In John 10:7 Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep." In verse nine he goes on to say, "whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture." At the end of verse 10 he concludes this section saying, "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."
To enter means to come or go into. This is an action that you initiate. In our society, you don't usually enter a gate unless you are invited or welcomed into the enclosure controlled by the gate. If you enter a stranger's gate uninvited, or worse yet, enter the enclosure by another means besides the gate, the owner is liable to accuse you of trespassing. So for Jesus to offer the promise of salvation to "whoever" enters is a big deal. He did not restrict entrance, so long as we enter through him.
What does he mean when he says to enter "through me?" If you take this literally it might make you think of Odo the shapeshifter in the television program Deep Space Nine. He could change his body to conform to any other shape, at least temporarily. However, I don't think that's what Jesus had in mind. Another definition for enter is to get someone admitted. I think this is more the meaning Jesus intended. You may climb over the fence, dig a hole underneath, or try any number of other ways to get into the enclosure, but you won't receive the promise if you take any of those other ways, because you weren't formally admitted by Jesus.
How many times have you wished someone would save you from the situations you find yourself in? The tire goes flat in the middle of nowhere on a lonely stretch of road; your spouse decides he never loved you and leaves you; your child treats you like a pariah and cannot find anything positive to say to you; or your doctor calls you to come back to their office right away for results of your recent test. These are all situations that unnerve the best of us. If you are like me, you've probably wished more than once to be a child again reading a fairy tale. Those stories always had a happy ending. As we grow up we begin to grow calloused and we lose our child-like faith that everything will turn out well in the end. However, Jesus doesn't qualify the promise here. He says that if you enter through him you "will be saved."
