John 10

11,12. I AM the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth; and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep. 13 I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father 16 knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall 17 hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd. Therefore doth my 18 Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father. 19, 20 There was a division therefore again among the Jews for these sayings. And many 21 of them said, He hath a devil, and is mad; why hear ye him? Others said, These are not the words of him that hath a devil. Can a devil open the eyes of the blind?

“And there shall be one fold,” says our translation, missing the point and beauty of the whole figure; whereas our Lord changes the word of purpose, saying, “there shall be one flock and one shepherd.”

“Not one fold, but one flock; no one exclusive inclosure of an outward church—but one flock, all knowing the one Shepherd and known of him.” The Gentiles came not to the Jewish fold; but Greek and Jew, barbarian, Scythian, bond and free, became one in each other by being one in Christ. To find this one flock of God we need not traverse the melancholy waste of centuries, nor search the folds where thieves and hirelings have entered to steal and to destroy; we need not go anxiously from fold to fold in quest of some divine mark upon the door; the mark is not upon the fold but upon the sheep. Each Sabbath-day the chiming bells summon the flock together upon a thousand hills, and by the side of still waters. ONE FLOCK, they follow the voice of the Shepherd, and he is the leader of them all, and he knows them all.

And how grand the testimony of this one Church of believing souls to the same fundamental and imperishable truths; that there is one living, almighty, holy God; that the Bible is his word revealed to man; that Jesus Christ his Son suffered on the cross for our redemption, and rose from the dead for our salvation! The self-same truths that Paul reasoned out of the Scriptures—that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead, and that Jesus is the Christ, have been maintained from the Scriptures through all ages; and the Church of God stands to-day before the world, with a unanimity of doctrine unknown in schools of science and philosophy, giving the whole weight of this concurrent testimony to prove the reality and the power of the gospel. Oh holy Catholic Church!—One and Universal Church; the Church of apostles and martyrs, of fathers and confessors; in catacombs and in prisons, in deserts and caves of the earth, in palaces and cathedrals; in exile and in missions, in all ages the one flock of God, the Church of the past, the Church of the present, the Church of the future, chanting ever the same faith, holding ever the same Christ, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end! J. P. T.

11. These exquisitely precious words—I am the good Shepherd—lead our thought first to the admirable fitness of the figure, considered as originating in Oriental lands, based on the charming relations as there seen of the shepherd to his flock, in which we have care and sympathy on the one side, met with never faltering trust and never flagging obedience on the other—begetting fellowship and companionship never to be intermitted by day or by night, in summer or in winter, in sunshine or in storm—the relations of want and supply reaching to food and to shelter, to help in weakness, to succor in trouble, to protection against enemies—indeed to every possible aid which interest can prompt or affection demand. The people of Christ have found comfort and quickening in this similitude—Christ the good Shepherd, and themselves the sheep of his fold—ever since David embalmed his Christian experience in his sweet twenty-third psalm: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” H. C.

Giveth his life. Beneath the burning skies and the clear starry nights of Palestine there grows up between the shepherd and his flock a union of attachment and tenderness. It is the country where at any moment sheep are liable to be swept away by some mountain-torrent, or carried off by hill-robbers, or torn by wolves. At any moment their protector may have to save them by personal hazard. The shepherd-king tells us how, in defence of his father’s flock, he slew a lion and a bear; and Jacob reminds Laban how, when he watched Laban’s sheep in the day, the drought consumed. Every hour of the shepherd’s life is risk. Pitiless showers, driving snows, long hours of thirst—all this he must endure, if the flock is to be kept at all. And thus there grows up between the man and the dumb creatures he protects, a kind of friendship. F. W. R.—When the thief and the robber come (and come they do), the faithful shepherd has often to put his life in his hand to defend his flock. I have known more than one case in which he had literally to lay it down in the contest. W. M. T.

Christ’s goodness, his real shepherd’s heart, is perfected in the self-sacrificing love which makes him give his life for the sheep. Here the incomparable love of Jesus goes far, far beyond the comparison under which it is represented. The earthly type cannot embrace the riches of the heavenly archetype. R. B.—The death of Christ was not necessary to establish the truth of his doctrine, or the certainty of his promises. Our Lord says that he laid down his life for his sheep, not for his doctrines. C. C. T.

