I am the Door of the Sheep

BY Guest Writer

Text: John 10:1-10, Acts 4:8-12, Romans 5:1-5

This is part of a 10-day series on the person of Christ in the 2016 Lent study.

I’ve always wanted to be on a game show. I know it’s silly, but it’s true. Growing up, I watched shows like The Price Is Right, Family Feud, or Wheel of Fortune. The shows’ potential prizes were typically hidden behind closed doors. And so there I’d sit, enthralled, wondering at what might be waiting for the contestants just behind Door Number One: a new stove, a new car… a free trip to the Bahamas?!

Life outside of a game show offers lots of doors, too, though the prospects of what might lie beyond them aren’t always a safe bet. There are countless doors before us, offering—even promising—something shiny, something new, something better than what we presently have.

If our hope is tethered to what this world can offer, we too easily fall for its lies promising “more.” Especially when life feels too difficult, it’s tempting to look for some version of that island escape. But what Jesus offers is something amazing, a better door. He offers Himself.

Jesus said:

“I assure you: I am the door of the sheep. . . I am the door.
If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture.”
-John 10:7,9

Jesus Christ is the door through which all who believe must enter. He is the Shepherd who offers abundant life to His sheep. “A thief comes to steal and kill and destroy,” Jesus said. “I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance” (John 10:10).

What is this abundant life found in Jesus? It is a life of peace with God (Romans 5:1). It is access to God by faith—a prize we don’t have to work for to get or make an educated guess to keep (Ephesians 2:8). When we enter through the Door who is Jesus Christ, we can stand confident, secure, and without shame (Ephesians 3:12, Hebrews 4:16). We are sheep, but we don’t have to be sheepish with our heavenly Father. We have access to eternal hope and joy in the presence of God, through Jesus the Son.  

Not only is Jesus the door through which we enter, He is the very cornerstone of our faith. Peter said to the high priests in Jerusalem, “This Jesus is the stone rejected by you builders, which has become the cornerstone. There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people, and we must be saved by it” (Acts 4:11-12, emphasis mine). Even the high priests must enter God’s presence through the Door—through Christ!

This life will have trials, this we know. What’s hidden behind the doors we encounter will not always be what we hoped. But there is one Door we can always trust, one Door that leads to the abundant life we long for. In Jesus Christ alone “we have been declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God.” In Him we have a hope that will not disappoint! Because of Jesus, “God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Romans 5:1-5).

Unmerited forgiveness, eternal peace, and lavish love—that is the abundant life we have when we enter through the Door of the Sheep.

This is the door I want to go through. No other door compares.

Trillia Newbell is the author of Fear and Faith: Finding the Peace Your Heart Craves (2015) and United: Captured by God’s Vision for Diversity (2014). Her forthcoming book Enjoy will publish in Spring 2017. She writes on issues of faith, family, and diversity, and is Director of Community Outreach for the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. For fun, she enjoys group fitness, cycling, and listening to a variety of music. Trillia is married to her best friend, Thern, and they reside with their two children near Nashville, Tennessee.