John 10 - The New International Commentary
10:1–2 Jesus introduces the subject of sheep and shepherds with the fifteenth of his “Amen, amen” pronouncements. Here (as in 8:34–36, and possibly 3:11–21) the “Amen, amen” formula seems to govern not just a verse, but an entire paragraph (10:1–5), which the Gospel writer finally characterizes as “this parable” (v. 6). “Amen, amen, I say to you,” Jesus begins, “the one who does not enter through the door into the courtyard of the sheep, but goes up from elsewhere, that one is a thief and robber” (10:1). That the “parable” begins negatively is not as surprising as it might otherwise be, given the negative tone of what has just preceded it (9:41). Moreover, the negative pronouncement has a positive sequel: “But the one who enters through the door is the shepherd of the sheep” (v. 2).*
Whether or not this “parable”* is comparable to Jesus’ use of parables* in the other three Gospels could be debated at length. Its closest kinship is with certain parables of “normalcy,” describing what is natural or appropriate in everyday life. Doctors, for example, are normally for sick people, not those who are well (see Mk 2:17). Fasting is normal when someone has died, but not at a wedding celebration (Mk 2:18–20). New wine normally goes in new bottles (Mk 2:22). If a sheep falls into a pit, its owner will normally pull it out, even on the Sabbath (Mt 12:11). If a shepherd loses track of even one sheep out of a hundred, he will normally leave the rest to fend for themselves while he goes out to look for it (Lk 15:4). If not common occurrences, these are at least common responses to everyday life situations, or even to emergencies. Similarly here, the first thing that gives legitimacy to the shepherd of the sheep is that he enters the courtyard in the normal fashion, “through the door” (v. 1). If we see someone climbing over the wall instead of entering in the normal way, it is fair to assume he is not the shepherd or owner of the sheep, but most likely a “thief and robber”* (v. 1). Even today, someone seen climbing into a house through a window is more likely than not up to no good.
The “courtyard” is a walled enclosure usually attached to a building,* serving a variety of purposes* but here envisioned as a pen or corral for sheep. It is not altogether clear whether all the sheep in the courtyard belong to the one shepherd, or whether several shepherds’ flocks are kept together in a common courtyard.* The phrase, “the shepherd of the sheep” (v. 2),* suggests that the shepherd who “enters through the door” is shepherd to all the sheep in the courtyard, or at least all that figure in the story.* If there are other sheep and other legitimate shepherds who also enter “through the door,” they go unmentioned. The contrast is between the one shepherd who enters legitimately, and the “thief and robber” who “goes up from elsewhere”* to gain access to the sheep.
3 Two more details (in addition to entrance “through the door”) signal the shepherd’s legitimacy. One is that “the doorkeeper* opens” to him, and the other is that “the sheep hear his voice, and he summons his own sheep by name and leads them out” (v. 3).* The presence of a “doorkeeper” is the only hint in the text that other shepherds may have their sheep within the courtyard, but this detail is more likely just part of what a reader might have visualized as a normal courtyard setting (see 18:15–17). It is worth noticing that “the sheep,” not “his sheep”—thus presumably all the sheep in the courtyard—“hear his voice.” Everywhere else in the chapter, to “hear” is to heed and follow (see vv. 8, 16, 27).* There is no suggestion that all the sheep in the courtyard “hear” the shepherd’s voice but that only “his own sheep” are summoned “by name” and led out of the courtyard. More likely, “the sheep” (that is, all the sheep in the courtyard) are in fact the shepherd’s “own sheep,” so that the courtyard is in fact emptied out. The phrase “his own sheep”* is not introduced in order to distinguish his sheep from someone else’s, but simply to accent that they belong to him as objects of his love and care.*
The verbs in the present tense (“opens,” “hear,” “summons,” “leads out”) refer not to a particular occasion, but to what is normally or customarily true in any courtyard where a shepherd takes care of his sheep and leads them to pasture each day. While it is also customary in any sheepherding culture for shepherds to give nicknames to certain sheep with identifiable features or characteristics, the notion that a shepherd calls every sheep “by name”* is an exaggeration prompted by the reality to which the imagery points, that is, Jesus’ intimate knowledge of, and love for, “his own” disciples (see 13:1).* The shepherd “summons” his sheep, much as Jesus will summon Mary to meet him outside Bethany (11:28), or summon Lazarus from the tomb (12:17),* and then “leads them out” to freedom and food and water (see v. 9).
4–5 The parable continues with a notice of what happens next, after the shepherd “has brought out all his own” (v. 4). The phrase “all his own”* echoes “his own sheep” in the preceding verse.* The strong verb “brought out” (literally, “driven out”)* reminds us that in spite of the implied application to himself and his disciples, Jesus is still speaking in a parable, and therefore about sheep, not persons. Earlier he had said (using the same verb), “the person who comes to me I will never drive out” (6:37), and in the present setting it was the Pharisees, not Jesus, who “drove out” the man born blind (9:34, 35). Here the verb, in the weakened sense of “brought out,”* merely resumes the verb “leads them out” in the preceding verse, avoiding a repetition of the same verb. It is not where the emphasis lies.
The verse’s main point is rather that the shepherd “goes ahead of them”* and the sheep “follow him,” just as Jesus’ disciples “followed” him from the beginning (1:37–38, 40, 43; see also 8:12). They do so “because they know his voice,” reinforcing the point that “the sheep hear his voice” (v. 3). “Knowing” is the result of “hearing,” but it is also the result of being known. That the shepherd knows his sheep is evident from the fact that he calls them “by name” (v. 3), and we now learn that this knowledge is in some way mutual, as Jesus will later make explicit (see v. 14). By contrast, the sheep “do not know the voice of strangers” (v. 5), and consequently will follow no one but their proper shepherd.* The “stranger”* (v. 5) is for the moment undefined, but the contrast with which the parable began suggests that “the thief and robber” mentioned there is still in view (v. 1). This is confirmed by the notion that the sheep “will flee from him” (v. 5), and then by the further mention of “thieves and robbers” in verse 8, and “the thief” in verse 10. The parable ends on the same negative note with which it began (see v. 1).
