John 10:23–42 Can You Lose Your Salvation?

What do you do when your faith feels real, but your track record makes you wonder if God will eventually let go? We sit with one of the most comforting promises Jesus ever gives and one of the most confronting claims He ever makes. As Pastor Harry Behrens finishes John 10:23–42, the big idea comes into focus: your assurance of salvation does not rest on the strength of your grip on Christ, but on the strength of His grip on you.

We walk through the scene in Solomon’s colonnade where the crowd demands clarity and Jesus answers with a diagnosis: unbelief is not mainly an information problem, it’s a receiving problem. Then we slow down over the words Christians cling to in anxious seasons: “I give them eternal life… no one will snatch them out of my hand.” Jesus doesn’t leave the listener wondering which hand holds them either. He ties His hand to the Father’s hand and says, “I and the Father are one” which explains both the comfort believers feel and the outrage His opponents show.

From there, we trace Jesus’ response to the blasphemy charge through Psalm 82, clearing up what “you are gods” means, why Scripture’s view of the image of God matters, and how sin turns our calling inward. The episode lands with a practical question: if we still fail, what fruit can we look for? The answer is surprisingly gentle and deeply clarifying: the evidence is not perfection, but the direction of your returning to the Shepherd who keeps calling your name.

If you’ve been measuring eternal security by your mood, your discipline, or your recent wins and losses, press play and let John 10 reset your footing. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs steadier ground, and leave a review so more people can find the message.

Transcript

The Doubt Few Admit

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Have you ever wondered if one day God might finally let go of you? Perhaps you've looked at your failures, your struggles, or your doubts, and quietly asked yourself, Am I really his? It's a question many believers carried, but few are willing to say at least. In the closing verses of John chapter 10, Jesus gives one of the most comforting promises in all of Scripture. He declares that those who belong to him are held securely in the hands of both the Father and the Son. A grip that no power in heaven or on earth can ever break. Join Pastor Harry as he unpacks this powerful conclusion to John chapter 10 and reveals why your assurance rests not in the strength of your grip on Christ, but in the strength of his grip on you. Here's Pastor Harry Barns with today's message.

Finishing John 10 Together

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Hello and welcome again to the takeaway. I'm your host, Pastor Harry Barns, and today we are finishing John chapter 10, covering verses 23 to 42. But before we get into these verses, I want to ask you something personal. Have you ever doubted your own salvation? Have you ever grown weary of the question underneath everything? Do I really belong to him? Not because you stopped believing, but because you kept failing. Because you looked at your own track record and what you found there was not the kind of evidence that produces confidence. Because the same patterns keep returning, the same sins keep surfacing. And somewhere in the quiet, you have asked yourself, if I were really his, would I still be struggling with this? Would I still fall the way I fall? Would I still find myself so far from who I thought I would be by now? And underneath all of that is a feeling that most Christians carry, but almost nobody names out loud. I don't deserve what Christ is offering. And if I'm being honest, I'm not sure I ever received it the way I was supposed to. Now that feeling, the one that says you have to be worthy enough to receive the gift before you can actually have it, that feeling is the exact thing that blocks the receiving. And here is what I have come to believe after years of pastoring people through this. The hardest thing a Christian ever does is receive. Harder than obedience, harder than sacrifice, harder than any discipline you will ever practice. Because receiving means accepting that the gift is already yours, that the one who gave it is the one who holds it. And what he holds, he does not lose. And everything in us fights that. We want to contribute, we want to justify, we want to bring something to the table that makes our having it make sense. And that very instinct, the reaching for justification, is what keeps our hands too full to receive. That is what we're going to be looking at today. And by the time we finish, I want the question underneath your doubt to have a different kind of answer because you saw more clearly whose hand you are actually in. Now, we have been in John chapter 10 for four episodes now, and everything we have covered has been building toward what Jesus is about to say in these final verses. In episode 47 and 48, we watch the shepherd enter the fold, call his own sheep by name, and become the door through which they pass into life. And we establish from John's own argument, built from chapter one, that the sheep who follow are the ones the Father already gave to the Son, marked before the shepherd arrived to collect them. And then in episode 49, we saw the good shepherd lay down his life voluntarily, the craftsman paying whatever the reclaiming required, because the image he made us to carry was worth every cost of its restoration. And then in episode 50, we sat with a single verse in John 10, 22 and opened up 400 years of history that most Christians have never been taught to see, showing that the God who preserved his covenant through the silence, through Antiochus, and the desecration, through three years of unlikely warfare in the wilderness, is the same God who now walks into the temple that preservation protected and is about to make the most personal declaration of the entire chapter. And then the crowd gathers around him in Solomon's porch and they ask the question that has been building since John chapter 8. So with that, let's read verses 23 to 42 together.

