to the blessedness of the eternal kingdom. He is the only One who could ever serve in that capacity. Fully God and fully man, He was sent by the Father in order to meet the just demands of God’s holy Law for us, and then to take our debt upon Himself on the cross. Because He has done this, the way of salvation has been opened for all who will enter the sheepfold through Him. This requires some spiritual discernment which God must supply.

There are so many who have such a strong intuition that all doors will eventually lead to safety and blessing. If that intuition is correct, then Jesus was wrong. We have man intuitions that are not correct, chief among them is that almost everyone is good, and that we are good too (pretty much). This intuition is strongly contradicted by reason, experience, and the Scriptures. These two false intuitions are related to one another. If we are basically good, and are already acceptable to God just because, then we do not need a Savior to come to earth, to live in perfect holiness, and then to die as a Sin Offering for us. It is not possible for the all-doors-are-safe intuition and the claim of Jesus to be the only Door to safety to both be correct. Christ came that we might have an abundant life that could only come to us through His death and resurrection.

Not only is Jesus the door to heaven, He is also the Shepherd who leads us there. While He does that now by His Word and Spirit, during His time on this earth He led His sheep by walking in a certain direction, and by continuing on that journey all the way to the cross. He laid down His life for the sheep. If we are all fine with God without Jesus Christ, then He made a horrible mistake that cost Him His life. But He is to be trusted far more than our own intuition or any false advisor. His work for us was very necessary, and He knows how to lead us away from wolves and from false shepherds who are only interested in themselves. This Shepherd leads us in the way of suffering, a way that we follow with joy because we are convinced that His suffering was different than ours, and His power is well beyond us. He accomplished something very great by laying down His life, and then taking it up again from the tomb. This was the charge that He had through His eternal covenant with the Father, and He kept that charge for us.

Just as our intuitions falsely tell us that we are actually good and that we face no eternal danger, these same intuitions can convince a person that Jesus is the problem, that He is the bad one, He has a demon, and He is insane. Yet can some demonic force work resurrection miracles, such as giving sight to the blind? That question troubles our otherwise settled intuitions. Jesus knew well that to reject these false ideas, to see the signs that He was performing with Biblical clarity, and to embrace Him as the Messiah required a work of God in the souls of men. To hear the voice of Christ in this way is to be given to Christ by the Father, such that no one is powerful enough to steal such a person away from Jesus. Those who are given to Him are His sheep. They hear His voice, they know Him, and they follow Him. The Father’s purposes are identical with the purposes of the Son. Just as Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.” Here we have the great mystery of the prophets plainly revealed, that the Servant of the Lord, the Christ, would actually be the Lord Himself, that Christ and God are one.

This clarity was not universally appreciated. They picked up stones to stone Him, though He had done many good works from the Father. They claimed that He, being a man, made Himself God, and that the anger that they felt against Him and their desire to even kill Him was righteous indignation, and a zeal for the honor of the Lord. Jesus then quoted from the Scriptures exposing their hypocrisy, since the Bible itself used the term “gods” to speak of people in positions of authority. If that kind of word was acceptable to use for important human beings, what about the pre-existent Son of God whom the Father had set apart and sent into the world?

The issue was not really a defense of the honor of God, but a deep hatred for God and His Anointed One. Yet there were many who did believe in Him, and many have believed in Him over the centuries. We have found Him to be the Christ, the Son of God, God Himself, the Door to Heaven, and our Good Shepherd. We are blessed to be His sheep. We have come to hear His voice in the Scriptures, and we follow Him.