I Am the Door

The scriptures use many evocative names to describe the Savior and His power in our lives.  He is the bread of life (John 6:48).  He is the bright and morning star (Revelation 22:16).  He is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending (Revelation 1:8).  He is the light and the life of the world (3 Nephi 11:11).  He is the good shepherd (John 10:11).  He is the Lamb of God (John 1:29).  All of these are powerful images of the majesty, goodness, and glory of the Son of God.  So it seems perhaps a little out of place for Him to use a very commonplace object in another metaphor for Himself.  In the same discourse in which He declared Himself the good shepherd, He also stated, “I am the door of the sheep.”  He repeated again in case we missed it saying, “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out” (John 10:7, 9).  So the Savior who is light and life and nourishment is also a simple door.  To be a door, a piece of wood or some other inanimate object built by man, does not seem to be a very flattering description—so why does He use this to describe Himself?

                I believe there are several things we can learn from this metaphor about the Savior.  First of all, a door is an essential aspect of nearly every building, home, or dwelling place, no matter the culture, the climate, the people, or the technology available.  Doors allow privacy, they allow protection, and they allow entrance into sheltered places.  People need doors—there is no getting around that.  In the same way, all people everywhere need the Savior, and though they may not recognize that need for Him or pay any attention to it (like they might overlook their dependence on doors) He is still an integral part of their lives.  In the sermon Jesus alluded to two aspects of doors which teach us about Him.  First, doors provide protection against “thieves and robbers” who cannot come in by way of the door (though they try some other way).  Jesus will protect us like a locked door protects a home.  The door Jesus spoke of also opens up to give life sustaining nourishment.  For the sheep if they did “enter in” they would be “saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.”  He opens the door to the sheep to go to the field and feed, and He opens the way before us to find life and to “have it more abundantly” (John 10:9-10).  He is our door to salvation. 

In the Book of Mormon Jacob used similar imagery, teaching that “the keeper of the gate is the Holy One of Israel; and he employeth no servant there; and there is none other way save it be by the gate” (2 Nephi 9:41).  Jesus is the only path to salvation, the only way to heaven, the only door by which we can pass to return to our Father in Heaven.  There is “no other name given nor any other way nor means whereby salvation can come unto the children of men, only in and through the name of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent” (Mosiah 3:17).  He is the Door by which we must all go through to eternal life.