Day 13 — The Gospel of John: The Word Became Flesh

Today’s Passage: John 10

John 10 runs straight out of chapter 9, where Jesus opened the eyes of a man born blind and the religious leaders threw the healed man out of the synagogue. Those leaders are the “shepherds” Jesus has in view when He starts to speak, men who shut out the very sheep God loves. Against them He draws a scene every listener knew from the hills around Jerusalem: a walled fold, one gate, a shepherd whose voice the sheep pick out of the morning noise, and thieves going over the wall in the dark. Then He turns the scene on Himself. “I am the gate for the sheep.” “I am the good shepherd.” Months later, at the Feast of Dedication, He teaches the security of the sheep inside the Father’s hand and says, “I and the Father are one.” The chapter is one claim with four sides: the voice, the door, the life laid down of His own accord, and the hand nobody can pry open.

As you read, hold this: I am the good shepherd.

John 10:1–6 (BSB)

¹ “Truly, truly, I tell you, whoever does not enter the sheepfold by the gate, but climbs in some other way, is a thief and a robber. ² But the one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. ³ The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen for his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. ⁴ When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. ⁵ But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will flee from him because they do not recognize his voice.” ⁶ Jesus spoke to them using this illustration, but they did not understand what He was telling them.

Chapter 9 ended with the religious leaders throwing out of the synagogue a man whose only offense was being healed, and Jesus begins here with two ways of getting into a fold. One man climbs in some other way, over the wall, and Jesus gives him his name: a thief and a robber. The other walks up to the single opening in full view, and he is the shepherd of the sheep. The leaders who have just abused the flock stand on one side of that picture and the true Shepherd on the other. Then the details soften. “He calls his own sheep by name.” Every animal in that pen has a name and the shepherd knows it, and he leads them out from the front instead of driving them from behind. He goes on ahead, and his sheep come after him because they know his voice. The whole relationship runs on voice and recognition. John closes the paragraph almost wearily: they did not understand what He was telling them. That is the blindness chapter 9 exposed, sitting now in the men who claim to see.

John 10:7–10 (BSB)

⁷ So He said to them again, “Truly, truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. ⁸ All who came before Me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. ⁹ I am the gate. If anyone enters through Me, he will be saved. He will come in and go out and find pasture. ¹⁰ The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life, and have it in all its fullness.

Since they missed the illustration, He drops it and says the thing outright. “I am the gate for the sheep.” In a wilderness fold the shepherd often slept across the single opening so that his own body was the gate, and nothing went in or out except over him. That is the picture Jesus claims for Himself: He is the opening in the wall, the way through. “If anyone enters through Me, he will be saved.” What He describes on the far side of that gate is freedom and provision together. The sheep comes in and goes out and finds pasture, safe enough to lie down inside the walls and free enough to graze the hillside, all of it under the Shepherd’s keeping. Then the chapter’s contrast comes to its point. “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” Steal, kill, destroy is the whole ambition of a false shepherd, and Jesus sets His own purpose against it in the most generous terms in the Gospel. “I have come that they may have life, and have it in all its fullness.”

John 10:11–18 (BSB)

¹¹ I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. ¹² The hired hand is not the shepherd, and the sheep are not his own. When he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf pounces on them and scatters the flock. ¹³ The man runs away because he is a hired servant and is unconcerned for the sheep. ¹⁴ I am the good shepherd. I know My sheep and My sheep know Me, ¹⁵ just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father. And I lay down My life for the sheep. ¹⁶ I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them in as well, and they will listen to My voice. Then there will be one flock and one shepherd. ¹⁷ The reason the Father loves Me is that I lay down My life in order to take it up again. ¹⁸ No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from My Father.”

The claim and its proof arrive in one breath. “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.” Over against Himself Jesus sets the hired hand, and what separates the two of them is ownership. The hireling works for wages and the sheep belong to someone else, so when the wolf comes his arithmetic is quick: these animals are not worth his life. He abandons them and runs, and the wolf does what wolves do, pounces and scatters the flock. Cruelty was never the hireling’s problem. He simply had nothing of his own at stake, and that was enough to lose the flock. The sheep in the care of the Good Shepherd (ποιμήν) poimēn, pronounced poy-MANE. Strong's G4166, shepherd. In the Old Testament the word does double duty. It names the man out on the hill with the staff, and it names the men who rule God’s people, and above both of them it is a title for God Himself. When Israel’s appointed shepherds fattened themselves and let the flock scatter, God answered through Ezekiel: “I Myself will search for My flock… I will tend My flock” (Ezekiel 34:11, 15). David had already sung the gentler side of the same title. “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1). So the words “I am the good shepherd” step into the place the Old Testament kept for the LORD, the God who said He would come and do Himself what the hired men had failed to do. are His own, which is why He is still standing there when the wolf arrives, and why He bleeds for them.

He says it again. “I am the good shepherd.” Then He opens up the knowing at the center of it. “I know My sheep and My sheep know Me, just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father.” The measure He gives for a shepherd’s acquaintance with his flock is the mutual knowing inside the Godhead, which is a staggering thing to say about people like us. Then the horizon widens past Israel. “I have other sheep that are not of this fold.” He means the Gentiles, ungathered as yet, who will hear His voice and come in. What He is after is one flock under one shepherd, a people of God gathered around a single voice rather than around one pen or nation or set of customs.

Then He guards His death against every misreading of it. “No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord.” He holds authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again, and the second authority looks past Good Friday to Easter morning; the laying-down has the taking-up already inside it. “This charge I have received from My Father.” The love of the Father and the obedience of the Son meet at the cross, and the sheep are the ones on whom the whole of it is spent.