6 The story might have continued, but it does not. Nothing is said of where the shepherd leads the sheep, or what happens next. Instead, the Gospel writer pauses to identify the preceding five verses as “this parable”* (v. 6), and to make it clear that Jesus aimed it at those Pharisees who were “with him” and had asked him, “Are we blind too?” (9:40). The notice that Jesus “told them” and the reference to “things … he was saying to them” echo 9:41, where “Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now you say that ‘we see.’ Your sin remains” (my italics). The reader is supposed to understand that the audience is the same. Jesus’ verdict against them is now confirmed by the notice that “they did not understand* what things they were that he was saying to them” (v. 6). Unlike the sheep who “know” the shepherd’s voice (v. 4), they do not know what Jesus is telling them. Their inability to see (9:41) is compounded by an inability to hear or understand.
If the Gospel writer goes out of his way to tell the reader that the Pharisees “did not understand,” does this mean he expects the reader to understand the parable, or is an explanation needed? If so, is the explanation to be found in verses 7–10, or in verses 11–18, or both? If not, what is the reader to make of the parable as it stands? At the very least, verse 6 seems to invite the reader to make a provisional assessment of the parable’s meaning. The efforts of commentators to find in verses 7–18 any kind of coherent or consistent interpretation of the parable invariably end, if not in frustration at least with an acknowledgment of severe limitations.* It appears that the model derived from Mark and Matthew, in which Jesus tells a “parable” and then supplies a detailed “interpretation” for the initiated (see Mk 4:1–9, 13–20; 7:14–15, 17–23; Mt 13:24–30, 36–43), is not a useful model here. Instead, verses 1–5 should be allowed to speak for themselves before moving on, and the notice that the Pharisees “did not understand” is as good a place as any for the reader to reflect on the parable’s intrinsic meaning and purpose. If verses 1–5 are in fact a single parable, as the phrase “this parable” implies (see above, n.
7–8 Even though the Pharisees “did not understand” (v. 6), Jesus speaks “again,” presumably addressing the same audience:* “Amen, amen, I say to you that I am the Door of the sheep” (v. 7). This comes as a surprise to the reader, who might have expected Jesus to identify himself first of all with “the shepherd of the sheep” (v. 2), or if not that at least to “the doorkeeper” (v. 3). Instead, by repeating the “Amen, amen” formula (now for the sixteenth time in the Gospel), Jesus calls attention to the parable’s opening line, with its own “Amen, amen,” and its key phrase, “through the door”* (v. 1).
As “the Door” Jesus claims to be the protector of the sheep from “the thief and robber” (v. 1b). “All who came before me are thieves and robbers,” he continues, “but the sheep did not hear them” (v. 8). “Before me”* could be either temporal (“all who came before I came”),* or spatial (“all who came and stood before me to gain entrance”).* The temporal understanding can appeal to 9:39, where Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world,” and to verse 10, where he will say, “I came that they might have life,” yet the language of “coming” is not easily compatible with the metaphor of Jesus as “the Door.” Moreover, the temporal understanding raises the difficult question of what is then implied about Abraham, Moses, the prophets, and John, who came “before” Jesus in time. Are they “thieves and robbers”?* “All” sounds very inclusive, yet Jesus has explicitly endorsed Abraham (8:39–40, 56), Moses (5:46–47), and John (5:33–35) as his legitimate predecessors.* Possibly for this reason, a few ancient manuscripts omit the “all,” and many more omit the phrase “before me.”*
More likely, therefore, the phrase “before me” has a spatial reference. “Thieves and robbers” have come “before” Jesus as before a door.* As “the Door,” he is a closed door to all who confront him and threaten the sheep. These “thieves and robbers” are presumably “the Jews” or “the Pharisees” who have challenged him repeatedly, and have now driven out the man born blind.* Throughout the preceding chapters, Jesus confronted these enemies alone, but we now learn that in doing so he was also protecting those whom he said the Father had given him (see 6:37, 44). In this way, his intention “that of all he has given me I might not lose anything” (6:39) is certain to come to pass (see vv. 27–29). “Thieves and robbers” are denied access to the sheep, both because “the Door” stands closed before them and because “the sheep did not hear them” (v. 8b). The latter assertion is true by definition, for throughout the chapter Jesus’ “sheep” are identified as those who hear the voice of the Shepherd and of no one else (see vv. 3, 4, 5, 14, 16, 27; also 18:37). Those who listen to other voices are ipso facto not his sheep (see v. 26).
9 Jesus repeats the “I am” pronouncement, just as he repeated, “I am the Bread of life” (6:35, 47), and “I am the Light of the world” (8:12; 9:5), and just as he will shortly repeat “I am the good Shepherd” (vv. 11, 14). “I am the Door,” he continues, “Through me, if anyone goes in he will be saved, and will go in and go out and find pasture” (v. 9). The difference is that now he presents himself as an open door, open not to “thieves and robbers” but to the sheep. It is no longer a matter of coming “before” the door (v. 8) and being denied entrance, but of going “through” the door* to a place of safety. As in 6:35, 47 and 8:12, the “I am” pronouncement is followed by an invitation and promise, introduced by “if anyone,”* recalling such classic promises as 6:51 (“If anyone eat of this bread, he will live forever”) or 7:17 (“If anyone chooses to do his will, he will know about the teaching”), or 8:51 (“If anyone keeps my word, he will never ever see death”).* Like these others, it is an invitation to “anyone” to believe in Jesus and thereby gain eternal life. But because it stands within the metaphorical world of sheep and shepherds, its vocabulary is distinctive. To “go in” and “go out” implies an enclosure, in this instance the “courtyard” (v. 1) housing the sheep. The promise of being “saved,”* uncommon in John’s Gospel,* is probably chosen here to highlight the thought of sheep being “rescued” or “kept safe” from harm, whether from “thieves and robbers” or natural predators (see v. 12).* Those addressed, therefore (and “anyone” implies a very general invitation), are promised entry to Jesus’ “courtyard,” with all the benefits of a shepherd’s care. The “courtyard,” however, is neither a prison nor a fortress, for the sheep, Jesus promises, “will go in and go out and find pasture”—another way of saying, “if the Son sets you free, you will really be free” (8:36). The metaphors of shepherds and sheep and the courtyard are still at work—not least in the term “pasture,”* which sustains animal, not human, life—but the reality to which the metaphors point is also clearly visible, and becoming more so. As the discourse continues, the metaphors will begin to fade, having served their purpose, and Jesus will speak more and more straightforwardly of his mission and his relationship to the Father.
