NOTES for Joh 10:1-10

Christ often “calls” Himself some inanimate object. At one time He is a stone, at another bread, then water; today He is a door. Each time He compares Himself with an object with which we deal almost constantly. Living without regular “contact” with a door is quite difficult nowadays: anyone who enters a building through an opening not intended for the purpose is a thief and a robber. Our Lord Jesus Christ is precisely the door through which we can enter the house of our heavenly Father. The way to God passes only through Him: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me,” the Lord will say a little later (John 14:6).

One can try to climb through windows or a chimney, or dig a tunnel—but why? Perhaps one can take roundabout ways to God, chase after some “special grace,” try to make oneself out to be something, and pretend that we ourselves can do at least something for our own salvation—but why? Why, when the way is straight? “Make His paths straight” (Matt. 3:3).

Straight does not mean easy. Everything will not instantly become better as if by the wave of a magic wand. But the essential thing is that the Lord “calleth His own sheep by name, and leadeth them out” (John 10:3). He will lead us, blind sheep, “by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them” (Isa. 42:16).

Today the evangelist passes on to us Christ's words, exceptional and most important for our life. These are the words that He is the Good Shepherd and the Door of the sheep.

Here it is useful to remember that in ancient Palestine sheep were not pastured the way cows were pastured in Russia. We imagine a shepherd as a scruffy little peasant walking behind the herd and driving the animals on with a heavy whip. Barking dogs biting at the heels of those trying to dodge them complete the unattractive picture. Alas, instinctively we understand Christ's words that He is the Shepherd in the way more familiar to our culture. A shepherd of sheep in the East, on the contrary, walks ahead of his flock, choosing the road among rocks and cliffs. Often he has to stop in a narrow place and let the sheep pass one by one, because for them there is no other road than the place where the shepherd stands.

This is exactly what the Good Shepherd is for us, the One who leads us to life. We follow Him, and on the narrow way it is possible for us to get through only by pressing close to Him, by cleaving to God, as the Bible says. Therefore the shepherding of Christ is a great gift for us. And in order to receive any gift of God, it is necessary to ask for it and thirst for it, to use it and thank Him for it. So too, in order for the Lord to be our Shepherd, we must desire this with all our strength, listen to His voice, and give thanks that He shepherds us.

Why climb over the fence when the door is open? Perhaps for fear of being turned away at the door—but then, even after “climbing over,” you will be asked to leave. Or perhaps out of mischief, as in childhood, when it was fun to climb through a window rather than obey tiresome rules of conduct. But mischief is out of place here: matters of the utmost seriousness are at stake.

Behind the denial of Christ there usually lurks a desire to manage without Him, as well as the self-confident notion that one’s own strength is sufficient for a righteous life. If we succumb to the temptation of self-sufficiency, we may fail to notice that what seemed to be “our own strength and resources” is in fact neither our own nor strength at all, but a delusion breathed upon us from a murky source.

Therefore, however harsh the words about the thieves and robbers who came before may seem—and they may also be applied to many who came later—they are just. Leaders and false prophets for whom people are merely a means of carrying out their own plans constantly send them to their deaths, and for now there is no end in sight.

But the good shepherd leads the flock not in order to shear and slaughter it, but to bring it to good pasture. Every comparison has its limits, including the comparison of people to a flock; yet let us not forget that each of us is unique to the Good Shepherd and that He knows each one by name.

Jesus usually did not speak directly about His messiahship. But He hinted at it often. His words about Himself as the good shepherd are also a hint. In those days there were many claimants to the role of Messiah. As early as the time of the Maccabees, roughly a century and a half before the Savior's coming, a new wave of messianism begins. Political messianism. The Messiah is awaited as a liberator, first from the power of a secular dynasty, and then from the power of the Romans. He is awaited as a great earthly King.

And traditional Jewish ideas about the Messiah did not require at all that one had to be born the Messiah. One could become the Messiah in the same way that those whom God calls to prophetic ministry become prophets. That is why false messiahs appeared in the same way as false prophets. Everything ended, at best, in nothing, and at worst, in tragedy. The Roman authorities did not encourage political messianism at all, and they suppressed any mass movement quickly and mercilessly. It often happened that the newly appeared "messiah" disappeared while the reprisals fell on the ordinary participants in the movement. Yet this did not stop zealots and adventurers of messianism. It is no accident that Jesus calls them "thieves and robbers": they certainly were not true shepherds of their flock.

And that is no surprise, since these people did not consider these flocks their own. The issue is not only that they were impostors. The issue is also the very character of political messianism. It lies in the idea of the Kingdom, which to the supporters of such messianism appeared to be a purely political reality, and therefore an entirely earthly one. Such an earthly kingdom could not be built without victims. The inevitable war and the following upheavals, political and social, were impossible without victims. Of course, everything was justified by the greatness of the goal. But that did not make things easier for those who died.

Only Jesus brought into the world a Kingdom that did not have to be established by force. A Kingdom for which one did not have to wage war against the authorities of this world. It also required a sacrifice, but the Savior Himself became that sacrifice. Therefore He had the right to speak of Himself as the true shepherd of His flock, for He became the door into the Kingdom for everyone who seeks it and did not destroy any one of them.

What does Jesus mean when He speaks of those who came before Him? If we consider the purely historical aspect, the answer is more or less clear: obviously He is speaking of the numerous claimants to messiahship who appeared in Judea then almost every day — appeared in order, in Jesus’ words, “to steal, kill, and destroy.” For all of them ended their preaching with a call to uprising, to a messianic war, a call that was almost always heard, and the consequences were not slow in coming: the Roman army suppressed all such movements harshly and mercilessly. Jesus, however, speaks of Himself as the Shepherd who cares for the sheep and does not want to destroy them needlessly, for He brought into the world the Kingdom, for the establishment of which no uprising is needed.

But this is only one side of the question. For when Jesus speaks of false shepherds, He is also addressing the Pharisees; it is they whom He calls blind, and He tells them that if they acknowledged their blindness, they would not bear sin upon themselves. Yet the Pharisees as a whole, unlike the Zealots, for example, were by no means supporters of holy war, though, of course, they awaited the Messiah no less. Of what, then, does Jesus accuse them? They certainly could not be accused of neglecting pastoral care: in this respect the Pharisaic teachers and rabbis were very zealous. But toward what was their zeal directed? First of all, and unsurprisingly, toward the religious education of their flock.

But religion in itself does not yet guarantee a full spiritual life. It can be either a help or an obstacle on the way into the Kingdom; if one makes it an end in itself, the consequences for spiritual life can be very sad. And the Pharisees were always inclined toward such absolutizing, although, of course, as always in such cases, much depended on concrete people. Unfortunately, however, there were many such mentors who were ready to sacrifice a person for the sake of religious norms and rules, and Jesus’ words applied to them in full measure.

Of course, many of those who were supposed to lead people along the spiritual path were objectively not ready for it. In that case a simple acknowledgment of their unreadiness would have been enough to remove responsibility from themselves: after all, no one would expect guidance from someone who had admitted this. But, as usual, very few were ready for such an acknowledgment. Who wants to sign his own pastoral incompetence?

And then the shepherds turned into those very false shepherds of whom Jesus spoke. And they bore sin upon themselves: for falsehood is always sin, and false shepherding is a double sin. Here the matter concerns the way of righteousness and the way into the Kingdom, and therefore salvation — something with which one must not play.