John 10:19–24 (BSB)

¹⁹ Again there was division among the Jews because of Jesus’ message. ²⁰ Many of them said, “He is demon-possessed and insane. Why would you listen to Him?” ²¹ But others replied, “These are not the words of a man possessed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?” ²² At that time the Feast of Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, ²³ and Jesus was walking in the temple courts in Solomon’s Colonnade. ²⁴ So the Jews gathered around Him and demanded, “How long will You keep us in suspense? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly.”

As always in John, His words split the crowd. One side reaches for the cheapest slander available: demon-possessed and insane. Others refuse it, and the evidence they reach for is the miracle of chapter 9. “Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?” The healed man does not appear in this scene at all, and his restored eyes are still arguing for Jesus in it.

Verse 22 moves the clock forward two or three months and changes the setting. The Feast of Dedication, in Jerusalem, in winter. A crowd closes around Him with a demand that sounds fair and functions as a trap. “How long will You keep us in suspense? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly.” He has been telling them for chapters, in the signs, in the I am sayings, in the shepherd picture they have just heard Him give. Clarity was never what they were short of.

John 10:25–30 (BSB)

²⁵ “I already told you,” Jesus replied, “but you did not believe. The works I do in My Father’s name testify on My behalf. ²⁶ But because you are not My sheep, you refuse to believe. ²⁷ My sheep listen to My voice; I know them, and they follow Me. ²⁸ I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them out of My hand. ²⁹ My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all. No one can snatch them out of My Father’s hand. ³⁰ I and the Father are one.”

Jesus answers the demand by pointing back at what they have already seen and refused. “I already told you… but you did not believe. The works I do in My Father’s name testify on My behalf.” Then He names what sits underneath the unbelief. “Because you are not My sheep, you refuse to believe.” They have evidence enough; belonging is what they lack. Then He turns to His own, and the sentence is all voice and recognition and following. “My sheep listen to My voice; I know them, and they follow Me.”

What He says next is among the strongest assurances of security anywhere in Scripture. “I give them eternal life,” a present possession rather than a distant prospect, “and they will never perish.” Then the guarantee. “No one can snatch them out of My hand.” As if to settle it twice over, He closes the Father’s hand around His own. “No one can snatch them out of My Father’s hand.” The sheep are held in two hands at once and the grip is unbreakable. This house will not both-sides that promise. The eternal security of the believer is one of the convictions Manna Praxis holds with a closed hand, and these two verses are among the sentences it rests on. The Father gives them, the Son keeps them, and nobody takes them out of either hand.

Then comes the sentence the whole chapter has been climbing toward. “I and the Father are one.” The Greek is hen, neuter, one in essence and one in nature, where the masculine heis would have said one person. So Jesus is claiming that He and the Father are one in being, without collapsing the Father and the Son into a single individual. This house will not both-sides that sentence either. Article 4 is closed here: Jesus Christ is God incarnate. The unity of the two hands in verses 28 and 29 is the unity of the two Persons, and that is why the sheep are safe.

John 10:31–39 (BSB)

³¹ At this, the Jews again picked up stones to stone Him. ³² But Jesus responded, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these do you stone Me?” ³³ “We are not stoning You for any good work,” said the Jews, “but for blasphemy, because You, who are a man, make Yourself out to be God.” ³⁴ Jesus replied, “Is it not written in your Law: ‘I have said you are gods’? ³⁵ If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and the Scripture cannot be broken— ³⁶ then what about the One whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world? How then can you accuse Me of blasphemy for stating that I am the Son of God? ³⁷ If I am not doing the works of My Father, then do not believe Me. ³⁸ But if I am doing them, even though you do not believe Me, believe the works themselves, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I am in the Father.” ³⁹ At this, they tried again to seize Him, but He escaped their grasp.

The reaction to verse 30 is the truest commentary on it. They picked up stones. They had understood Him exactly. Nobody gathers rocks over a man who claims to be a good teacher; they gathered rocks because they had heard a man claim to be God, and they said so out loud. “You, who are a man, make Yourself out to be God.” Modern readers sometimes say Jesus never claimed deity. The men in that colonnade, standing close enough to throw, had no such doubt. They read the claim correctly and then rendered the wrong verdict on it.

Jesus answers out of Scripture, quoting Psalm 82:6, where God addresses Israel’s judges as “gods” because they bore His authority. The argument runs from lesser to greater. If Scripture, which cannot be broken, can use that word of mortal men entrusted with God’s message, blasphemy is a strange charge to bring against the One whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world for calling Himself the Son of God. He gives up no ground at all in saying it. He is showing these men that their own Scriptures leave them nowhere clean to stand. Then He puts the evidence back in front of them: judge Him by the works. If His Father’s works are absent, let them disbelieve Him; if the works are there, let them believe the works and come by that road to knowing that the Father is in Him and He is in the Father. That is verse 30 again, with a door left open for honest doubt to walk through. They reach for Him a second time and He escapes their grasp, because His hour has not come and no one takes His life until He lays it down.

John 10:40–42 (BSB)

⁴⁰ Then Jesus went back across the Jordan to the place where John had first been baptizing, and He stayed there. ⁴¹ Many came to Him and said, “Although John never performed a sign, everything he said about this man was true.” ⁴² And many in that place believed in Jesus.

He withdraws back across the Jordan to the place where John had first been baptizing (1:28), the ground where the Gospel’s public witness began. The chapter ends there, and the ending answers all the stone-throwing in Jerusalem. Many came to Him. What those people say is a tribute to the Baptist. “Although John never performed a sign, everything he said about this man was true.” John the Baptist worked no miracle, and his testimony stands vindicated anyway. He had pointed to the Lamb of God (1:29), and here is the Lamb, the Good Shepherd on His way to lay down His life. The last line of the chapter is the verdict John keeps hoping his readers will reach: many in that place believed in Jesus. The voice of the Shepherd is still out there gathering His sheep.