12. In this form of the parable Christ contrasts himself (as the shepherd who alone seeks the welfare of the sheep) not only with the thieves, but also with the hirelings. These two classes corresponded to two different classes of Pharisees, viz., those who sacrificed the welfare of the people to their wholly selfish aims; and those who, with better feelings, had not love enough, and therefore not courage enough, to risk everything for the good of souls. The latter, afraid of the power of the former, gave the poor people up to the power of the evil one (the wolf, verse 12), to scatter and divide. N.

14. The good shepherd.** The Eastern shepherd goes before his sheep, he draws them after him—draws them by those ties of dependence, trust, and affection that long years of living together have established between them. This usage of Eastern shepherd life is beautifully illustrative of the mode by which Jesus guides his people onward to the fold of their eternal rest; not by fear, not by compulsion of any kind, but by love, by the attraction of his loving presence, the force of his winning example. In our blessed Lord and Master we have one who himself trod before us every step that he would have us tread, bore every burden he would have us bear, met every temptation he would have us meet, shared every grief he would have us share, did every duty he would have us do.

Know and am known. What possibly can be meant by this but that there is a bond of acquaintanceship, affection, communion, fellowship, between each true believer and his Saviour, such in its origin, its strength, its present blessedness, and its glorious issues in eternity, that no earthly bond whatever—not the closest that binds human heart to human heart—can offer the adequate symbol of it, to get which we must climb to that mysterious bond by which the Father and the Son are united in the intimacies of eternal love? This bond consists in oneness of life, unity of spirit, harmony of desire and affection. H.

14,15. Read the whole thus: “I am the good Shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine as the Father knoweth me, and as I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.” At once our Redeemer’s thought becomes clear. There is a reciprocal affection between the Shepherd and the sheep. There is a reciprocal affection between the Father and the Son; and the one is the parallel of the other. The affection between the divine Shepherd and his flock can be compared, for the closeness of its intimacy, with nothing but the affection between the eternal Father and the Son of his love. As the Father knows the Son, so does the Shepherd know the sheep; as the Son knows the Father, so do the sheep know their heavenly Shepherd. F. W. R.—Not as one afar off do we know him, but as our life, as him who makes us sharers in his life by his own gracious indwelling in us. The communion between him and his has its holy archetype in the eternal communion between the Father and the Son. Because with the love wherewith his Father knows him he knows those whom his Father has given him, therefore he lays down his life for the sheep. And, on the other hand, it is in this greatest love of all, through which he laid down his life for them, that the sheep know him as the good Shepherd. Until we know by faith that he has laid down his life for us, whom his love calls friends while we were yet enemies, until then his Shepherd’s heart has not really been made known to us; for all his Shepherd’s virtues have at once their root and consummation in this single one: “And I lay down my life for the sheep.”

16. Them also I must bring, the good Shepherd says. Again, this precious, gracious must, of most free love! He must because it is the Father’s will, who has given both the sheep to the Shepherd and the Shepherd to the sheep. He must because it is within his soul a pressing want of redeeming and saving love. R. B.—They shall hear my voice. This is not the language of mere foresight that they would believe, but the expression of a purpose to draw them to himself by an inward and efficacious call, which would infallibly issue in their spontaneous accession to him. B.—The blessed assurance: There shall be one flock and one Shepherd, gives us a glimpse into the fields of the heavenly Zion, where the good Shepherd feeds his sheep brought home from all dispersion, and leads them to living fountains of water. We shall see it, this heavenly Jerusalem, and our heart shall rejoice with unspeakable joy: One flock, one Shepherd! The Lord God it is who says it, and he will also do it. R. B.

18. No man taketh my life from me, but I lay it down myself; and I have power to take it again.** It is impossible for language more plainly and emphatically to express the absolute voluntariness of Christ’s death. It is beyond all doubt the language of one who was conscious that his life was his own (which no creature’s is), and, therefore, his to surrender or retain at will. Here lay the glory of his sacrifice, that it was purely voluntarily. The claim of “power to take it again” is no less important, as showing that his resurrection, though ascribed to the Father, was nevertheless his own assertion of his own right to life as soon as the purposes of his voluntary death were accomplished. B.—The God-man suffered by virtue of his will to suffer. By virtue of that same will, in which he emptied himself, did he for us lay himself open to the attacks of hostile powers and of death, in order to conquer them; and his suffering is a continuous acting of his highest freedom—at the same time a continuous triumph. Hilary.—His own love to sinners, and not the power of the Jews or Pontius Pilate’s soldiers, was the cause of his death. This commandment. Meaning a part of the charge or commission with which the Second Person, Christ, was sent into the world, to carry out the purposes of the eternal Trinity. Both here and elsewhere, the word has a wide deep meaning, and points to the entire unity of the Father and the Son in the work of redemption, to which Christ frequently refers: “I am in the Father and the Father in me.”