10 Jesus now returns briefly to the subject of the “thieves and robbers,” before stating in classic Johannine terms why he came into the world. “The thief does not come except that he might steal and slaughter and destroy,” he continues, adding that “I came that they might have life, and have [it] in abundance” (v. 10). The stark contrast between “the thief” and Jesus is striking, as if to guard against any misunderstanding of certain traditional sayings attributed to Jesus in which his “coming” is actually compared to the coming of a thief (see Mt 24:43–44; Lk 12:39–40; Rev 3:3; 16:15; also 1 Thess 5:2, 4). That a thief “steals” is a truism, but “slaughter” and “destroy” are more surprising. These words are part of the metaphor, because “slaughter”* has to do with the killing of animals (in this instance, sheep).* The supposition is that sheep are stolen not in order to be added to someone else’s flock, but to be slaughtered for food, and thus “destroyed.” The accent is on “destroy,”* for being “destroyed” or “lost” is in this Gospel the very opposite of gaining “eternal life” (see 3:16; 6:39–40). Here the thief comes to “destroy,” while Jesus comes “that they might have life.” “Life” corresponds to “pasture” within the metaphor, except that the “life” Jesus gives is “in abundance,” that is, more than mere survival or safety (v. 9), more than “pasture” (v. 9) in the sense of basic sustenance for a sheep or a human.* “Life” is nothing less than “eternal life” with God (just as in 3:16 and 6:40, and frequently throughout the Gospel).*
11 Abruptly changing the metaphor, Jesus continues, “I am the good Shepherd.”* Why “the good Shepherd”? Why not simply “the Shepherd of the sheep” (as in v. 2), corresponding to “the Door of the sheep” (v. 7)? Jesus seems to use the adjective “good” in much the same way that the adjective “true” is used in other instances (see, for example, 1:9, “the true Light”; 6:32, “the true bread”; 15:1, “the true Vine”), to refer to what is “real” or “genuine” in God’s sight, the very model or prototype of what a shepherd should be.* What makes a shepherd “good” is that he “lays down his life for the sheep,” that is, he puts his very life on the line to protect his flock. With this, Jesus leaves behind the imagery of the opening parable (vv. 1–5), with its picture of the shepherd entering through the door and leading the sheep out to pasture. Instead, we see the shepherd and the sheep in the fields outside the courtyard, facing the possible attacks of predators.
In the translation, I capitalized “Shepherd” in “I am the good Shepherd,” but not in the next sentence, “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” The reason is that in the second instance the definite article appears to be generic (like “the doorkeeper” in v. 3, “the thief” in v. 10, or “the hireling” in v. 12).* Jesus is speaking of what any “good shepherd” (as opposed to a “hireling”) would do for his sheep. “Life” (literally, “soul”)* refers here not to the “spiritual” or immaterial side of a person’s being, but, quite the contrary, to a person’s physical life in this world (see 12:25),* in contrast to the eternal and abundant “life”* that Jesus gives (v. 10).* The point initially is not that a good shepherd dies for his sheep (that would hardly benefit them),* but that he puts himself in danger in order to ensure their safety. Yet the metaphor is moving toward a reality a few verses later in which Jesus as “the good Shepherd” actually “lays down his life” in death to gain for his sheep eternal life (see vv. 15, 17–18; 15:13).
12–13 For the moment, still working with the image of what is expected from any “good shepherd,” Jesus drives the imagery home by invoking a contrast. The opposite of “the good shepherd” is “the hireling,”* who is no shepherd at all, and has nothing to lose if the sheep are slaughtered because they do not belong to him in the first place. He envisions a scene in which the hireling “sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees” (v. 12), precisely because he is only a hireling, “and it does not matter to him about the sheep” (v. 13). The outcome is inevitable: “the wolf seizes and scatters them.” Whether the predators are humans (as in v. 10), or wild animals as here, the sheep are at their mercy without a “good shepherd” to protect them. Jesus intends no specific identification of “the hireling” any more than for “the doorkeeper” or even “the thief” (while Jesus may have thought of “the Jews” or “the Pharisees” as “thieves and robbers,” the singular “thief” remains a generic figure within an imaginative story).* He is not even attaching any particular blame to “the hireling,” who is simply acting out his role as one who has no investment in the sheep. All that Jesus is saying is that “the hireling” is not a “good” (that is, proper) shepherd, in that he is by definition not a shepherd at all (v. 12).* Jesus adds, almost redundantly, that this is “because he is a hireling and it does not matter to him about the sheep” (v. 13), but not before offering a glimpse of the grim but inevitable outcome of the story, in which “the wolf seizes and scatters” the sheep, so that the flock is destroyed (v. 12b). For the reader of the other Gospels, his language evokes a scene just after the Last Supper, on the Mount of Olives, in which Jesus quoted the text, “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered” (Mk 14:27/Mt 26:31, from Zech 13:7).
