THE SPHERE FOR THE SHEEP AND THE “DOOR” INTO IT
John 10: 2-4, 7-9, 11, 14-18, 27-38
I would begin by saying that the division between chapters 9 and 10 of this gospel is not correct. The paragraph begins in chapter 9: 35 and goes on without a break to the end of chapter 10. I wish to call your attention to chapter 9: 35. I am increasingly impressed that in reading Scripture it is most important to take account of the Lord Jesus Christ as He presents Himself in each passage. It is evident that He presents Himself in this Scripture as the Son of God, and if He is not thus apprehended, the meaning of all that comes out in chapter 10 can never be understood. In John’s writings the Lord is presented in two lights—as Christ and as the Son of God. When we come to the close of this gospel, chapter 20: 31, we read, “that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life in his name”. In this portion of Scripture, He is clearly presented as the Son of God. Previously the Jews had asked Him, “How long dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly”. He had been presented to them as the Christ, but they had not believed. He does not repeat what He told them; the Lord never encourages unbelief—that part of the testimony is, so to speak, not repeated. So now the Lord presents Himself as the Son of God: I wish to emphasise this particularly, for the Son of God has a wonderful place. In the first Epistle of John 5:11 we read. “And this is the witness [or record], that God has given to us eternal life; and this life is in his Son”. We cannot understand anything about eternal life apart from this.
I want now to speak a little about the sheep of Christ and to point out the sphere that belongs to them. They occupy that sphere, there is that about them which marks them out as His sheep: they hear His voice, and the voice they hear is the voice of the Son of God: and He knows them. So the sheep of Christ are marked as being known in a particular way by Him. They are known by Him personally, individually, and they follow Him; they follow the Son of God. His path is a wonderful path, a peculiar path, and the sheep are found following Him in it, and He says, “I give unto them eternal life”: eternal life is given by Him to the sheep—to those who follow Him as the Son of God, and who hear His voice. Eternal life is the characteristic blessing of the sheep. And in verses 14, 15 we find that this characteristic blessing of the sheep lies in knowledge. “I am the good shepherd; and I know those that are mine, and am known of those that are mine, as the Father knows me and I know the Father”: this knowledge is the characteristic blessing of Christ’s sheep. Then in verse 28 eternal life is given to the sheep as security. “I give them life eternal; and they shall never perish, and no one shall seize them out of my hand”. There is perfect security there from every form of opposition or power of evil. No one is able to pluck them out of His hand. I do not apprehend that security is spoken of here for our comfort, but let me tell you, in a day like this we do need the comfort of it. Absolute security is guaranteed, “they shall never perish”. The sheep are in the hand of the Son of God—a place of greater security than any you could possibly conceive, and the result of being there is—they do not “perish”.
Now I want to speak a little as to the sphere of the sheep. Many have difficulty to adjust in their souls what belongs to them down here and what belongs to them in heaven. They connect eternal life with heaven instead of earth. The sphere of the sheep, then, in the first place, is connected with the truth of Jesus as the Son of God. You get the revelation; that is—the way God has revealed Himself in Him. The Son of God having been here, there has been the revelation of God—the only true God—and of what the Son of God has brought in by the revelation of Him. The incarnation becomes increasingly precious to me. A wonderful sphere has been formed down here, to be entered into while we are on earth, though it is not of earth. It is no question of heaven. We know, of course, and rejoice in it that we all—all Christ’s sheep, are going there; but God has not come out in the revelation of Himself in heaven. No! the wonderful thing is that God has revealed Himself down here in the blessed Person of His Son, and there is a sphere on God’s side where He has come out. That is the sphere open and available to us. A wonderful thought—a sphere down here into which the sheep are entitled to enter. I fail to see how it could be connected with heaven. It is not earthly, but it is for us while we are on earth. In this chapter the “one flock” is the great point. God has come out in revelation; He has come out in a Man—in the only-begotten Son, and in the revelation of Himself has formed a sphere down here, though outside all here, and it is ours to enter into it. It is the characteristic blessing of the sheep, and it lies in the knowledge of the Father and the Son. Is it possible to have that knowledge down here? Yes; not the knowledge of divine Persons in the Godhead, but in the sphere where the Spirit of God has come out, and you can enter into that sphere here, and now. The knowledge is, of course, in different measure to the knowledge between the Father and the Son, but it is the same kind or character of knowledge as that between the Father and the Son as Man down here. The Lord says, “and am known of those that are mine, as the Father knows me and I know the Father”. Surely if we were able to take in all that this involves our souls would be exercised as to how far we enter into that sphere, and if we know experimentally this—the characteristic blessing of the sheep. When the Lord Jesus Christ was down here, He was in relation to the Father as the only true God, and we are entitled to know the Son of God as the Father knew Him down here, and as He as a Man knew the Father. This same kind of knowledge is open to us, but not that which belongs to those relationships between divine Persons; that cannot be known or entered into by us. Incarnation has brought Him into revelation, has brought Him, so to speak, within our range.
In the end of chapter 9 the Lord heard they had cast the man who had been born blind out of the Jewish fold, and having found him He said to him, “Dost thou believe on the Son of God?” and He goes on to unfold what is really the truth of Christianity.
We read in John 1, “In the beginning”. That is not the outset—the creation; it is the starting-point; it is incarnation. Mr Raven said that the truth of incarnation is entering into a condition in which He was not before10. There was no change of Person—it is not a term of personality, but a term of condition. The sphere of the sheep is connected with the thought of the revelation of God as the only true God. In that one Person—Jesus Christ, the sent One—two things are perfectly expressed—the perfect revelation of the Father, and Himself—the Son of God—the perfect answer to that revelation.