Reading John 10:23-42

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It says, Jesus was walking in the temple in the colonnade of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly. And Jesus answered them, I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me. But you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one. The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, I have shown you many good works from the Father, for which of them are you going to stone me? The Jews answered him, It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law? I said you are gods? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came, and scripture cannot be broken, do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, You are blasphemy because I said I am the Son of God? If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I in the Father. Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands. He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing at first, and there he remained. And many came to him, and they said, John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true, and many believed in him there.

Why They Cannot Believe

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Now what we're seeing here is the crowd surrounds him in Solomon's porch and asks, How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly. Now this sounds like a reasonable request. Just say it directly. Give us the clear answer we have been waiting for. But watch what Jesus says in response, because it is something most people read right past. He says, I told you, and you do not believe. The works I do in my Father's name, they bear witness about me. And then this. But you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. He tells them the problem plainly. You do not believe because you are not my sheep. The issue lives on the receiving side, and the capacity to receive the testimony, to hear his voice and recognize it for what it is, is itself a gift his sheep have been given. And it is one thing no person has ever generated for themselves, which is worth sitting with, because it is the same thing that makes receiving the free gift of salvation so hard for us. We keep wanting to bring something to the transaction, and the text keeps telling us there is nothing to bring. We have seen this pattern all the way through John's gospel. The Pharisees heard everything the blind man heard. They stood in the same room, listened to the same words, witnessed the same miracle, and they came away with nothing but fury. The issue was never the clarity of the light, it was the capacity of the eye. And the capacity to see, as John has been showing us since chapter one, is a gift. He said, born not of the will of man, but of God. So when the crowd asks, tell us plainly, and Jesus answers, I already told you, that is a diagnosis. The question underneath their question is, why can't we hear it? And Jesus answers that question directly, because you're not my sheep.

One Grip Of Father And Son

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And then Jesus says the thing that carries the entire weight of this episode. And I want us to move through it slowly because every sentence here is doing some real work. He says, My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. The knowing here is the same word used earlier in the chapter for the father knowing the son, a relational, covenantal, total knowing. He does not know about his sheep, he knows them. And that knowing is what the following flows from. They follow because they are known, not the other way around. And then he says, I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. He says, I give. This is present tense, it's active. He is not offering eternal life as a possibility that becomes real when the sheep perform well enough to secure it. He gives it, and what follows from the giving is absolute. They will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. And then we read this, and this is where Jesus opens into something the crowd was not ready for. He says, My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. Now we have a question here. Which hand is it? My hand, Jesus says, or the Father's hand, Jesus says. Are the sheep in one hand or two? And if two, what is the relationship between them? And which one is more secure? Well, Jesus answers the question before anyone can ask it. He says, I and the Father are one. There is no difference between the two hands because the two hands belong to one God. The sheep are held in the Son's hand and in the father's hand simultaneously. And those are not competing grips or sequential grips or redundant grips. They are one grip because the son and the father are one. And the crowd understood exactly what he was saying, which is why they immediately picked up stones. They were not confused, they were offended because he had just claimed to be God. Now I want to say this to the listener who came into this episode carrying doubt about their own salvation today. The ground your assurance stands on is the strength of his grip on you. And his grip is the grip of the Father and the Son. One hand, one God greater than all, holding what he will not lose. Which means the thing you have been trying to earn is the thing he is already holding for you. And the hardest work left to you is the receiving. Now let's bring in what episode 50 showed us last week. The God who held the covenant through 400 years of prophetic silence, who would not let Antiochus take the temple, even when it looked like he had, who preserved what belonged to him through desecration and warfare and three years in the wilderness when everything looked like it might fail. That God is holding you in the same hand that held Israel, in the same grip that held the promise from Abraham to the manger. No one was able to snatch that out of his hand then, and no one is able to snatch you out of his hand now. So with that, let's keep going.