14–15 Again (as in v. 9) Jesus repeats the “I am” expression: “I am the good Shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father” (vv. 14–15a). Here the metaphor of shepherd and sheep begins to give way to the characteristic pairing of Jesus with “the Father.” We have heard nothing of “the Father” since 8:54, but from here to the end of the chapter he will be very much a part of the discussion (see vv. 17, 18, 25, 29, 30, 32, 36, 37, 38). That “I know mine and mine know me” builds (albeit vaguely) on the notion in the introductory parable that “the sheep hear his voice,” and that the shepherd summons them “by name” (v. 3). The neuter pronoun for “mine”* probably has as its antecedent “the sheep” or “his own sheep” from that scene (vv. 3, 4) and from the later contrast between the shepherd and the hireling (v. 12; see also v. 27).* Yet “the Father” is no necessary part of the imagery of shepherd and sheep, and the analogy between the mutual knowledge of Father and Son and of the Son and his disciples is by no means dependent on the Son being visualized as Shepherd and the disciples as sheep (see, for example, Mt 11:27 and Lk 10:22).* It is the Father, in fact, who makes it possible for Jesus to make the role of a “good shepherd” (v. 11) his own: “And I lay down my life for the sheep” (v. 15). But this time Jesus is not simply telling what any “good shepherd” customarily does for his sheep (as in v. 11), but is instead revealing what he himself does as “good Shepherd.” The verb “I lay down”* is present (as in v. 11), but points toward the future, when Jesus will give himself over to arresting authorities in order to spare his disciples (18:8), and eventually give himself up to death on the cross (19:30).* Still, it is not exactly a futuristic present, for Jesus’ life is already at risk, and has been ever since “the Jews began pursuing” him (5:16), and “kept seeking all the more to kill him” (5:18; see also 7:1, 19, 25; 8:37, 40).*
16 It would be easy and natural to move directly from verse 15 to verse 17, where Jesus continues, “That is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I might take it back again.” But in between comes a different pronouncement: “And other sheep I have, which are not from this courtyard. Those too I must bring, and they will hear my voice, and they will become one flock, one Shepherd” (v. 16). This parenthetical comment* looks beyond the “courtyard” of Palestinian Judaism, and probably beyond Judaism itself to the Gentile world. In that world, Jesus is saying, there are those who are already his “sheep,” and they will prove it by “hearing his voice,” as his own sheep always do (see vv. 3, 4, 14, 27). Later, the Gospel writer will confirm Jesus’ pronouncement (and dissolve the metaphor) with the striking comment that even the Jewish High Priest had “prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, and not for the nation alone but in order that the children of God who are scattered might also be gathered together into one” (11:52).* Here too the assumption is that Jesus will die (by “laying down his life”), but—oddly—that he will survive death, so as to “bring”* these “other sheep” under the Shepherd’s care. His survival of death, moreover, is not a mere possibility, but a certainty, something that “must”* happen, just as surely as “the Son of man must be lifted up” (3:14; also 12:34). The whole scenario recalls Mark 14:27–28, where Jesus quotes a Scripture hinting at his death (“I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered,” v. 27), yet quickly adds, “but after I am raised up, I will lead you into Galilee” (v. 28; also 16:7).
The outcome is that all the sheep (both those “from this courtyard” and the “other sheep”) “will become* one flock,” with “one Shepherd.” Not one “courtyard” or “fold,” as in the Vulgate,* but “one flock,”* a metaphor for the church used only here in John’s Gospel.* “One flock” is a corollary of “one Shepherd.” Jesus’ vision is not that Gentiles will be brought into “this courtyard,” understood as Judaism, for it is the Shepherd’s care, not a particular “courtyard,” that defines the “flock.” At this point, “one Shepherd” appears to be a self-reference, for Jesus has been the “Shepherd” all along (explicitly so in vv. 11 and 14). Yet in light of what follows later in the chapter the “one Shepherd” could just as easily be God (as consistently in the Old Testament),* for Jesus and the Father share in the common work of protecting the sheep and keeping them safe (see vv. 28–30). It is precarious to read into the text any definitive assumption as to what the precise relationship between Jewish and Gentile Christian congregations, or between Jews and Gentiles in any single congregation, should be. With or without the metaphor of shepherd and sheep, Jesus’ intent is simply that all his disciples, Jew or Gentile, present and future alike (see 17:20), will become “one” in their relationship to God, their love for each other, and their mission to the world (see 11:52; 17:11, 21, 23).
17 Picking up the thread of verse 15, Jesus continues, “That is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I might receive it back again” (v. 17). His point is not that the Father’s love for him is conditional on “laying down his life” for his sheep (see 3:35, 5:20, and 15:9, where the Father’s love for the Son is a given, and 17:24, where Jesus says, “you loved me before the foundation of the world”). Rather, Jesus’ love for his sheep and his willingness to die for them is part and parcel of his very nature as God’s Son, and therefore as the object of the Father’s love.* As Shepherd he risks his life for his sheep (v. 11), but as the Father’s Son he does more (vv. 15, 17), giving himself up to death on their behalf (see 3:16). That Jesus has now begun to speak explicitly of his death is confirmed by the next clause, “that I might receive it back again.”* This clause would have no meaning in relation to a shepherd putting his life in danger for his sheep, but in the present context it points to Jesus’ resurrection—his clearest pronouncement so far on the subject (see 2:19; 6:62).
18 “No one took it away from me,” Jesus continues, “but I lay it down on my own.” The aorist “took away”* could be a gnomic or timeless aorist,* but more likely Jesus is looking back at those earlier instances in which his enemies tried to arrest or stone him and failed to do so (see 7:30, 32, 44; 8:20, 59). His words, “I lay it down on my own,” come as a surprise in light of his insistence all along that “I can do nothing on my own” (5:30; see also 7:17, 28; 8:28, 42). The distinction is that Jesus acts “on his own” initiative in contrast to the initiative of others who tried unsuccessfully to take his life.* He never acts “on his own” in relation to the Father (see 5:19; 7:18).
