Sermon on the Good Shepherd.

(John 10:1-21).

This sermon appears as a continuance of the Lord’s accusatory words, leveled at the Pharisees in relation to the healing of the man that was born blind. Having explained to them their responsibility for “those who see may be made blind,” the Lord (in an allegorical form) reveals to them that they are not sincere spiritual leaders of the people, as they imagined themselves to be. Because they thought more of their personal gains than those of the people, they were not “good shepherds,” and as a consequence, were leading the people toward destruction instead of salvation. The Pharisees only at the very end understood this marvelous allegorical sermon, borrowed from a shepherd’s life in Palestine. The Lord likens the people with a flock of sheep and the leaders, as the shepherds of this flock. In order to protect the flock at nighttime against wolves and robbers, it was driven into caves or especially erected compounds. It was not uncommon to have a number of flocks, belonging to a number of owners, in one compound. In the morning, the gate-keeper would open the gate, allowing the shepherds to round up their flock by calling out the individual names of their sheep: the sheep would recognize the voice of its shepherd and follow it out of the compound to pasture — a practice that can be witnessed in Palestine to this day.

Naturally, afraid to confront an armed gatekeeper, the robbers would secretly climb over the fence into the compound. Drawing upon this well-known example from life, the Lord applies the word “sheepfold” as the God-chosen Jewish people, or as God’s Church of the Old Testament from which the New Testament was formed; the word “shepherd” is meant to be every genuine instructor in religious-moral living; the words “thieves” and “robbers” are all false, self-styled prophets, false teachers, heretics, self-opinionated religious leaders of the people, thinking only of themselves and their own interests — those Pharisees that were accused by the Lord.

The Lord calls Himself “the Door” and the “good Shepherd,” Who “gives His life for the sheep” in protecting them from wolves. The Lord calls Himself the “Door” in the sense that He is the only genuine intercessor between God and the people, the only path for the pastors and the flock: into the Kingdom of God, established by Him and presented as the “Door of the sheep,” and only through Him can entry be gained. All who avoid Him, “climbs up some other way (not the normal way),” are “thieves and robbers,” i.e. not true pastors but imposters that are pursuing personal gains, and not the good of the flock. “Sheepfold” is the earthly Church, while “pasture’ is the Heavenly Church. The Pharisees didn’t understand the first part of the sermon. Consequently, in the second part, the Lord revealed Himself as the “good Shepherd.” The meaning of the word “hireling” must be understood as that of the unworthy pastors who, according to the Prophet Ezekiel, “feed themselves” (34:2) and at the first sign of danger, abandon their flock to the mercy of the four winds. The word “wolves” means the devil and his servants that destroy “sheep.”

The Lord points out the main distinctive qualities of a genuine pastor: 1) Selflessness — even to the point of death for the sake of the flock. 2) Knowing your sheep. In the highest sense, this knowledge belongs to Him: this mutual knowledge of one another, pastor and sheep, should be akin to the mutual knowledge of God the Father and God the Son: “As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father.”

The Lord’s words “other sheep,” “which are not of this fold,” but who “also I must bring,” mean the heathens who are also beckoned into Christ’s Kingdom. The Lord concludes His sermon with the words that “I lay down My life for the sheep” voluntarily: “No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself,” because He has the power to “lay it down” and “the power to take it again” — an expression full of freedom i.e. Christ chose His own death voluntarily, as a means of saving His flock. These words caused another argument among the Jews, resulting in some showing empathy to the Lord’s words, while others continued to declare Him as being a demoniac.