The Abundant Life - John 10:1-11
[31st October 2024]
The abundant life. Who doesn’t want an abundant life? Jesus seems to promise it here.
10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. 11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
What did Jesus mean by the abundant life in Jn 10:10? I think the clue is that in the context of John’s Gospel, Jn 10:1-21 is an explanation of the miracle of John chapter 9, the healing of the man born blind, and the healed man’s subsequent interactions with the Pharisees. So Jn 9:1-10:21 is a single literary unit.
The implication being that the formerly blind man now has life in abundance. He walks home not only with his physical sight restored, but also as a spiritually changed believer and worshipper of Jesus with an abundant life from Jesus.
Meanwhile the Pharisees who were materially prosperous, and who felt that they had an abundant life, and can see physically much better than the cursed blind man, are oblivious to their wilful spiritual blindness such that the Pharisees’ guilt remains while it is the man born blind who paradoxically now sees. This represents a highly symbolic display of Jesus’ ability to cure spiritual blindness, and as the present story makes clear that the only sin against which there is no healing is spiritual blindness. The Pharisees’ guilt remains.
This is the only use of the concept of the “abundant life” [Jn 10:10] in the New Testament. So, in an age when the term is used a lot in churches, our interpretation here is important.
The abundant life isn’t one of material prosperity even with a Christian veneer: enough money, perfect children, perfect marriage, perfect job, even dare I say it, perfect mental health, being a member of a big booming perfect church, a permanent cheesy happiness, with many ‘blessings’, whatever they are. It isn’t about everything working out right in your little world - Jesus and his bit part in your life movie.
I am sure the healed blind man remained dirt poor after his healing, with the added new problem of persecution from the religious authorities. Sitting around begging for decades hadn’t trained him up much for a post-healing career. If John chapter 9 illustrates Jesus’ parable in chapter 10, life in abundance is having your eyes opened to spiritual things with Jesus at the centre. Or perhaps it's the other way around, Jesus uses the new life of the healed and saved man to illustrate his parable.
As chapter 9 proceeds, the healed man’s spiritual life grows by leaps and bounds from his first open public testimony about what Jesus had done in his life healing his eyes, on that sabbath day, with Jesus at the centre of his new worldview.
This is the abundant life. He fully ‘gets’ Jesus. In his interactions with the hostile Pharisees, he progresses on from calling Jesus merely (and inadequately) a prophet v17; to defending him (apologetics) against various charges v25; to inviting them to become Jesus’ disciples (evangelism) v27; to correcting their misunderstanding about Jesus (doctrine) and about why God answers prayer in v34; to confessing Jesus as Lord and worshipping him as the divine Son of Man v38.
You can tell the man felt confident and secure enough to stand up with boldness and confidence to the religious bullies who challenged him and mocked him for his belief in Jesus as the Messiah in his new life in Jesus.
This is the picture of the abundant life, it is not a promise of an easy life, but a full Jesus life. This is why you are here at this college. To train to be able to defend Jesus, to evangelise, to have doctrinal understanding and to worship Jesus, with confidence and boldness, confessing his name in hostile circumstances. You are being trained to live the abundant life.