7 Therefore Jesus said again, “Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.
8 All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them.
9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture.
10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy;
I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
John 10:7-11
Dearly beloved,
Greetings in the Name of our Lord and Saviour, the Gate of life and our good Shepherd, Jesus Christ!
What a joy for us to know Christ more and more! Amen?
From addressing our ability (and desire) to see and believe in Him (John 9), our Lord Jesus moves now to addressing our ability (and willingness) to hear His voice and follow Him.
In John’s gospel, Christ’s seven “I AM” declarations about Himself changed the world - in transcending earthly time and space into the heavenly reality - through divine metaphors which authenticates His divine nature as the Son of God, and expresses His salvific and redeeming love relationship toward the world.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is God – in the flesh! It is unbelievable, but it is true. And He has come to ‘seek and save the lost’ (Luke 19:10), so that we may have ‘life, and have it to the full’. (John 10:10)
Christ is the ‘righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, "BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH." (Romans 1:17)
Paul, the ex-Pharisee and now, Apostle serving under the Kingship of Jesus Christ, was monumentally clear about the Lord Jesus’ salvific relationship with the world when he taught, ‘This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe’. (Romans 3:22)
Jesus said, “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved.”
In other words, Christ was stating simply that there are no other means to salvation.
It is only through Christ, that we may be saved; for Jesus did not declare “I am a gate”, but rather unambiguously, “I am THE GATE!”
CHRIST IS THE ONLY WAY BY WHICH WE ENTER AND MAY BE SAVED! (Psalm 118:20)
Question for you – how many of you are feeling uncomfortable at this very moment?
For how many of us are our ‘worldly’ sensibilities assaulted and offended at the same time? Shouldn't we be more 'sensitive' to the world around us?
Before you emote further out of 'righteous indignation', allow me continue to make the biblical case.
Jesus IS the only means by which we receive eternal life.
Remember John 3:16? Open your bible and read it for yourself - over and over again if you have to.
There is no other way.
That is our gospel message – the way to God’s kingdom is exclusive to Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world!
When we think of ‘only way’ in reference to ‘heaven’, and feel uncomfortable, what is happening is that we have allowed a certain worldview - post-modernism - to infect and manifest in our core belief system.
Post-modernism – which is the prevailing tenet of our age today, and defined broadly as distrust, suspicion and skepticism of divine-narratives and concepts of human nature – has forcefully invaded the Christian mind with subtle notions of ‘tolerance.’
To compound the crisis, many Christians have mistaken ‘tolerance’ for ‘acceptance’.
Understand this - God accepts who we are, and what we have done; but He does not tolerate who and what we have become.
God hates sin, and hates the sin in our lives.
Man continues to reject Christ, because spiritual blindness and deafness has resulted in our inability to fully realize the extent of sin in our lives, and how blind, deaf and paralyzed we have become, because of sin.
Though God cannot tolerate the sin in our lives, He continues to love us, and love us He did - through His Son, Jesus Christ.
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)
C.S. Lewis in his masterful work, ‘Mere Christianity’, explains that our faith crisis is really due to our utter lack of conviction and resolve to know the truth, purpose and condition of our existence, and to decide who Christ really is.
“That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God”
That’s it. Plain and simple.
We remain blind, deaf and paralyzed because we are determined to be undecided and apathetic about who Christ is.
We remain blind, deaf and paralyzed because we are determined to be undecided and apathetic about the real condition of our lives, and that which we truly need in our lives - forgiveness of our sins and deliverance from the bondages of shame, guilt and death.
At the very core, that is the worldview today.
How sad, and tragic.
And our determination to be undecided and apathetic is reinforced by the current worldly-sensibilities of post-modernism, which at its root, advocates false - and outright wrong - notions of tolerance and acceptance.
As a disciple of Jesus Christ, it must be natural and intuitive for us to embrace the existential and exclusive reality that Christ alone is ‘The Gate’, that Christ alone is ‘The Shepherd’, and that Christ alone is ‘The Way, The Truth and the Life’ (John 14:6)
The Lord Jesus does not give His disciples any contingency nor alternative, but to preach and live out their lives through exclusive faith in His death on the Cross at Calvary by which we receive salvation from our sins.
