NOTES for Joh 10:11

As before, Jesus uses symbolic words from everyday life familiar to people in order to express who He is and why He has come. This time He calls Himself the shepherd, ready to protect and preserve the flock even at the cost of His own life.

Like other images, this little parable cannot prove anything to anyone. Although the Lord says that the sheep know the shepherd by his voice, most of them prefer not to remember or accept this. This image can only help a person who already trusts Jesus to understand Him better, to become convinced of the truth of His words, and to hear once again from the pages of the Gospel how a familiar voice calls him by name - for in this flock each sheep is unique and is worth the shepherd's life. The one who by faith knows why and for whom the Lord died and rose again can now realize how immeasurably close and dear he is to the Good Shepherd, who lays down His life for the sheep.

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.

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.