Jesus will shortly make the distinction explicit, but first he states even more strongly that he acts on his own initiative: “I have authority* to lay it down, and I have authority to receive it back.” He has mentioned “authority” only once before, in claiming that the Father “gave him authority to do judgment, because he is Son of man” (5:27), in just the same way that “he gave to the Son to have life in himself” (5:26). In both places, Jesus’ “authority,” including his ability to act “in himself” (5:26), or, as he says here, “on my own,” is not something intrinsically his by nature, but something conferred on him by the Father.* His pronouncement here about “authority” provides a point of reference for Pilate’s unintentionally ironic claim nine chapters later, that “I have authority to release you, and I have authority to crucify you” (19:10). There Jesus is quick to remind him that “You would have no authority against me at all if it were not given you from above” (19:11). Part of the irony is that by then the reader knows that the same is true of Jesus himself, and his own authority, except that his authority is from God and not from Rome. For him, the principle articulated by John still stands: “A person cannot receive anything unless it is given him from heaven” (3:27). Here, therefore, he is quick to add, “This command I received from my Father.”
“Received”* is the same verb used twice before, in the clauses, “that I might receive it back again” (v. 17) and “I have authority to receive it back” (v. 18a). It is not a case of an active “taking” in the first two instances (as in the NIV and NRSV, “to take it up again”) and a more passive “receiving” in the third. Rather, the verb should be translated the same way all three times. Jesus has the authority to “receive” back his life from the Father, because he has first “received” a “command” from the Father, and obeyed it by laying down his life. There is a kind of analogy between the “authority” granted to Jesus from the Father and the “authority” Jesus grants to those who “receive” him (see 1:12, “But to as many as did receive him he gave authority to become children of God”). “Command,”* mentioned here for the first time,* encapsulates in a single noun all that is involved in the notion that God “sent” his Son (see 3:17, 34; 5:36, 38; 6:29, 57; 7:29; 8:42), accenting the Father’s intention that the Son “lay down his life” and “receive it back again.” Implicit in the “command” is the “authority” to do just that. With this, Jesus ends his speech (vv. 7–18) on a rather defiant note.
19–21 If the first part of Jesus’ speech to “the Pharisees … who were with him” (9:40) resulted in incomprehension (10:6), the second part (vv. 7–18) divides them. “Again a split* came about among the Jews,” we are told, “on account of these words” (v. 19). “Again” reminds us that there have been other such “splits,” whether “in the crowd” (7:43) or among “the Pharisees” (9:16). Probably only the second of these is in view here, for “the Pharisees” and “the Jews” are, as we have seen, largely interchangeable terms. “Many,” perhaps the majority, say to their companions, “He has a demon and is mad! Why do you listen to him?” (v. 20), and the “others” reply, “These are not the words* of one demon-possessed. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?” (v. 21). The charge of demon possession has been leveled before, whether simply as another way of saying he was mad (7:20), or in a more serious vein, linking him to the hated Samaritans (see 8:48, 52). Here the charge of madness is explicit. While demon possession and madness were not necessarily identical in the ancient world, they were closely associated.* Here the answer of the “others” (v. 21) suggests that they took the rhetoric of demon possession seriously, even if not quite literally. “Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?” they ask, on the assumption that the actions of a demoniac are essentially the actions of the “demon”* possessing him. Again (as in 9:16) this second group (even though they do not necessarily believe in Jesus) speak for the Gospel writer, echoing the words of the man born blind, “It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of one born blind” (9:32). Just as the question “How can a sinful man do such signs?” (9:16) went unanswered because the answer was obvious to the reader, so too those who asked, “Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?” are given the last word here.* Their question in a way echoes Jesus’ own question in the synoptic tradition, “How can Satan cast out Satan?” (Mk 3:23). It also brings the whole section (9:39–10:21) back to the point at which it began, the healing of the man born blind. The dispute over Jesus’ “words” (vv. 19, 21) comes down finally to his “works.”
22–23 The new scene begins with the notice, “Then came the Rededication in Jerusalem” (v. 22). “Then” is used to set the time frame not for what precedes (9:1–10:21), but for what follows.* This is evident from the verb “came” or “came about.” When the writer wants to set the time for what has preceded, he uses such expressions as “These things he said teaching in synagogue in Capernaum” (6:59), or “These words he spoke in the treasury, teaching in the temple” (8:20). Here by contrast he is not summarizing, but moving on.*
The “Rededication”* was an eight-day festival, beginning on the 25th of Kislev (or December), commemorating Jewish independence under Judas Maccabaeus and the consecration of the temple in Jerusalem in 164
O. Titles and Works (10:22–42)
Then came the Rededication in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. So the Jews surrounded him, and were saying to him, “How long will you take away our life? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name, these testify about me. But as for you, you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. And I give them eternal life, and they will never ever be lost, and no one will seize them out of my hand. That which my Father has given me is greater than all things, and no one can seize [it] out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”
Again the Jews lifted stones that they might stone him. Jesus answered them, “I showed you many good works from the Father. For which work among them are you stoning me?” The Jews answered him, “It’s not about a good work that we are stoning you, but about blasphemy, and because you, being a man, are making yourself God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law that ‘I said you are gods’? If he said that those to whom the word of God came were ‘gods,’ and the Scripture cannot be abolished, then you’re telling him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world that ‘You blaspheme,’ because I said ‘I am the Son of God’? If I do not do the works of my Father, don’t believe me. But if I do them, even if you don’t believe me, believe the works, so that you might learn and know that the Father is in me and I in the Father.”
So they sought to arrest him again, and he went out from their hand. And he went back again across the Jordan, to the place where John was at first baptizing, and remained there. And many came to him, and they were saying that “Though John did no sign, still everything John said about this man was true.” And many believed in him there.