And here is the pinch, getting to heaven is not about ‘being good’, for deep down, we all know that even at our best, we are still inadequate.
In truth, we will never be good enough. If we think we can, we are deceiving ourselves. And in my experience, as would be yours, there is no arguing with one who is in self-denial.
Getting to heaven is not about ‘being good’, but being deemed ‘righteous’ by God. And the bible tells us that ‘this righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.’ Romans 3:22
Only through Jesus Christ!
There are many keys to living well, or living as a good person but inherently, what do we do with the sin in our lives?
Jesus did not say that He is not key to any superfluous accessories of earthly-life.
Jesus declared that He is the exclusive Gate for His Sheep in order that they may live life to the full and to eternity. He goes on to teach that His sheep hears His voice. What does that tell you? If we do not hear His voice? Who do we belong to? Certainly not to Jesus!
Our question remains, “Do you hear the voice of Christ, our Shepherd?”
Do you only choose to hear the voice of Christ above the din and distractions of the world?
Now, consider this… …
If your loved ones, family and friends do not, or cannot, or are unwilling to hear the voice of Christ, is it your job to make them hear?
Absolutely not!
You will not be able to make them see, or hear, what they refuse to see or hear.
But you can certainly live your life seeing and believing, hearing and following solely after Christ, our Shepherd. That is our role – to allow Christ the fullness of our lives, so that He may enter in and empower us to live life to the full.
Church, we have to stop toning down our gospel in order that God’s truth would sound more acceptable to the world.
We have to cease adjusting the gospel message and eradicating biblical standards to accommodate the sensitivities of the world.
We have to cease our reticence in proclaiming unequivocally that the Bible is the Word of God; in the certainty that all worldviews, religions and belief systems pertaining to the hope of salvation is categorically false.
Church, we must begin to actively and purposefully declare once again, the exclusive salvific work of our Lord Jesus and His existential truth-claim that He is the only way to GOD.
“Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)
Can these words be any clearer to us?
“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.” (John 3:36)
“It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed.
Jesus is“‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.’
Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:10-12)
Throughout the Word of God, we read that Christ is the only hope and salvation for the world. Only Christ can atone for our sin, and therefore, only Christ can offer us salvation unto God’s original destiny for us – eternal life.
“And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” (1 John 5:11-12)
God’s Word states the exclusive and existential truth that Jesus Christ is the only way to life itself.
The question I have for us is this, “Is God’s Word our word?”
Is God’s Word Your sole and absolutely source of information, integration, inspiration to living life?
Apart from Christ, we have no hope, no salvation, and no hope of salvation.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is the very essence of our faith.
His Kingdom ministry, death on the Cross, resurrection from the grave and ascension to His heavenly throne is the basis of our Christian life today and everyday.
Remember, the butcher drives the sheep towards the abattoir for their ultimate slaughter and death; the shepherd, on the other hand, leads his sheep towards pasture and water, for sustenance and life.
Don’t be driven by the butcher.
Be led by Jesus Christ, the good Shepherd who laid down His life for you.
Don’t be driven by the world’s sensitivities and proclivities into embarrassed silence, tragic accommodation or erroneous notions that salvation can come apart from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Be led by Jesus Christ, the good Shepherd who has come, so that you may have life and have it to the full.
“Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
May the Lord Jesus Christ be truly and solely, our All in all.
Shalom.
Let us pray.
Our Father in Heaven,
Hallowed be Your Name. Your Kingdom come, Your Will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
Grant us the strength and courage that we may be Your people who is uncompromising in our faith that “Salvation is found in no one else” apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son and our Saviour.
Grant us the wisdom to live out the reality that God, You have exalted Christ to the highest place and gave Him the Name that is above every name.
Grant us the audacity to live out the reality that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. (Ref: Philippians 2:10-11)
Grant us Your presence, purpose and power that we may live out and proclaim the exclusive and existential truth the Jesus Christ is indeed the Son of God, and our only hope of Salvation!
We know that we believe that Jesus is the Messiah, is because we are born of God, and that through Jesus, we have life. (Ref: 1 John 5)
Lord Jesus, may our words and actions always affirm Your divine uniqueness and Your role as Mankind’s only Saviour from human sin.
All these we ask and pray, in the Name above every name, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour. Amen.
