NOTES for Joh 10:17-28
17 Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. |
18 No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father. |
19 There was a division therefore again among the Jews for these sayings. |
20 And many of them said, He hath a devil, and is mad; why hear ye him? |
21 Others said, These are not the words of him that hath a devil. Can a devil open the eyes of the blind? |
22 And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter. |
23 And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon's porch. |
24 Then came the Jews round about him, and said unto him, How long dost thou make us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly. |
25 Jesus answered them, I told you, and ye believed not: the works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me. |
26 But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. |
27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: |
28 And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. |
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As we can see, many of the Pharisees were still ready to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah. They correctly understood His hints about His messiahship, and now they wanted only one thing from Him: that He finally declare Himself openly to be the Messiah. But He does not do this, because He knows perfectly well what "being the Messiah" means for these people, and He was not going to become that kind of Messiah - His plans did not include raising a rebellion, beginning a holy war against the Romans, or becoming the ruler of an earthly state.
Instead, He again and again explains to those around Him what the Kingdom He brought into the world is. And He speaks of the main thing that forms the basis of the Kingdom's life by His own example: to live in the Kingdom means to give one's life to God in order then to receive it back from His hands. And the Savior's own path, His death and Resurrection, is a remarkable example of this.
According to the laws of our untransformed world, even the Messiah, bearing in Himself the fullness of God and the fullness of the Kingdom, can die - although, unlike us, death is not a natural inevitability for Him. And when He is killed, He dies like any human being. But His life belongs to the Father; He lives not by His own life, but by the Father's life, which was given to Him by the Father in all its fullness. And in the Kingdom, where there is no place for death, He receives it again from the Father in all its fullness - completely unexpectedly for His enemies, who thought that now, once He had died, everything was over.
And the path of every Christian, every inhabitant of the Kingdom, resembles the path of the One who brought the Kingdom into the world. Of course, God has not given any of us, as He gave Him, the capacity to contain the life of the Kingdom in all its fullness. But the Kingdom is open to us, and one can enter it only by giving up the life that God gave us at birth, so that there in the Kingdom He may return it to us transformed. This new life will no longer be part of our world - a world being transformed but not yet transformed - but part of the Kingdom; it will become the first step on the path of our transformation, the first step on the path to salvation.
Readings for 15 May 2026
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