The writer pauses to sketch a new scene at the Jewish festival of Rededication (known today as Hanukkah), and a new stage in Jesus’ debate with “the Jews.” The scene accomplishes two things: first, it attempts to resolve the “split” (v. 19) over Jesus’ claim to be “the good Shepherd,” drawing on the “sheep” imagery of verses 1–18 (see vv. 26–27); second, it recalls the earlier confrontation at the Tent festival (chapters 7–8), in that “the Jews” continue to challenge Jesus about his claims more generally, focusing now on such titles as “the Christ” (v. 24), “God” (v. 33), and “the Son of God” (v. 34). He answers by repeatedly downplaying the importance of titles, and calling attention instead to “the works I do in my Father’s name” (see vv. 25, 32, and 37–38). The outcome is the same as before. “The Jews” try to stone him (v. 31; see 8:59), or, failing that, arrest him (v. 39a), but again without success (v. 39b; see 7:30; 8:20, 59). It remains true that no one has taken Jesus’ life from him. Only he has “authority to lay it down” and “authority to receive it back” (see vv. 17–18). His “words” (v. 19) to that effect are thereby vindicated. Once he has made his escape, Jesus leaves the scene of his lengthy debates with “the Jews” for good, returning for a time to revisit the place “across the Jordan” where John testified about him long before (see 1:19–34) and where he had found his first disciples (vv. 40–42). History repeats itself, as “many believed in him there” (v. 42).
24 Accordingly, we are told, “the Jews surrounded him,”* possibly with hostile intent,* as if with stoning already in mind (see vv. 31–33). “How long will you take away our life?” they ask. “If you are the Christ, tell us plainly” (v. 24). The question, “How long will you take away our life?”* (v. 24a), virtually defies translation. Most noticeably, it echoes Jesus’ own words a few verses earlier, “No one took it away from me,” referring to his own “life” or soul, “but I lay it down on my own” (v. 18). If the meaning is the same, they are turning his pronouncement upside down by asking, “How long will you take our life away?” or “kill us.”* But they can hardly have meant such a thing literally. They have been trying to kill Jesus, not the other way around.* Therefore most English versions render it, “How long will you keep us in suspense?” (RSV, NRSV, NIV, REB, NAB, etc.). While this translation makes excellent sense in the context, no such meaning is attested in biblical, classical, or Hellenistic Greek.*
It appears that the language of “killing” or “taking away life” is used here metaphorically, as in our colloquial English expression, “the suspense is killing me.” While examples from the Greek Old Testament are markedly different, they do exhibit a kindred note of “breathless” expectancy: “To you, Lord, I lifted up my soul” (see Pss 25[24]:1; 86[85]:4; 143[142]:8).* Here, however, the expectancy is not a good thing, for someone else is “lifting up” or “taking away” their “soul,” or life, and not toward God. In the wake of the “split” dividing them (v. 19), they are uncertain what to expect, for they are no longer in control. The notion of “killing” or a prolonged death, therefore, is by no means inappropriate as a metaphor for their frustration.
The overriding question is what it has been all along, the subject of all the “splits” among “the crowd” (7:40–44), “the Pharisees” (9:16), and “the Jews” (vv. 19–21): Who is Jesus? Behind the disputes over whether he is “from God” or “a sinner” (9:16), “demon-possessed” or not (vv. 19–21) is the persistent issue of whether or not he is, or is claiming to be, “the Christ” (see 7:26–27, 31, 41–42). This is what frames the anguished demand, “If you are the Christ, tell us plainly” (v. 24b). By “plainly”* they seem to mean not just “publicly” (as in 7:4, 26; 18:20), but “in so many words,” rather than in metaphors such as Bread, Light, Shepherd, or Door (see 11:14; 16:25, 29). Any reader familiar with other Gospels will recall the High Priest’s words at Jesus’ trial before the Sanhedrin: “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” (Mk 14:62), or “Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God” (Mt 26:63). There, “the Christ” called forth as its companion title, “the Son of God” (or something equivalent), and in much the same way the subsequent debate here will center less on the issue of whether Jesus is “the Christ” than on whether he is “God” (v. 33) or “the Son of God” (v. 36). Even though the title “Christ” or “Messiah” in early Judaism (see 1:41) did not necessarily imply divinity, in the world of John’s Gospel it does, not only to the author (see 20:31) and those who believe in Jesus (see 11:27),* but even at some level to Jesus’ opponents.* Their intense interest in whether or not he is “the Christ” seems to grow, directly or indirectly, out of their initial impression that he “was claiming God as his own Father, making himself equal to God” (5:18). Here as in chapters 7–8, it will turn out that the issue of Jesus as “the Christ” is only preliminary to the issue of Jesus as “Son of God” or “God.” Moreover, in asking him now to speak “plainly,” “the Jews” show themselves ignorant of the fact that he has already done so (see 7:26). In retrospect, he will insist that “I have spoken plainly to the world; I always taught in synagogue and in the temple, where all the Jews come together, and I said nothing in secret” (18:20).
25 Jesus answers them with a fairly lengthy speech (vv. 25–30). His opening words, “I told you,* and you do not believe” (v. 25a), are not literally true. Even though he has spoken “plainly” (7:26), he has never told them in so many words that he was “the Christ.” He has claimed this only once, in a very different setting, when the Samaritan woman said, “I know that Messiah is coming, who is called Christ,” and Jesus told her, “It is I—I who am speaking to you” (4:25–26). But he immediately explains himself: “The works* that I do in my Father’s name, these testify about me” (v. 25b). With this, he explains not only the sense in which he can say “I told you,” but also the sense in which he can claim that they “do not believe.” What they have failed to believe is the testimony of his “works.” These works, he reminds them, are in his Father’s “name,” that is, they are the Father’s own works. With this, he takes them back to where their unbelief began, when he said, “My Father is working even until now, and I am working” (5:17), and they “kept seeking all the more to kill him, because he … was claiming God as his own Father, making himself equal to God” (5:18). This, and not the title “Christ,” he reminds them, is the real issue. Nor is it purely a question of who Jesus is, for, as he says, “The works that I do” are done in “my Father’s name.” Despite the emphatic “I,” they are the Father’s works and not his own.
