(4) Who Is This Thief


In John 10:10, Christ our Savior states that He has come that we may have life, and have it more abundantly.  Our focus and attention must be constantly fixed upon Him.  

From an earlier blog, we learned that once we have confessed our sins to Jesus and have received Him as our Personal Savior, we are sealed unto the day of redemption by His Holy Spirit; and nothing will be able to snatch us away.  Yet, we still battle with the old sinful nature that wars against our new nature in Christ.

And so, Jesus desires us not only to experience the new life in Him, but for us to "have life, and that they may have it more abundantly."  We must be on guard to have Jesus protect us from the thief.  And in this verse and associated Bible verses in the broader passage, John 10:7-9, Jesus spoke of Himself as the Shepherd who guards His sheep.  

In contrast, the thief is a false shepherd.  He "cares only about feeding himself, not building up the flock.  He steels sheep in order to kill them, thus destroying part of the flock." (The Bible Knowledge Commentary, New Testament, Walvoord & Zook, p. 310)

As we focus on Jesus and what He has done for us, we give Him praise for all that He has provided.  He has given us everything we need to live in this world, a world that is unfriendly toward us as believers.  When we read the Bible, we see numerous examples of thieves who have come to steel, to kill, and to destroy.  One example of physical suffering is what the martyr, Stephen, went through.  Read Acts 7:54-60.  In this story, we see Stephen, a man filled with the Holy Spirit, being wrongfully accused and killed by evil men.  They are seen as "thieves seeking to kill and to destroy."  

Yet, even in this extreme case where Stephen was killed, at that moment, he was taken immediately to be with His Lord, Jesus Christ.  In later blogs, we will learn more about what it means to be absent from the body and present with the Lord.

We will also learn how to protect ourselves from the most formidable foe and evil there is, Satan himself.  In the next series of blogs, we will learn about putting on the full armor of God to protect against Satan's fiery darts. (Ephesians 6:11: Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.)


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