THE ABUNDANT LIFE

“The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).

The tenth chapter of John is about Jesus, the Good Shepherd. A shepherd is one who cares for and watches over his sheep to protect, feed and guide. In this chapter Jesus contrasts His purpose in life and ministry with that of the enemy. He calls the enemy a thief whose sole purpose is to rob, steal and destroy. In contrast, Jesus says that His purpose is that those who follow Him might have “life” and have it “more abundantly.”

The word “thief” means embezzler, pilferer; the picture that emerges is that our enemy operates in the shadows, in the dark. Those who embezzle do so very quietly, in secret. A few years ago I was doing an outreach program for a church and while I was there the pastor found out that his secretary had embezzled thousands of dollars from the church. She took a few hundred dollars at a time by taking advantage of the trust and confidence of the leadership and using a check request system to her personal advantage. The devil is an embezzler, a pilferer. His most devastating work in the life of a believer is not pornography or promiscuity (as bad as they are) but it is stealing away truth, stealing away our dreams and promises, stealing away the abundant life that God has given us. All of a sudden we realize that our dreams and promises are gone—a robbery has taken place and we weren’t paying attention.

A shepherd is one who tends, leads, guides, cherishes, feeds and protects his flock. The shepherd watches over the “life” of his sheep, all of it. I don’t know much about shepherding but I’ve attempted to understand Jesus’ frequent references to being a shepherd. I have done research in an attempt to get a simple grasp on the meaning of the passage in Psalm 23, for instance. One of the things I learned is that Holy Land shepherds often constructed hut-like buildings where they put the sheep at night for protection. Jesus refers to this in John 10:1 as the sheepfold. Once the sheep were inside and settled down, the shepherd closed the door and made his bed right inside, across the threshold. No intruder could get at the sheep without going through the shepherd.

In verse 10, Jesus says that He has come that we might have a real, genuine, full life. He then goes on to say about this life, “That they may have it more abundantly.” It has taken me a while to understand that the life Jesus was referring to was more about me than it was about the circumstances of my life. Our world is conditioned to perceive “abundant life” as being made up of things: possessions, money, position, even our physical appearance and health. The truth is that these are blessings but they are not life; they are the cosmetics rather than the substance of the “abundant life.” A person who has life and has learned to live it abundantly is a person who has learned to live the life God has given him or her to the fullest extent possible. Some of the most “abundant lifers” in Christ have very little in the way of possessions; others have tremendous physical struggles but they have learned to live life fully and completely in the Lord and they are happy and fulfilled people. I recently read Philip Yancey’s book, Where is God When it Hurts? I was very inspired and moved by his chapter on Joni Eareckson Tada. In spite of her extreme physical limitations, Joni lives out, very clearly, the abundant life Jesus was talking about.

Speaking to the Pharisees about a life bearing good or bad fruit, Jesus said, “… out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34 NKJV). The original words here for abundance and the word abundant in John 10:10 both come from the same Greek root word meaning “to be furnished so richly that the person has an overflow.” That’s the life Christ wants for us and has provided for us—and it is the one the enemy wants to steal. The abundant life’s dwelling place is in the heart and that is what we are to guard and nurture; everything else, like money, possessions and position, are just peripheral and cosmetic.

I choose to live the abundant life in Christ. I don’t have a lot of things but I have a full and peaceful heart centered in Christ. Also, my life is filled with family and friends I dearly love, so what more could I ask? My life truly is full and abundant!