Stones And A Blasphemy Charge

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Because then we see that they pick up stones and Jesus does not run. He asks, I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of them are you stoning me? They answer, Not for a good work, but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God. And what Jesus does next is one of the most remarkable moments in the entire gospel. He argues from the scripture, he reasons from the text to the conclusion, exactly the way he has been teaching his disciples to read all along. He says, Is it not written in your law? I said, You are gods. That's a little g gods. Now he is quoting Psalm 82 6 here. And to follow his argument, we have to understand what Psalm 82 is actually saying, because most listeners will hear you are gods and immediately think Jesus is claiming that human beings are divine. The psalmist is saying something else completely. Psalm 82 is addressed to human judges, the leaders and authorities of Israel who carried the responsibility of rendering justice among God's people. God calls them gods because they were created as image-bearers, vessels through whom the character and justice and authority of God were meant to flow into the world. They carried the calling to make God's justice visible. They were ambassadors, representatives, sojourners, carrying the authority of the one who sent them, and they failed. You judge unjustly, you show partiality to the wicked, you do not defend the weak or the fatherless. They bore the image and corrupted the function. They were given the calling to display God and turned it toward themselves. Romans 3 23 names what that failure actually is. Paul says, All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Now that phrase, fall short of the glory of God, is not primarily about breaking a list of rules, though that is included. It is about the image. We were made in the image of God, created

Psalm 82 And Image Bearers

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as Isaiah says, for his glory. He said, Everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made. Now, sin is the reorientation of that image away from God and towards self. The glory we were made to carry and display, we turned inward. And in doing so, we fell short of the very thing we were created for. So let me be clear about what we are and what we are not. We are not gods with a capital G, and we are not gods with a lowercase G in any functional sense either. We are image bearers, vessels made to carry the light of God's character, cracked by sin so that the light passes through in a way it was never designed to. And that crack is precisely why we cannot bring anything to God that would make us worthy of the gift. The vessel that was supposed to display his glory cannot repair itself. And Jesus, standing in front of men who are about to pick up stones, makes the argument. He is claiming to be the fulfillment of everything the image was always pointing toward, the invisible God made visible, the exact imprint of his nature, as Hebrews 1 3 says, every attribute of God fully displayed in a human life, completely, without the corruption that sin introduced into every other image bearer who ever lived. And the restoration he came to accomplish, the laying down of his life for the sheep, the craftsman reclaiming his work, is in itself the renewal of the image in us, so that we become what we were always made to be. Image bearers through whom the light of God's character passes, prisms refracting the full spectrum of who he is into the world around us. Paul calls us his workmanship in Ephesians 2 10, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Now notice the order there.

John’s Witness And True Belief

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And many came to him there, and they said, John did no sign, but everything John said about this man was true. John the Baptist did no miracle. He had no spectacular works to point to. What he had was a testimony. He said, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world and the faithfulness to point away from himself and toward Christ and mean it completely. And the people who heard that testimony and then encountered the one the testimony was about recognized the fulfillment. They did not need the miracle. The witness was enough because the witness was true. And it said, Many believed in him there. The chapter that opened with a shepherd entering a fold and calling his own sheep by name now closes with people who heard a faithful under Shepherd's testimony and believed. The sheep the Father gave to the Son heard the voice, followed the pointer, and found the shepherd. And the shepherd received them into the hand that no one can open. That is the complete arc of John chapter 10. And it is the answer to the doubt we opened with.