8 All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them.
9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture.
10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy;
I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
John 10:7-11
Dearly beloved,
Greetings in the Name of our Lord and Saviour, the Gate of life and our good Shepherd, Jesus Christ!
What a joy for us to know Christ more and more! Amen?
From addressing our ability (and desire) to see and believe in Him (John 9), our Lord Jesus moves now to addressing our ability (and willingness) to hear His voice and follow Him.
In John’s gospel, Christ’s seven “I AM” declarations about Himself changed the world - in transcending earthly time and space into the heavenly reality - through divine metaphors which authenticates His divine nature as the Son of God, and expresses His salvific and redeeming love relationship toward the world.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is God – in the flesh! It is unbelievable, but it is true. And He has come to ‘seek and save the lost’ (Luke 19:10), so that we may have ‘life, and have it to the full’. (John 10:10)
Christ is the ‘righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, "BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH." (Romans 1:17)
Paul, the ex-Pharisee and now, Apostle serving under the Kingship of Jesus Christ, was monumentally clear about the Lord Jesus’ salvific relationship with the world when he taught, ‘This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe’. (Romans 3:22)
Jesus said, “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved.”
In other words, Christ was stating simply that there are no other means to salvation.
It is only through Christ, that we may be saved; for Jesus did not declare “I am a gate”, but rather unambiguously, “I am THE GATE!”
CHRIST IS THE ONLY WAY BY WHICH WE ENTER AND MAY BE SAVED! (Psalm 118:20)
Question for you – how many of you are feeling uncomfortable at this very moment?
For how many of us are our ‘worldly’ sensibilities assaulted and offended at the same time? Shouldn't we be more 'sensitive' to the world around us?
Before you emote further out of 'righteous indignation', allow me continue to make the biblical case.
Jesus IS the only means by which we receive eternal life.
Remember John 3:16? Open your bible and read it for yourself - over and over again if you have to.
There is no other way.
That is our gospel message – the way to God’s kingdom is exclusive to Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world!
When we think of ‘only way’ in reference to ‘heaven’, and feel uncomfortable, what is happening is that we have allowed a certain worldview - post-modernism - to infect and manifest in our core belief system.
Post-modernism – which is the prevailing tenet of our age today, and defined broadly as distrust, suspicion and skepticism of divine-narratives and concepts of human nature – has forcefully invaded the Christian mind with subtle notions of ‘tolerance.’
To compound the crisis, many Christians have mistaken ‘tolerance’ for ‘acceptance’.
Understand this - God accepts who we are, and what we have done; but He does not tolerate who and what we have become.
God hates sin, and hates the sin in our lives.
Man continues to reject Christ, because spiritual blindness and deafness has resulted in our inability to fully realize the extent of sin in our lives, and how blind, deaf and paralyzed we have become, because of sin.
Though God cannot tolerate the sin in our lives, He continues to love us, and love us He did - through His Son, Jesus Christ.
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)
C.S. Lewis in his masterful work, ‘Mere Christianity’, explains that our faith crisis is really due to our utter lack of conviction and resolve to know the truth, purpose and condition of our existence, and to decide who Christ really is.
“That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God”
That’s it. Plain and simple.
We remain blind, deaf and paralyzed because we are determined to be undecided and apathetic about who Christ is.
We remain blind, deaf and paralyzed because we are determined to be undecided and apathetic about the real condition of our lives, and that which we truly need in our lives - forgiveness of our sins and deliverance from the bondages of shame, guilt and death.
At the very core, that is the worldview today.
How sad, and tragic.
And our determination to be undecided and apathetic is reinforced by the current worldly-sensibilities of post-modernism, which at its root, advocates false - and outright wrong - notions of tolerance and acceptance.
As a disciple of Jesus Christ, it must be natural and intuitive for us to embrace the existential and exclusive reality that Christ alone is ‘The Gate’, that Christ alone is ‘The Shepherd’, and that Christ alone is ‘The Way, The Truth and the Life’ (John 14:6)
The Lord Jesus does not give His disciples any contingency nor alternative, but to preach and live out their lives through exclusive faith in His death on the Cross at Calvary by which we receive salvation from our sins.
