NOTES for Joh 10:27-38
Anyone who has tried to be a Christian knows that it is a difficult thing. We would very much like baptism, like a fairy-tale spell, to make us good and inaccessible to sin. We would very much like the admonition "you are baptized with a second baptism," appointed for confession, to be unnecessary. The power of love that the Holy Spirit gives a person is great, but the degree of our freedom is great as well. Therefore the need to make a choice remains with us forever, and this choice is hard, because the Lord calls us too to love as He loves, that is, by giving our life.
And therefore Christ's promise is so important for us: "...no one is able to snatch My sheep out of the Father's hand". Like the promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church, it opens for us the possibility of relying on Christ without fear and trusting Him. In Orthodox language, this means that salvation consists not in matching some given parameters, but in being together with Jesus.