While rummaging around in the top drawer of my school desk, a museum of semi-useful artifacts, I found a key engraved with the room number J172. This should have caused not the slightest attention except no one in our Jones building knows of a room 172. While I walked about looking for the mystery door one of my younger colleagues suggested I needed to join AARP since I had a key but didn’t know where the door was.
While it is true I never did find a door for the key, I have a much more important key and I know where the door is for that one. Jesus said in John 10, “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved.” The key is a simple understanding that eternal life is a gift and God stands with outstretched arms offering the gift. All we need do is take it.
There are those who would have us believe the door to the kingdom has a combination lock and only they have the code. “Come,” they say, “Study with us and we will open the door for you.” That is a way to enslave us to their will. But Jesus has set us free from others’ control over our eternal future. We need no other mediator than Jesus Himself. He is the Door. He is the Way. Perhaps the problem is that it is not complicated enough. If it is so easy anyone can get in and maybe it is not exclusive enough for some. Well, it is not exclusive. Jesus said, “Whosoever will, come.”
Written by Roger Bothwell on September 30, 2003
Spring of Life, 151 Old Farm Rd. Leominster, MA 01453