Christ often “calls” Himself some inanimate object. At one time He is a stone, at another bread, then water; today He is a door. Each time He compares Himself with an object with which we deal almost constantly. Living without regular “contact” with a door is quite difficult nowadays: anyone who enters a building through an opening not intended for the purpose is a thief and a robber. Our Lord Jesus Christ is precisely the door through which we can enter the house of our heavenly Father. The way to God passes only through Him: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me,” the Lord will say a little later (John 14:6).

One can try to climb through windows or a chimney, or dig a tunnel—but why? Perhaps one can take roundabout ways to God, chase after some “special grace,” try to make oneself out to be something, and pretend that we ourselves can do at least something for our own salvation—but why? Why, when the way is straight? “Make His paths straight” (Matt. 3:3).

Straight does not mean easy. Everything will not instantly become better as if by the wave of a magic wand. But the essential thing is that the Lord “calleth His own sheep by name, and leadeth them out” (John 10:3). He will lead us, blind sheep, “by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them” (Isa. 42:16).

Why climb over the fence when the door is open? Perhaps for fear of being turned away at the door—but then, even after “climbing over,” you will be asked to leave. Or perhaps out of mischief, as in childhood, when it was fun to climb through a window rather than obey tiresome rules of conduct. But mischief is out of place here: matters of the utmost seriousness are at stake.

Behind the denial of Christ there usually lurks a desire to manage without Him, as well as the self-confident notion that one’s own strength is sufficient for a righteous life. If we succumb to the temptation of self-sufficiency, we may fail to notice that what seemed to be “our own strength and resources” is in fact neither our own nor strength at all, but a delusion breathed upon us from a murky source.

Therefore, however harsh the words about the thieves and robbers who came before may seem—and they may also be applied to many who came later—they are just. Leaders and false prophets for whom people are merely a means of carrying out their own plans constantly send them to their deaths, and for now there is no end in sight.

But the good shepherd leads the flock not in order to shear and slaughter it, but to bring it to good pasture. Every comparison has its limits, including the comparison of people to a flock; yet let us not forget that each of us is unique to the Good Shepherd and that He knows each one by name.

As we can see, many of the Pharisees were still ready to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah. They correctly understood His hints about His messiahship, and now they wanted only one thing from Him: that He finally declare Himself openly to be the Messiah. But He does not do this, because He knows perfectly well what "being the Messiah" means for these people, and He was not going to become that kind of Messiah - His plans did not include raising a rebellion, beginning a holy war against the Romans, or becoming the ruler of an earthly state.

Instead, He again and again explains to those around Him what the Kingdom He brought into the world is. And He speaks of the main thing that forms the basis of the Kingdom's life by His own example: to live in the Kingdom means to give one's life to God in order then to receive it back from His hands. And the Savior's own path, His death and Resurrection, is a remarkable example of this.

According to the laws of our untransformed world, even the Messiah, bearing in Himself the fullness of God and the fullness of the Kingdom, can die - although, unlike us, death is not a natural inevitability for Him. And when He is killed, He dies like any human being. But His life belongs to the Father; He lives not by His own life, but by the Father's life, which was given to Him by the Father in all its fullness. And in the Kingdom, where there is no place for death, He receives it again from the Father in all its fullness - completely unexpectedly for His enemies, who thought that now, once He had died, everything was over.

And the path of every Christian, every inhabitant of the Kingdom, resembles the path of the One who brought the Kingdom into the world. Of course, God has not given any of us, as He gave Him, the capacity to contain the life of the Kingdom in all its fullness. But the Kingdom is open to us, and one can enter it only by giving up the life that God gave us at birth, so that there in the Kingdom He may return it to us transformed. This new life will no longer be part of our world - a world being transformed but not yet transformed - but part of the Kingdom; it will become the first step on the path of our transformation, the first step on the path to salvation.