I Am the Door

The second step left a man holding on to a Person in the dark. That raises a fair question. If the one who has been born from above presses in with force, what is he pressing against? Is the kingdom a locked house whose door must be broken? Yeshua answered that question in the same chapter of John where He promised that no one would snatch His sheep out of His hand.

John 10:9 I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.

A Door That Is a Person

Two things stand out in this short verse.

The first is that a door is not a wall. A wall has to be climbed or broken through. A door is a way in that has been made on purpose and left open for those who are meant to come through it. When Yeshua calls Himself the door, He is not describing an obstacle that people must overpower. He is describing the way in that has already been provided. Nothing in the verse asks anyone to force it.

The second is that this door is not a thing but a Person. Yeshua does not say, “There is a door, and I will show you where it is.” He says, “I am the door; if anyone enters through Me.” The way into the kingdom is not a method, a ritual or a set of steps. It is Yeshua Himself. To enter through the door is to come through Him.

This keeps the forcing of Matthew 11:12 in its proper place. The one who has been born presses in, and he holds on. But what he holds on to is a Person, as Jacob held on to the man at the Jabbok. The door itself stands open.

He Will Be Saved

The verse also promises the one who enters that “he will be saved.” The verb is a passive. The one who enters does not save himself; he is saved. And the Greek verb is sozo, the same verb Matthew used when the angel told Joseph that the child would be called Yeshua, “for He will save His people from their sins.” Matthew wrote autos, “He Himself,” into that sentence, unfolding the yod at the front of the name. Here the same Yeshua says that whoever enters through Him will be saved. The name and the door say the same thing.

The rest of the verse describes the life that follows: the one who enters “will go in and out and find pasture.” The sheep that has come through the door is not shut in a pen and left there. It goes in and out under the care of the Shepherd and finds what it needs. The door is a way into life, not a gate into confinement.

How One Enters

If the door is open and is not to be forced, how does a person come through it? A short psalm gives the answer, a psalm whose heading in the YLV reads “A Psalm for thanksgiving.”

Psalm 100:3-4 Know that the LORD, he is God; he made us, and we are his—his people and the flock of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, his courts with praise; give thanks to him, bless his name.

Verse 3 calls God’s people “the flock of his pasture,” the same picture Yeshua used when He said that the one who enters through Him will “find pasture.” Then comes the line itself: “Enter his gates with thanksgiving.” The Hebrew word for thanksgiving here is todah (תּוֹדָה), the same word that stands in the psalm’s heading, and the rest of the line follows from it: his courts with praise, give thanks to him, bless his name. The psalm does not tell the worshipper to storm the gates or to prove himself at the threshold. It tells him to come in giving thanks.

What is asked at the door, then, is not force but thanks. Force has its place in the order, as the grip of one who will not let go of the Person he has met. But the entering itself is done with gratitude, because the way in has been opened by another.

Think of a guest who arrives at a house where a place has been prepared for him. The door is open and the host is waiting. The guest does not break the lock or argue his way past the servants. He comes in, and the right thing for him to say as he crosses the threshold is thank you. His thanks does not open the door. It is the fitting answer to a door that was already open.

Jacob’s Last Confession

Beside this psalm stands Jacob’s last confession.

Genesis 49:18 For your salvation (yeshuah יְשׁוּעָה yesh-oo'-aw) I wait, O LORD.

It is exactly what the door asks for. It is not a demand and not a bargain. It is a man turning to the LORD by name and confessing that what he has looked for all his life is the LORD’s own salvation. What Jacob waited for was not an idea but a Person, just as the door of John 10:9 is not a thing but a Person. At the end of his life, Jacob’s words about salvation were not a struggle but a confession, spoken to the One the salvation belonged to.

Waiting Forward, Looking Back

There is one difference between Jacob’s position and ours. Jacob waited forward, before the price was paid. We look back on a salvation already carried out: the Lamb has been slaughtered, and the purchase has been made by His blood.

That difference makes the thanksgiving at the door fuller, not weaker. Jacob gave his confession while still waiting. We come to the door after the price has been paid, and the door Himself is the One who paid it.

So the third step is clear. The one born from above, who holds on to the Person he has met, enters through the door who is that same Person, and he enters with thanks. Nothing in this step is earned. The door was opened by the One who is the door, and the one who enters “will be saved.”

But entering is not the end of the order. A door leads into a house, and those who come in are meant to stay. The last step is the one Yeshua spoke about on the night He was handed over, when He told His disciples what it means to remain in His love. And the grammar of that one verse sets His part and our part in a striking order.