19–21. The third time that we find our Lord’s words causing a division, or schism, among his hearers. Some even among the Pharisees took our

Lord’s part. They defend him on the score both of his words and works. The calm, solemn, loving, God-glorifying language just used, was the very opposite to that which might be expected from a demoniac. And no devil, however powerful, could work such a miracle. J. C. R.

Section 95.—At the Feast of Dedication. Charged with Blasphemy.

The Temple. Perea.

22,23. And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter. And Jesus 24 walked in the temple in Solomon’s porch. Then came the Jews round about him, and said unto him, How long dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us 25 plainly. Jesus answered them, I told you, and ye believed not: the works that I do in 26 my Father’s name, they bear witness of me. But ye believe not, because ye are not of 27 my sheep, as I said unto you. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they 28 follow me; and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall 29 any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father which gave them me, is greater than 30 all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. I and my Father are one.31, 32 Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, Many good works have I showed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me? 33 The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blas- 34 phemy, and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God. Jesus answered 35 them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto 36 whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; say ye of him whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, 37, 38 I am the Son of God? If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in him.39, 40 Therefore they sought again to take him; but he escaped out of their hand, and went away again beyond Jordan, into the place where John at first baptized; and there 41 he abode. And many resorted unto him, and said, John did no miracle; but all things 42 that John spake of this man were true. And many believed on him there.

BOTH in the common business of Christian living, and in the discouragements of Christian failure, there is an inestimable power in the assurance explicitly given in the words of the Saviour. And this is the assurance: All who have become his by the communication into their souls of his divine life through faith shall be securely kept in that communion. They are not on the same ground with the rest of the world. They live in no uncertainty. There are privileges, there are safeties, pertaining to them, not to be had in any other way than this new way. The almighty friendship of the Saviour, pledged to them when they consented to be his friends, amounts to something. They are not outside, but inside a commonwealth, or fold, which has defences, foundations, immunities. Over it is a Guardian who is not a covenant-breaker, a Shepherd that is a King. No man is able to pluck them out of his hand. F. D. H.

Do we feel the faint beatings of the new life in our hearts? Do we fear that these may be so checked as to be finally and forever stopped? Let us not think of our weakness, but of Christ’s strength; not of our faith, but of his faithfulness; not of the firmness of our hold of him, but of the firmness of his hold of us. Not into the hand of the Father, as the great and holy Law-giver, would the spirit in the first exercises of penitence and faith venture to thrust itself, but into the hand of the Son, the Saviour. Yet as soon as it does so, the other hand, that of the Father, closes over it, as if the redoubled might of Omnipotence waited and hastened to guard the treasure. “Neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. . . . No man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.” The believer’s life is hid “with Christ.” Far up beyond all reach of danger this of itself would place it. But farther still, it is hid “with Christ in God.” H.

22. The festival of Dedication was instituted by Judas Maccabeus to commemorate the purification of the temple and the renewal of the temple-worship, after the three years’ profanation by Antiochus Epiphanes. It was held during eight days, commencing on the 25th day of the month Kislev, which began with the new moon of December. It was celebrated by the Jews, not at Jerusalem alone, like the great festivals of the law; but at home, throughout the whole country, by the festive illumination of their dwellings. R.

23. Jesus walked in the temple.** His appearance at this festival seems to have been, like the former (Section 84), sudden and unlooked-for. The multitude probably at this time was not so great, both on account of the season (midwinter), and because the festival was kept in other places besides Jerusalem, though, of course, with the greatest splendor and concourse in the temple itself. H. M.—In Solomon’s porch. The eastern porch of the temple still retained the name of Solomon’s porch, because it was at least built of the materials which had formed part of the ancient temple. Here, in this bright colonnade, decked for the feast with glittering trophies, Jesus was walking up and down, quietly, and apparently without companions.

—24. The Jews said. If thou really art the Messiah, tell us with confidence. Tell us here, in Solomon’s porch, now, while the sight of these shields and golden crowns, and the melody of these citherns and cymbals, recall the glory of Judas the Asmonean—wilt thou be a mightier Maccabeus, a more glorious Solomon? F.