Assurance Plus The Fruit Of Returning

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So let me bring this home by doing what these verses invite us to do: looking away from ourselves for assurance and looking at what he has done. Because the doubt that opened this episode, the doubt that says, I keep failing, I keep falling, maybe I was never really his, that doubt is looking in the wrong direction. It is looking at the sheep to find out if the shepherd is real. And Jesus keeps telling us to look at the shepherd's hand. And here is what that hand has done across everything we have covered in John chapter 10. The shepherd entered the fold, not because the sheep found their way to him, but because he came to where they were. The shepherd brought them to it. He laid down his life voluntarily by the Father's charge, for the sheep he knew by name, because the craftsman would not abandon the vessels he made for his glory. He preserved his people through four hundred years of silence and one generation of violent assault through Antiochus and the desecration and the three years in the wilderness, because what he purposes to keep, he keeps. And then he walked into the temple, that preservation protected and declared. He said, My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life. They will never perish. No one snatches them from my hand, and no one from the Father's hand, because those two hands are one. Every single item on that list is something he did. And your assurance rests on his performance inside it, not yours. Which brings us right back to where we started. The hardest thing you will ever do as a Christian is simply receive that. Not earn it, not deserve it, not build a case for why you should be allowed to keep it, just receive it. And the reason it is so hard is that every instinct in us wants to contribute something. And the moment we try, we are back to standing on our own grip instead of his. Now, what about the fruit? What about the evidence in your own life? Because you might be sitting here thinking, okay. But I still fail, I still fall, I still return to the same sins. How do I know the mark is on me? Now here's what Jesus has shown us. The evidence that you are his is that you keep returning. The blind man could not even identify Jesus when Jesus first asked him, Who is the Son of Man that I may believe? He did not know, but he wanted to know. And when Jesus revealed himself, the man said, Lord, I believe, and he worshipped. The evidence was never perfection. It was the direction of the returning. The sheep, the shepherd calls, hear his voice, and they follow. And when they wander away, as sheep do, the voice that called them keeps calling, and they keep coming back. And that coming back is the fruit of their salvation, not the cause of it. It is the evidence that the image is being restored, that the craftsman's work is visible, that the light is passing through, however imperfectly. It is the patience and the returning and the inability to finally walk away from the shepherd who keeps calling your name. And what you do is the fruit of what he has done. And that fruit, the hearing, the following, the returning, the abiding, that is the sign that the mark is on you. You are not held by your faith. You are held by the one your faith is in, and no one takes what he holds. Let's

Prayer And How To Reach Us

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pray. Father, thank you that the hands that hold us is the same hand that held the covenant from Abraham to the manger, that held the temple through Antiochus, that held the blind man through every confrontation until he worshiped, and that holds us now through every failure and every return. Thank you that our assurance does not rest on the strength of our grip, but on yours. And yours is the grip of the Father and the Son, one hand greater than all, holding what you will not lose. Give us the grace today to receive what you have already given. In Jesus' name, amen. Now I want to thank you again for joining us today, and I hope today's message has helped you take a step closer and knowing just how much God loves you and really wants to know you. Now, if anything today resonated with you, or if you have any questions or comments, please visit our website at thetaway.faith. There you can send us an email or you can click on the text us link in the episode description. Either way, we would truly love to hear from you. Now, in our next episode, we're going to move into John chapter 11, and a new scene is going to open entirely. We're going to see Lazarus is sick, and when word reaches Jesus, what he does and what he waits to do is going to raise every question we have ever had about why God sometimes seems to delay when the people he loves are suffering. Until then, God bless, and we'll see you next time on the takeaway.