[Note: The following is a response I composed to the discussion going on at the thread entitled, The Blood of Christ, and is posted as a new thread here.]
First of all, let me offer this disclaimer: I do not like the term “literally.” First and foremost, the way the term is often used is a fundamental mistake with regard to what metaphors really are and, more importantly, do (literally!). Metaphors are what they are precisely because there is something really real that they convey and which gives them their meaning. When one says that “Jesus is the gate of the sheep” one does not intend (forgive the crassness), that his limbs are wood, his innards barbed wire, and he has a latch sticking out his side. (Yes, I realize these are anachronistic to Jesus' day, but one ought get my point.) Rather, one means that the thing a gate does (the reality it conveys) is the same thing Jesus does: provide ingress and egress for the sheep. The “literal” reality of the gate is identical with the “literal” reality of who Jesus is. Metaphors (as the etymology suggests) are bridges from one referent to another on the basis of a commonly shared reality.
Secondly, the terms “metaphor” and “literally” are misunderstood and misused. “Literally” is intended to mean some sort of real physical reality only. “Metaphor” is intended to mean something that's only theoretically, or conceptually, true. Thus, when one hears “Jesus is not literally the gate of the sheep” they mean by that that he is not made of wood and barbed wire. But this conveys both too much and too little. Too much in the sense that “literally” ends up conveying the notion that the meaning is somehow constrained to physical reality, when that physical reality is what it is only because the full metaphysical reality w