25,26. Again our Lord appeals to his miracles as the grand proof that he was the Christ. Again he reminds the Jews that he does not act independently of his Father, but in entire harmony and unity with him. . . . Not being Christ’s sheep was not the cause of their unbelief; but their unbelief was the evidence that they were not Christ’s sheep. J. C. R.—To souls who were willing to believe, Jesus had often, even lately in his discourse concerning the Shepherd, said clearly and pointedly who he was; but the Jews, who were hankering after a worldly Messiah, did not “understand the speech” in which, as Christ, he discoursed to them; and the works through which the Father testified of the Son they despised. The restored blind man walked among them as a living sermon on the Christ, but they believed not, for they loved darkness rather than the light which in Christ offered to enlighten them. R. B.

27. It was the perfect harmony which subsisted between the words and the character of Jesus, that caused that unbounded confidence, and deep attachment of souls to him, to which he refers so strikingly here: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” Every word was a revelation of his person, and therefore it was that every word had so profound a significance, and sank so deep into the hearts of those that heard him. A. T.—My sheep. His, by the Father’s gift—by redemption and purchase—by calling and choosing, by feeding, keeping, and preserving—and by their own consent and will. They are his peculiar property. Hear my voice. This supposes that Christ first speaks, and then they hear. Grace begins the work: they, through grace, obey his calling, and willingly do as he bids them. I know them. With a special knowledge of approbation, complacency, love, and interest. They follow me. Like sheep, they obey, trust, and walk in the steps of their divine Master. They follow him, in holy obedience to his commandments—in striving to copy his example—in trusting implicitly his providential leadings—going where he would have them go, and taking cheerfully all he appoints for them. J. C. R.

28. Three properties of his sheep, to which the Shepherd has three offices to correspond: to those who hear his voice he gives eternal life; those whom he knows he never suffers to perish; those who follow him no man can pluck out of his hand. Neither the corruption and weakness of our flesh, nor the cruel enmity of the devil and of the world, shall ever separate us from eternal life in communion with Jesus Christ, the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls. The hand of the Shepherd will hold us with a power which nothing can overcome, if we only give ourselves up to be held by his hand in the sincere clinging of our heart to him. R. B.—To be safe in Christ’s hand, and so never to perish, is one thing; but to feel that we are safe, is quite another. Many are safe, who do not feel it. Christ’s hand holding them, and not their hand holding him, is the true secret of their safety and perseverance. J. C. R.—The whole strength of our soul’s desire is for a guarantee against ourselves. Such a guarantee is here assured to us. Hengs.

29. The Father has given the sheep to the Son in order that the Son might give them eternal life; and no man can bring to naught this council of eternal love, for it is the council of him who is greater than all, against whose almighty power all those enemies of life are powerless who strive to pluck out of the Saviour’s hand those that have been given him, and that he has saved through his life. R. B.

30. That the Christ should speak of God as the Father whom he represented in his official character, and should appeal to works done in the Father’s name, was legitimate, and in accordance with the Jewish notion of the Messiah. But Jesus went farther than this, and having declared his own absolute power over his sheep, even to the giving them eternal life, he rose to the sublime assertion, “I and my Father are one.” The gravamen of the offence was that “being a man,” he made himself God by asserting that he and his Father were one. J. P. T. —Our language admits not of the precision of the original in this great saying. “Are” is in the masculine gender—“we (two persons) are;” while “one” is neuter—“one thing.” Perhaps “one interest” expresses, as nearly as may be, the purport of the saying. There seemed to be some contradiction between his saying they had been given by his Father into his own hands, out of which they could not be plucked, and then saying that none could pluck them out of his Father’s hands, as if they had not been given out of them. “Neither they have,” says he: “Though he has given them to me, they are as much in his own almighty hands as ever—they cannot be, and when given to me they are not, given away from himself; for he and I have all in common.” B.

We understand by the “oneness” here spoken of, the oneness of Christ with the Father in will and works, in virtue of which his work is the work of the Father; but this was founded on the consciousness of his original and essential oneness with the Father, as is clear from his testimonies in other places as to his relations to God. N.—When he said, “I and the Father,” he signified a duality of persons, a distinction of subsistences; but when he added, “We are one,” he signified a oneness of God-head, an identity of essence, nature, and power. Zigabennus.—The Father did not give away the sheep out of his own hand when he gave them into the hand of the Son as their Shepherd. The hand of the Father and the Son is one and the same God’s hand. The absolute power belonging to God the Son possesses equally with the Father, and this equality of power rests upon their oneness of nature. Through faith, then, we are kept unto salvation, not by human power, but by the power of God. R. B.