26 For emphasis, Jesus repeats himself: “But as for you, you do not believe,” adding the reason for their unbelief, “because you do not belong to my sheep” (v. 26).* Reintroducing the sheep metaphor, he revisits the parable of verses 1–5 and the discourse of verses 7–18. One might have expected rather, “You do not belong to my sheep because you do not believe,” but the wording here is in keeping with the theology of the Gospel. The fact that sheep hear their shepherd and recognize his voice does more than simply legitimate the true Shepherd in contrast to “strangers” (see vv. 3–5, 8, 14, 16); it also legitimates them as his sheep. “Hearing” and “knowing” the Shepherd’s voice is what identifies the sheep.* Here for the first time, Jesus defines “hearing” or “knowing” the shepherd’s voice more specifically as “believing.” Those who do not “believe” prove thereby that they are not Jesus’ sheep. Behind it all is a strong accent on election: those who “believe” do so because they are already Jesus’ sheep (see v. 16, “other sheep I have”), his gift from the Father.
27–28 Jesus now goes on to speak positively about his sheep (vv. 27–28), not so much for the benefit of his immediate hearers as for the readers of the Gospel, those whom he wants to assure that he is “the Christ, the Son of God,” so that they might “in believing have life in his name” (20:31). “My sheep hear my voice,” he begins, “and I know them, and they follow me” (v. 27), largely repeating what he said before (vv. 3–4, 14). To this he adds the strong assurance that “I give them eternal life, and they will never ever be lost, and no one will seize them* out of my hand” (v. 28). Here too he builds on what has preceded, but with particular emphasis on his sheep never being “lost” or “destroyed.” The corollary of “eternal life,” he claims, is eternal safety from predators (see vv. 10, 12) under his protective “hand.” Jesus’ goal for his disciples is what it was four chapters earlier, “that of all he has given me I might not lose anything” (6:39). This goal will come to realization within the narrative, and when it does, first Jesus (17:12) and then the Gospel writer (18:9) will call it to our attention.
29–30 So far, aside from the phrase “in my Father’s name” (v. 25), Jesus’ claims about his disciples have been largely centered on himself and his own initiative: “the works that I do … testify about me” (v. 25); “you do not belong to my sheep” (v. 26); “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (v. 27); “And I give them eternal life, … and no one can seize them out of my hand” (v. 28, italics added). Now, however, he acknowledges (as in 6:39) that his “sheep” are in fact a gift from his Father: “That which* my Father has given me is greater than all things, and no one can seize [it] out of the Father’s hand” (v. 29).* “Father” is where the emphasis lies, for it is where the Greek sentence both begins and ends: literally (following the Greek word order), “My Father, that which he has given me is greater than all things, and no one can seize [it] out of the hand of the Father.”* Perhaps for this reason, the majority of manuscripts, including some early ones, have the relative pronoun and the adjective as masculine, yielding the translation, “My Father, who has given to me, is greater than all things” (italics added). This more familiar reading is an easy, almost too easy reading (see n.
By contrast, the point of the reading adopted here is that because the Father is who he is, his gift (“that which he has given me”) is “greater than all things.” The conclusion that “no one can seize [it] out of the Father’s hand” closely parallels what Jesus has just said about himself, that “no one will seize them out of my hand” (v. 28). This can only mean that the gift “greater than all” is Jesus’ “flock” (v. 16), that is, his sheep viewed collectively as “That which he has given me.”* That believers in Jesus are God’s gift to him, a gift of inestimable value, comes as a strong word of comfort and assurance to the Gospel’s readers. It may come as a surprise to later Christians grounded in the Reformation who have been taught that in ourselves we are corrupt and worthless sinners. “In ourselves” this may be true, but, as we have seen, the Gospel of John views us through a different lens.* Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, and in this case the Beholder is God.* This immeasurable value of Jesus’ sheep, moreover, is their intrinsic value, for what could be more “intrinsic” than the value assigned to a person or community by God the Creator and Redeemer?
With this Jesus creates a syllogism, not just for the readers’ benefit, but as a direct challenge to “the Jews”: if (a) no one can seize Jesus’ sheep out of his hand, and (b) no one can seize them out of his Father’s hand (v. 29), then (c) “his hand” and “his Father’s hand” are doing the same work, in this instance providing security and protection to the flock. To “the Jews” the syllogism reopens an old wound, recalling the day Jesus began (as they saw it) “claiming God as his own Father, making himself equal to God” (5:18). Without hesitation, he draws the explicit and inevitable conclusion: “I and the Father are one” (v. 30), an assertion every bit as provocative as “My Father is working even until now, and I am working” (5:17), if not more so. As commentators are fond of pointing out,* “one” is neuter,* not masculine,* which would have meant “one person,” and might have been viewed as inconsistent with the later doctrine of the Trinity.* Still, it may not be wise to draw the distinction too sharply, in view of the phrase “one Shepherd”* back in verse 16, which, as we have seen, could refer to the Father as easily as to the Son, or to the Father working through the Son. As for the neuter, it would not have to mean more than the two working together in harmony (see 1 Cor 3:8), but the force of the syllogism and the precedent of 5:17 will make it unmistakably clear to “the Jews” that Jesus is in fact “making himself God” (see v. 33). The readers of the Gospel have even more to go on, for they cannot have forgotten the programmatic claims of 1:1 (“and the Word was God”) and 1:18 (“God the One and Only … right beside the Father”).* At the same time, “one” also makes it clear that Jesus is not claiming to be a “second God” in defiance of Jewish monotheism, but is in some way claiming identity with “the Only God” (see 5:44), the God of Israel.
