John Chapter 10

John 10. "I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved." Jesus boldly proclaims his ability to grant eternal life in this chapter, and takes it to another level: he calls all others who make a similar claim "thieves and robbers." This may be his most difficult teaching for people to accept in the 21st century, because he denies all other routes to God except himself. There is a general effort today to pin the ugly label of narrow-mindedness on the church, and exempt Jesus himself from such archaic ideas. But the idea didn't originate with the church, it originated with Jesus.

Jesus distinguishes himself from every other religious leader, prophet or guru. He separates them into two groups: thieves and hired hands. The thieves don't even believe their own message; they're merely using faith as a way to manipulate people and take advantage of them. The hired hands are sincere enough, they just don't have as much invested in the sheep (that would be us) as Jesus the Good Shepherd does. The Shepherd owns the sheep and loves the sheep, is willing to do anything for the sheep. The hired hand, while sincere and hard working, is still ultimately in it for himself or herself, not us. The hired hand may care, but only up to a point.

Jesus is the only sane spiritual leader in history who claimed to be God. He is the only one who claimed to love the entire world and be willing to give everything to save the world. He is the only one who claimed to be the way to eternal life, rather than merely knowing the way or pointing the way. He did not claim, as almost all prophets and gurus do, to bring a message from Heaven; he claimed that he was the message, and heaven was coming to earth in him. There will be even more ways Jesus will distinguish himself, but these alone are substantial. Name one: Mohamed, Buddha, Krishna, Vishnu, Moses, Zeus, Gandhi, Marx...fill in the blank with whatever name you like. None of them made the claims Jesus did, because none of them could live up to the claims Jesus made. And none of them, not one, claimed to love every individual person with their entire being the way Jesus did, to be exclusively motivated by love for people.

Jesus is not bashing other religions. He is saying that he is the fulfillment of every spiritual desire any person has ever had, whether they grew up Hindu or practiced astral projection or were Baptist. Jesus isn't expressing a preference of one religion over another: all people need him just the same. He even mentions people outside his Jewish tradition in verse 16: "I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them in also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd." Jesus is not just hijacking Judaism, he's making himself the fulfillment of every religion on earth.

I've always viewed the visit of the Magi as foreshadowing this. It's a very peculiar event, these eastern mystics--basically pagan stargazers from Iraq--who come looking for Jesus, led to him by a star. What's the purpose? God is using even their worship of the stars to lead them to Jesus. While their methods may be a bit off base, they're listening for the right voice, and the sheep know the voice of the Good Shepherd when they hear it.

Several of our Core Beliefs affirm this: see Trinity, Humanity, and Salvation by Grace.