To Encourage You

John 20:19 “On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’”

Have you ever thought much about the topic of barriers, i.e., those things meant to keep people out – or in.  There’s been so much talk in the news about a wall on the southern border.  It would be meant to keep non-citizens out.  There are walled communities, with guards and gates to keep anyone out who has not been invited.  Throughout history we read of moats and walls around cities and castles.  We lock our doors to keep out intruders.  Everywhere we turn there are locks, gates, passwords or other obstacles to bar people from passing through for one reason or another.  In the Bible we are told of a great curtain in the temple of God that was meant to keep anyone from entering the most holy place.  To do so without authorization meant certain death. But then, think about death. What a barrier the grave is.  What grief there is when we realize that we’ll never see some person we loved because at the grave, for there is no passing through to the other side of that barrier. 

But then even beyond death there are barriers.  We are told that between heaven and hell, “a great chasm has been fixed” (Luke 16:26).  There will be no passing from one to another. There is no “purgatory,” which is a totally unbiblical concept, for one’s abode is fixed upon death.

But it is to the idea of such barriers that the verse above speaks. Here we have the Son of God in His resurrected body passing through a locked door as if it wasn’t there.  It was no obstacle to Him. But an even greater reality is that the tomb itself couldn’t hold Him.  When the disciples visited the sepulcher on the third day, the Roman guards were rendered powerless and the stone had been rolled away.  That’s the power of God on display, for no door can keep Him out.   He’s One Who can remove barriers that no one else could ever pass through. 

That’s one of the messages of the cross.  It was at the moment when Jesus breathed His last that “the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom,” symbolizing that the barrier to intimacy with God the Father had been opened to all.  While we are on earth, believers now know that they can always “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that (they) may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).  And neither will the grave hold the believer after death, for Jesus has torn those bars away as well.  It’s because of this that the Christian can now say “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory” (1 Corinthians 15:55)?  As Paul told the Thessalonian church, and every member of the true Church since that time “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.  For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” No wonder He could then say “Wherefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). 

What an awesome thing that the Son of God passed the great barrier separating heaven from earth to make the way for us to pass from earth to heaven. There is no barrier, for we now have a Way, but there is only One Way.  Of that we can be sure.  Jesus has promised to come again to take us to be with Him, to bridge that barrier that no one else can. 

What wonderful words the Lord gave to the disciples when He told them He would soon go away.  Perplexed, we are told that Thomas asked, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”  It was to this question that Jesus replied, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). So, what about you?  Do you know this Way of salvation?  Do you know the One Who has torn all the barriers away?  You can, if you believe, for at that moment you will have entered by that “narrow way that leads to life” (Matthew 7:14). It’s as the old hymn says with these wonderful words: “Oh, the mighty gulf that God did span, at Calvary!”