I’ve always been familiar with and often heard tossed around the second part of John 10:10, but not sure that I’d ever really dug into all of the context before and after it (coincidentally, it’s today’s verse of the day on biblegateway.com.)
You may be familiar… “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” Absolutely Jesus did exactly that, no questions asked. And while this verse is often used as a loving, universal catch-all, the irony in the surrounding verses is in the narrow analogy. The one gate. The only gate. Jesus describes and owns a singular sacrificial system, states he is the only way to abundant life now and everlasting, and calls anything otherwise murderous and destructive thievery. So shocking and offensive was this narrow message that in the remaining versus of chapter 10, he is dubbed a demon, insane, worthy of stoning, a blasphemer, and sought for arrest.
He did come to give life and abundantly. A loving, kind, gracious Savior “who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). But there is only one gate. And it is narrow. “For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” (Matthew 7:14).
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