Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
I must confess that I was not looking at the passage as I spoke. Given Igzy's comments, it is even more evident that it is not about pastors, or even clergy, per se, but of those who would come to take the place of the Christ. In any case, our attempts to apply it to pastors, clergy, even a hierarchy are misguided because that does not appear to be what Jesus was talking about. He wasn't even talking about churches.
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I'm still stuck on who the porter is. The metaphor is all over the place. Jesus is the gate yet enters the gate. I think it was a typical Pharisee metaphor of those days. Jesus was likely a Jewish Pharisee.
At any rate I think we can say Jesus was talking about something very glorious, as in life more abundantly. And that the gloriousness was larger than any groups we can form. Larger than evangelicalism, fundamentalism, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, etc. et al.
And that is what we should touch. Cuz when we touch that we transcend all of man's groupings ... and break out of our human tribalism ... into something glorious and universal ... out of the sheep pens into the wild, with the shepherd ... to the green grass ... not hay and such in the sheep pens.
In John 10 Jesus painted a metaphorical image speaking of something much more glorious than came before, and more glorious than all of men's groupings. The shepherd calls the sheep out of the pens. The sheep hear his voice, leave the pen, and follow the shepherd. Where? They don't know where. That's why they follow the shepherd. In the pens, or out of the pens, the sheep belong to the shepherd, and they know it, and know his voice. Sheep are followers....
I think there's tons to mine from John 10. Even just the sheep factor alone. Sheep are funny critters. Send a herd over a fence, start 'em jumping it, and remove the fence, and all the rest will continue to jump the fence that's no longer there. Funny superstitious sheep. They jump a ghost ... something unseen but to them must be there, or the sheep in front of them wouldn't have jumped it.
How many Christians, or humans for that matter, do that?