33. Had the Jews understood our Lord only to mean that he had unity of sentiment with the Father, they would not have attempted to treat him as a blasphemer. In this sense Abraham, Moses, David, and all the prophets were one with God. But what irritated them was that they understood him to speak of unity of nature. Therefore they say, “Thou makest thyself God.” A. Clarke.

34-36. Your law. Sometimes our Lord speaks of two great divisions into which the Jews divided the Old Testament, viz., the law and the prophets. Sometimes he distributes the Scriptures into three parts: the law, the psalms, and the prophets. Here he uses one word for all the Old Testament. By saying “your law,” he reminds them that he appeals to their own honored sacred writings. J. C. R.—Gods. He appealed specifically to Psalm 82: 1, 6, which passage refers to Exodus 21: 6, and 22: 8, 9, 28. In these passages civil judges are called Elohim—one of the names of God. H. C.—There is a contrast here between himself and all merely human representatives of God. The contrast is between those “to whom the word of God came”—men merely having a divine message to utter (if prophets), or a divine office to discharge (if judges)—and Him whom (not being of the earth at all) the Father sanctified (set apart) and sent into the world, an expression never used of any merely human messenger of God, and used only of himself. B.

He sought to prove to them, on their own ground, that Messiah might call himself in that higher sense the Son of God, and appropriate the titles founded thereon, without the slightest prejudice to the honor of God. “If,” said he, “in your own law, persons who, in specific relations, represent God (e. g., judges and kings), are called gods, how much more, and in how far higher a sense, is the highest Theocratic King entitled to call himself the Son of God!” N.—In this passage of the Psalms, the judges in Israel were addressed. The judge’s office is God’s (Deut. 1: 17), and God honors the human bearer of his office with his name, as in the fifth commandment he attaches to those who bear the name of father the “honor” which properly is due to him alone. The Lord here compares himself with, and yet at the same time separates himself from, those who in the Psalm are called gods. In him only it is that every holy office divinely appointed in the old economy, as well as the judicial office, has found its truth and fulfilment. Sinful men, who were called gods by virtue of the divine business to which by the word of God they were called—they, in their unholiness, were only able to show forth the glory of the holy God in a shadowy and partial manner; not until the Word himself became flesh and dwelt full of grace and truth among his people—only in the holy Son of man who is the only begotten of the Father, did the honor reserved for human nature appear in its fulness. R. B.

Because I said, I am the Son of God. Our Lord had not said, in so many words, that he was the Son of God. But he had said what beyond doubt amounted to it—namely, that he gave his sheep eternal life, and none could pluck them out of his hand; that he had got them from his Father, in whose hands, though given to him, they still remained, and out of whose hand none could pluck them; and that they were the indefeasible property of both, inasmuch as “he and his Father were one.” B.

38. Believe the works.** His wonders fulfilled their office when they gained men’s ears and hearts for their Redeemer. If the cure of disease, or raising the dead, or stilling the sea, will turn men’s hearts to him, he works the outward wonder for the inward blessing. Indeed, it is probable that the whole system of miracle-working, sublime as it is to us, was rather a condescension of our Lord, and looked to him as but an inferior ministry—since he said, “If ye will not believe me, believe the works.” F. D. H.

40. Judea, therefore, was closed to him, as Galilee was closed to him. There seemed to be one district only which was safe for him in his native land, and that was Perea, the district beyond the Jordan. He retired, therefore, beyond Jordan, where John had once been baptizing, and there he stayed. F.

41,42. All things that John spake of this man are true.** John’s preaching was not forgotten after his death, though it seemed to produce little effect during his life. Herod could cut off his ministry, but he could not prevent his words being remembered. J. C. R.—Many believed. Might not this be a sign to them, that he who came to fulfil the law and put a loftier law in its place—he to whom all the prophets had witnessed—he for whom John had prepared the way—he who spake as never man spake—he who did the works which none other man had ever done since the foundation of the world—he who had ratified all his words, and given significance to all his deeds, by the blameless beauty of an absolutely stainless life—was indeed speaking the truth when he said that he was one with the Father, and that he was the Son of God? F.

We take, then, our Lord’s wonderful sayings at the feast of Dedication as asserting the essential unity of nature and attributes between himself and the Father, and as thus assuring us of the perfect and everlasting security and well-being of all who put their souls for keeping into his hand. H.

Section 96.—Informed of Lazarus’s Sickness. Delays Four Days.

Perea.