“I am the door, by me if any man enter it he shall be saved.”
―John 10
“O God, through Christ, the living way,
My Father and my God,
So near, and I so far astray,
Brought nigh Thee by His blood.”
YES, Christ is the door to the Supper, the only way of blessing for sinful men, He said so Himself. “I am the door,” and again, “I am the way, the truth and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” John chapter 10 and 14. The words have been so often repeated and become so familiar that they seem to have lost their force and meaning; may the Holy Spirit of God put fresh unction and power into them for every one of us today.
Some people seem to think that God ought to have opened a dozen ways into His blessing, so that they could have chosen the one that suited them the best; they turn from the blessing because they do not like the way to it, but there is none other. This is said both clearly and conclusively in Peter’s words, when, filled with the Holy Ghost, he addressed the Christ-rejecting leaders of the Jewish nation. “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given amongst men, whereby we must be saved.” Acts 4:1212Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. (Acts 4:12). God has bound up the blessing of sinners with the glory of His Son and never will one of them be saved apart from Him. The great Servant who has come from heaven to compel the needy into God’s feast of blessing will compel them only through this new and living way―Christ. There is no room for argument, no other way of blessing is possible either in time or eternity. God has spoken, and His word is final.
We should rejoice that this is so, for Christ Jesus the Lord is both accessible and attractive and most suitable to sinful men. Multitudes can bear witness to this, and it is this that the Bible means when it says, “He is gracious.” The four Gospels have been written that we might have no doubt about this. They show the Lord to us in a fourfold and complete way, and are well calculated to meet and win the most callous heart. They tell us that when the disciples would have driven the children away, He drew them to the warmth of His own heart and blessed them, and they were not afraid of Him and did not flee from Him. They tell us of the leper who came to Him, and was not repulsed. If he had come to Peter he would have cried, “Don’t come near me,” and John would have said, “Keep your distance,” but Jesus had compassion on him and stretched forth His hand and touched him, and he, poor wretch, had not been touched for years, and the touch of that compassionate hand must have healed his stricken soul as truly as those words of power healed the plague of his body.
These Gospels tell us how He wept over Jerusalem, the city that hated Him and was to murder Him, as He foresaw its doom, and how tears of divine sympathy flowed down His cheeks when He saw the sorrow of two of His friends weeping for their dead brother; for foes and friends He wept alike, and His tears were the proof of an impartial, invincible love.
But it is His cross that makes Him so irresistibly attractive, “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men.” He was crucified; the Gospels tell us of this; and who can read that four times told story and remain unmoved! John the Apostle who stood by the cross, gives it to us in the fewest words. He tells us what he saw and heard: the cry, “I thirst,” the triumphant word “It is finished”; the thorn-crowned head bowed in death; the side pierced with the soldier’s spear, and the flowing blood and water. Of all this he was a witness, and he says, “He that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.” John 20:35. Alas that the record should have been made in vain for so many!
Let us hear what John Bunyan can tell us of the effect of a sight of the cross. “Now I saw in my dream that the highway up which Christian was to go was fenced on either side by a wall, and that wall was called Salvation, Isaiah 26:11In that day shall this song be sung in the land of Judah; We have a strong city; salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks. (Isaiah 26:1). Up this way therefore did burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty, because of the load on his back. He ran thus until he came to a place somewhat ascending: and upon that place stood a Cross, and a little below it in the bottom a sepulcher. So I saw in my dream, that just as Christian came up with the Cross, his burden loosed off from his shoulders, and fell from his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do, till it came to the mouth of the sepulcher, where it fell in and I saw it no more.
“Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a merry heart, He hath given the rest by His sorrow, and life by His death. Then he stood awhile to look and to wonder: for it was very surprising to him that the sight of the Cross should thus ease him of his burden. He looked therefore, and looked again, even till the springs that were in his head sent the waters down his cheeks... Then Christian gave three leaps of joy, and went on singing―
“Blest Cross! blest Sepulcher! blest rather be
The Man that there was put to shame for me.”
In this way did the pilgrim pass through the door into God’s everlasting feast.
And let us listen to John Newton. He had got as far from God as a man out of hell could, and in the hold of a fast-sinking ship, when all hope had been abandoned, he cried to God for mercy, and saw as in a vision the Saviour on the cross, and prostrate at His feet he was saved, and afterward wrote.
“I saw One hanging on a tree,
In agonies of blood,
Who fixed His eyes of love on me
As near His cross I stood.
That look of love and sorrow said:
My life for thee I give;
This blood is for thy ransom paid,
I die that thou mayest live!
O never till my latest breath
Can I forget that look;
It seemed to charge me with His death,
Though not a word He spoke.
That look of love and sorrow said:
My life for thee I give;
This blood is for thy ransom paid,
I die that thou mayest live.”
That was the way that John Newton entered into the blessing, and he could not forget it, nor did he intend that anyone else should forget it after his death, as one who has written of him has said, for he gave instructions that the only epitaph on his grave should be,
JOHN NEWTON,
Clerk,
Once an Infidel and Libertine,
A servant of slaves in Africa,
Was, by the mercy of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ,
Preserved, Restored, Pardoned,
And appointed to preach the Faith
He had so long labored to destroy.
And if I may be permitted to humbly put myself alongside these men, who were great sinners, greatly saved, I will tell you the way that I found the door to the Feast. I was a convicted and repentant sinner, feeling deeply my need of the Saviour, and a servant of the Lord put his arm round me and said, “You’ll trust Him tonight, won’t you, dear?” I knew who he meant when he said, “You’ll trust HIM,” and I answered, “Yes.” He said, “Let us sing,
“‘Tis done, the great transaction’s done,
I am my Lord’s and He is mine;
He drew me and I followed on,
Glad to confess His Name divine,
Happy day, happy day,
When Jesus washed my sins away.”
Why did I, on the following day, print the Name JESUS in capital letters, and put it where I could see it constantly? I had found the way to the great Supper, I had passed through the door of salvation―It was Jesus Himself, and He was not only the way into the Feast, He was the Feast itself. He was all in all.
If John the Apostle, and John Bunyan, and John Newton, and many another John, through infinite mercy found this one way of blessing open for them and if they entered in with gratitude and joy, why not you? The door is open still, and this great Saviour’s words are still the hope of despairing souls, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” and “Him that cometh to Me, I will in no wise cast out.” The multitude that no man can number, who shall sit down at God’s Feast, have every one of them entered by this one way: there is none other.