Biblion Bible Commentary
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I Am the Good Shepherd
John 10:7-18
7 Jesus therefore said to them again, “Most certainly, I tell you, I am the sheep’s door. · WEB
Two claims from the same picture — he is the way in, and he is the one who dies for the flock.
"I am the sheep's door" John 10:7.
He takes the picture and puts himself in it twice, in two different positions, which is not confusion. A fold on open ground often had a gap rather than a gate, and the shepherd slept across it; his body was the door. Both images are one arrangement.
"All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep didn't listen to them" John 10:8. The charge is not against the prophets, who are the voice being recognized. It is against the climbers of verse one — leaders who took the flock without being sent.
"I am the door. If anyone enters in by me, he will be saved, and will go in and go out and will find pasture" John 10:9.
Anyone keeps it open, and the three verbs describe an ordinary safe life: in at night, out in the morning, food. Going in and out was the Hebrew way of saying the whole of a person's daily business Deuteronomy 28:6. What is promised is not ecstasy but security and enough.
"The thief only comes to steal, kill, and destroy. I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly" John 10:10.
The contrast is between two arrivals and what each is for. Three destructive verbs against one gift — and abundantly means over and above, more than the minimum. The Gospel that began with a hundred and fifty gallons of wine at a village wedding is consistent about this.
"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep" John 10:11.
The word for good is not the moral term but the one for fine, beautiful, admirable — the shepherd as he ought to be. And the definition given is a death.
That is the surprise in the image. A shepherd risking his life for the flock is heroic and familiar; David told Saul about a lion and a bear 1 Samuel 17:34–36. A shepherd who dies has, on any ordinary reckoning, failed the flock, since a dead shepherd protects nothing. Only in this case does the dying accomplish the protecting.
"He who is a hired hand... sees the wolf coming, leaves the sheep, and flees" John 10:12. The contrast is ownership. A hired man behaves rationally: the sheep are not his, and no wage is worth a wolf. The account does not call him wicked, only a hired hand — and doesn't care for the sheep is the whole indictment.
"I know my own, and I'm known by my own; even as the Father knows me, and I know the Father" John 10:14–15.
The comparison is startling. The knowledge between the shepherd and his flock is measured against the knowledge between the Father and the Son, which is the deepest relation this Gospel describes John 1:18.
"I have other sheep which are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will hear my voice. They will become one flock with one shepherd" John 10:16.
The sentence breaks the fold open. Said in Jerusalem, this fold is Israel, and the others are everyone the book has been reaching toward since the prologue — a Samaritan village, a Roman official, the Greeks who come asking in chapter twelve. And the outcome is not two flocks with an arrangement between them but one flock, one shepherd.
"No one takes it away from me, but I lay it down by myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again" John 10:18.
This is the clearest statement in the Gospels that the death was not suffered but given. Everything that will be done to him — the arrest, the trial, the nails — is described in advance as something he permits, and the same authority covers the taking it up again.
And the last clause keeps it from being independence: I received this commandment from my Father. The freedom is total and it is obedient, which is this book's account of him from beginning to end.
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