GATEWAYS

 

Gateways

I grew up on the southern end of Loch Lomond, the gateway to the Highlands. I then lived in Winnipeg, the gateway to the West. I now live in Brisbane, which has the Gateway Arterial, though I’m not too sure what it is a gateway to. None of these gateways has an actual gate at its centre.

Image from Web

Was there a gate at the entrance to the Garden of Eden? Or were cherubim and the flaming sword its gate? Then there are the ‘pearly gates’ in the walls of the new Jerusalem, the Lamb’s wife. These also have angels posted at each of them. Though the tree of life is there, no angels appear to have ‘a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life’ (Gen. 3:24). ‘Also she had a great and high wall with twelve gates, and twelve angels at the gates … three gates on the east, north, south, west… The twelve gates were twelve pearls: each individual gate was of one pearl … Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there’ (Rev. 21:12-13, 21a, 25). So, we go from one closed gate at the beginning of the Bible, to twelve open gates at the end of it. What happened in between? What happened to the flaming sword? Well, it burnt itself out on another gate!

‘Therefore Jesus said again, “I tell you the truth, I am the gate; whoever enters through Me will be saved”’ (John 10:9). ‘He who has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God’ (Rev. 2:7). So, Jesus is the gateway to Paradise. Instead of having our access to the Garden blocked by angels and a flaming sword, we enter through Jesus. How so?

Who likes a bottleneck in traffic or leaving a stadium? Jesus is the world’s bottleneck. He says, ‘Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it’ (Matt. 7:13-14). Why is the gate so narrow? ‘Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me”’ (John 14:6). So, it’s narrowed down to Jesus. We cannot get to God unless we go through Him. Otherwise, it’s through the flaming sword which turns every way on the broad gateway to hellfire.

Jesus extinguishes the flames for those who go through Him. He fireproofs all who are repenting and believing in the Gospel. What’s the Gospel about? It’s about Jesus saving His people from God’s everlasting fiery wrath by living a perfect life as their representative and taking their punishment for them. Their punishment has to do with Him undergoing the fiery wrath of God poured out on Him on the cross. This was the baptism of fire God’s only begotten Son underwent on their behalf, as the angels of death, as it were, turned God’s flamethrowers on Him, holocausting Him like the Passover Lamb He was.

By being resurrected, Jesus is the gateway to everlasting life. He says, ‘Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth – those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation’ (John 5:28-29). He is the gateway to the new earth, the world, the meek shall inherit (Matt. 5:5; Rom. 4:13). ‘For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved’ (John 3:17). May Jesus cause a huge bottleneck as the gateway!