There are three points in which God’s people are poorly established: (1) the place the Son of God as Man has taken to God; (2) the new place man has been brought into God-ward; (3) the knowledge of the Father God-ward, and that also involves the knowledge of “Jesus Christ” as the sent One, and what characterised Him as the Father’s sent One. He has not been “sent” to heaven. He was sent to earth. When He says of the sheep, “I give unto them eternal life”, what does He give them? The knowledge of the Father as He, as man, knows the Father, and as the Father knows Him, and this is that wonderful sphere—the sphere of eternal life. He is “the door”, and entering in by Him involves three things: (1) salvation, “he shall be saved”, (2) liberty, (3) pasture—all that you need to nourish and support you in the life into which you have entered. All this is reached by Christ as “the door”. But mark! the sphere is, as I have said, down here, but it is necessarily an out-of-the-world sphere, connected with Jesus as the Son of God. “Who is he that gets the victory over the world, but he that believes that Jesus is the Son of God”, John 5: 5.
Well, the Lord presents Himself to the man who had been blind as “the Son of God”. The man gladly believed on Him, and did Him homage. He submitted his whole being to Him as the Son of God. That is how we “enter in”. We begin with Jesus as the Christ—that is the beginning. Then we recognise Him as the Son of God. Many are what I call doorstep Christians—they remain on the doorstep of Christianity and never go in. They believe in Jesus as the Christ, but do they believe on Him as the Son of God? The sphere where He is known as the Son of God is an out-of-the-world sphere, and if the sheep know Jesus as the Son of God they have entered that sphere, and it is the sphere of eternal life, of salvation, liberty and pasture. He is the door (if one may so say) of egress and of ingress. His death was the door out from the Jewish fold. But now He is the door in—for ingress. It is, “If any man enter in”, etc. We have the Lord in resurrection as the door of ingress, so in verse 9 it is the Son of God in resurrection. He is marked out as the Son of God by resurrection from the dead. His resurrection took place down here. It did not take Him to heaven, and when our resurrection takes place it does not take us to heaven. We await the rapture for that, but I wish to emphasise that while this sphere which I have spoken of is down here, it is on the other side of His resurrection. We stand connected with the purpose of God; the sheep of Christ, though here in flesh, are not seen in flesh in that out-of-the-world sphere because it is connected with Him as the Son of God risen from the dead, and that brings in the characteristic blessing of the sheep which is eternal life, and which consists in the knowledge of the Father as “the only true God”, &c.
My conviction is—we are near the close of things here. Everything will get worse and worse. Many saints have asked me recently if I think the rapture is near. I think it is. But have we soberly weighed the condition of things here? They are now exceedingly difficult and trying for many of the Lord’s people, and they will become increasingly so. When the rapture takes place how we shall rejoice to be with Him, but things here are becoming so bad there will presently be no place for us here. When Enoch was taken the state of things here was awful—wickedness on every hand just before the flood. So God took him. But listen! you are in the hand of the Son of God and in the Father’s hand, and you “shall never perish”. If we are settling ourselves comfortably in our circumstances here, this passage loses its force for us, but I believe the days are not far off when every statement of the Lord in regard to our security will be realised. “No one shall seize them out of my hand”. You are perfectly safe in the hand of the Son of God. What a wonderful place that is to be in! “No one”—none can touch you there. Is the wolf coming? You are perfectly secure and safely guaranteed against “perishing”; you have the blessed sense of security from all that transpires here.
But it is not only security. The sheep have the wonderful privilege of knowing the Father in the kind of way that Christ as Man knew Him. I wish I could open it up to you. Oh, to know Him now as the Father knows Him, with the same kind of knowledge! and the sheep are characterised by this knowledge.
In heaven there will be no question of “perishing”, and the term “eternal life” will have no force. Let us receive the truth as Scripture presents it. We are finite creatures now, and we shall remain so all through eternity. There is no confusion in Scripture. God will ever remain God, and the creature will remain the creature. In 1 Corinthians 15 we get the end of the mediatorial kingdom of God the Father. The Son delivers it up to Him, and Father, Son and Holy Ghost become all in all. That is the end—the final.
Now I have only a simple, practical word to add—Where are we, beloved, in relation to all this? Have we the light of Him as the Son of God? It is a wonderful thing to know Him as the Christ, but it is still more wonderful to know Him as the Son of God. Have we that light, and are we in the faith of Him as the Son of God? I might again refer in this connection to the Epistle of John—“Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God” (1 John 5: 1); but when you come to believing that He is the Son of God you are carried on farther: “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?”, vv 4, 5. Oh, beloved, where are we? Have we availed ourselves of Him as the “door”, “I am the door”? It is not a shut door; it is an open door. “If any one enters in by me he shall be saved, and shall go in and shall go out and shall find pasture”. It has all been made available in His resurrection and ascension. Well! it is in the measure that we “enter in” through Him into the knowledge of God, that salvation, security, liberty and pasture are made good to us. There is a boundless and inexhaustible provision for us. We “find pasture”, and how wonderful is the character of the pasture! There is for us the “bread of God come down from heaven”. We really feed upon the knowledge of God.
I feel that there is everything to encourage us. If we know Him in the wonderful way He presents Himself to us here—“I am the door”, we shall prove the truth of His words; it will lift us above the discouraging elements, that we may see all around us, and it will set us in the joy of salvation, in the joy of liberty, and in the satisfaction of enjoyed pasture—rich pasture—from the hands of God.
May the Lord supplement and bless these fragmentary remarks, and make good to our souls what it is to be the sheep of Christ.