And here is the pinch, getting to heaven is not about ‘being good’, for deep down, we all know that even at our best, we are still inadequate.
In truth, we will never be good enough. If we think we can, we are deceiving ourselves. And in my experience, as would be yours, there is no arguing with one who is in self-denial.
Getting to heaven is not about ‘being good’, but being deemed ‘righteous’ by God. And the bible tells us that ‘this righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.’ Romans 3:22
Only through Jesus Christ!
There are many keys to living well, or living as a good person but inherently, what do we do with the sin in our lives?
Jesus did not say that He is not key to any superfluous accessories of earthly-life.
Jesus declared that He is the exclusive Gate for His Sheep in order that they may live life to the full and to eternity. He goes on to teach that His sheep hears His voice. What does that tell you? If we do not hear His voice? Who do we belong to? Certainly not to Jesus!
Our question remains, “Do you hear the voice of Christ, our Shepherd?”
Do you only choose to hear the voice of Christ above the din and distractions of the world?
Now, consider this… …
If your loved ones, family and friends do not, or cannot, or are unwilling to hear the voice of Christ, is it your job to make them hear?
Absolutely not!
You will not be able to make them see, or hear, what they refuse to see or hear.
But you can certainly live your life seeing and believing, hearing and following solely after Christ, our Shepherd. That is our role – to allow Christ the fullness of our lives, so that He may enter in and empower us to live life to the full.
Church, we have to stop toning down our gospel in order that God’s truth would sound more acceptable to the world.
We have to cease adjusting the gospel message and eradicating biblical standards to accommodate the sensitivities of the world.
We have to cease our reticence in proclaiming unequivocally that the Bible is the Word of God; in the certainty that all worldviews, religions and belief systems pertaining to the hope of salvation is categorically false.
Church, we must begin to actively and purposefully declare once again, the exclusive salvific work of our Lord Jesus and His existential truth-claim that He is the only way to GOD.
“Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)
Can these words be any clearer to us?
“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.” (John 3:36)
“It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed.
Jesus is“‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.’
Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:10-12)
Throughout the Word of God, we read that Christ is the only hope and salvation for the world. Only Christ can atone for our sin, and therefore, only Christ can offer us salvation unto God’s original destiny for us – eternal life.
“And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” (1 John 5:11-12)
God’s Word states the exclusive and existential truth that Jesus Christ is the only way to life itself.
The question I have for us is this, “Is God’s Word our word?”
Is God’s Word Your sole and absolutely source of information, integration, inspiration to living life?
Apart from Christ, we have no hope, no salvation, and no hope of salvation.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is the very essence of our faith.
His Kingdom ministry, death on the Cross, resurrection from the grave and ascension to His heavenly throne is the basis of our Christian life today and everyday.
Remember, the butcher drives the sheep towards the abattoir for their ultimate slaughter and death; the shepherd, on the other hand, leads his sheep towards pasture and water, for sustenance and life.
Don’t be driven by the butcher.
Be led by Jesus Christ, the good Shepherd who laid down His life for you.
Don’t be driven by the world’s sensitivities and proclivities into embarrassed silence, tragic accommodation or erroneous notions that salvation can come apart from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Be led by Jesus Christ, the good Shepherd who has come, so that you may have life and have it to the full.
“Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
May the Lord Jesus Christ be truly and solely, our All in all.
Shalom.
Let us pray.
Our Father in Heaven,
Hallowed be Your Name. Your Kingdom come, Your Will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
Grant us the strength and courage that we may be Your people who is uncompromising in our faith that “Salvation is found in no one else” apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son and our Saviour.
Grant us the wisdom to live out the reality that God, You have exalted Christ to the highest place and gave Him the Name that is above every name.
Grant us the audacity to live out the reality that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. (Ref: Philippians 2:10-11)
Grant us Your presence, purpose and power that we may live out and proclaim the exclusive and existential truth the Jesus Christ is indeed the Son of God, and our only hope of Salvation!
We know that we believe that Jesus is the Messiah, is because we are born of God, and that through Jesus, we have life. (Ref: 1 John 5)
Lord Jesus, may our words and actions always affirm Your divine uniqueness and Your role as Mankind’s only Saviour from human sin.
All these we ask and pray, in the Name above every name, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour. Amen.