31 The immediate response of “the Jews” is predictable, as “again”* they “lifted stones that they might stone him.” “Again” looks back at 8:59, when they did exactly the same thing in response to Jesus’ pronouncement, “before Abraham came to be, I am” (8:58). At that time, their action terminated the long debate, as Jesus “was hidden, and went out of the temple” (8:59b). Not so here. The debate is just getting started.
32 Instead of pressing the explicit claim that “I and the Father are one” (v. 30), Jesus resumes speaking of his “works” (see v. 25). “I showed you many good works from the Father,” he replies, with more than a touch of irony, “For which work among them are you stoning me?” (v. 32). Evidently the works of “the good Shepherd” (vv. 11, 14) are by definition “good,”* most recently the healing of the man born blind. Jesus’ “good” works, he reminds them, are “many,” bringing to mind as well the healing at the pool of Bethsaida, which aroused their hostility in the first place (see 5:16; 7:21–23), and perhaps others of which they had only heard reports.* Possibly his use of the adjective “good” also revisits the Sabbath question (see 5:16; 9:16), about which (in other traditions) he said, “It is lawful to do good* on the Sabbath” (Mt 12:12; see also Mk 3:4; Lk 6:9; 13:15–16; 14:5). His point is one he has made before, in very different words: “The thief does not come except that he might steal and slaughter and destroy. I came that they might have life, and have [it] in abundance” (v. 10). His works are “good” in that they involve the giving, not the taking, of life.
33 Ignoring the irony, “the Jews” respond in all seriousness, “It’s not about a good work that we are stoning* you, but about blasphemy, and because you, being a man, are making yourself God.”* The charge is prompted by the pronouncement, “I and the Father are one” (v. 30). Here for a third time (just as in 5:18 and 8:53), “the Jews” take offense at what Jesus is supposedly “making himself” to be. Twice before (see 5:19–23 and 8:54–55) he explained that he was not “making himself” anything, but simply acting on behalf of his Father and allowing the Father’s works to speak for him.
34–36 Jesus makes the same point again by appealing to “the works of my Father” (v. 37), but not before engaging “the Jews” on the basis of their own Scriptures: “Is it not written in your law,”* he asks, “that ‘I said you are gods’?* (v. 34). The citation is word for word from Psalm 81(82):6, LXX, addressed originally to gods of other nations, rebuking them for their favoritism toward sinners and indifference to the poor (see vv. 2–4). In some traditions, both Jewish and Christian, the passage has been taken to refer to judges in Israel (perhaps on the basis of such biblical texts as Exod 21:6 and 22:7–9, 28, where the term “God” seemed to refer to the courts).* Jesus, for his part, goes on to identify these “gods” as those “to whom the word of God came”* (v. 35a), an expression more appropriate to biblical prophets than to either gods or judges.* He quickly adds, “and the Scripture cannot be abolished” (v. 35b),* in effect claiming eternal validity not only for the cited text but for his interpretation of it.* By “the Scripture”* Jesus means nothing other than what he has just said to be “written in your law” (v. 34), and his acknowledgment that it “cannot be abolished” signals his acceptance of “your” law (that is, the whole of Jewish Scripture) as his own. The accent is not so much on the inerrancy of Scripture (which is, however, taken for granted by both parties) as on its everlasting authority and applicability, right down to Jesus’ time.
In later Jewish traditions, the text was frequently applied to Israel as a whole, by virtue of Israel’s election and reception of the law at Mount Sinai, sometimes accompanied by the warning, “But you will die like mere men; you will fall like every other ruler” (Ps 82:7, NIV).* It is tempting to assign such an interpretation to Jesus here as well, in view of his likely reference to the Sinai revelation in 5:37–38 (“You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, and you do not have his word dwelling in you, because he whom that One sent, him you do not believe”). While that passage has in common with the present one the mention of “the word” of God, or of the Father, and of Jesus as him “whom that One sent” (see 10:36), the reference here is more general. The expression, “those to whom the word of God came,” lacks any explicit reference to the Sinai theophany, nor is there any explicit rebuke (as in 5:38), much less a warning about “dying like mere men.” Whatever the precise scope and limits of Jesus’ interpretation, he seems to assume that his hearers share it, at least broadly speaking, just as they share his conviction that “the Scripture cannot be abolished.” On that basis he creates his argument from the greater to the lesser. If* God called human beings “gods” because “the word of God” came to them, then how could his accusers say, “You blaspheme,” just because he had said, “I am the Son of God”?* Actually, he had said no such thing explicitly, any more than he had ever told them, “I am the Christ” (see v. 25), yet in speaking again and again of God as his “Father,” he had essentially made that claim.
The reader of the Gospel sees more. The mention of those to whom “the word of God came”* evokes for the reader the programmatic announcement, “the Word came in human flesh”* (1:14)—something “the Jews” at the Rededication festival know nothing about. This is in fact Jesus’ only use of the phrase “the word of God” in the entire Gospel,* and the reader wonders: What is the relationship between this coming of “the word of God” to those whom the psalm called “gods,” and the coming of Jesus the Word “in human flesh”? Robert Gundry has argued that the two “comings” are the same, so that the “gods” to whom “the word of God came” are none other than—or, at least, include—“the Jews” to whom Jesus is now speaking at the Rededication festival.* This interpretation is intriguing, because it could provide an appropriate postscript to Jesus’ repeated warnings to “the Jews” two chapters earlier that “you will die in your sins” (8:21, 24; see Ps 82:7, “you will die like mere men”). Still, it will not do simply to identify the respective “comings,” for the “coming of the word of God” to Israel corporately or to its prophets individually appears to have taken place repeatedly over centuries, while “the coming of the Word in human flesh” is by contrast an unprecedented, once-for-all redemptive event in the person of Jesus. “Those to whom the word of God came” are all Jews up to the time of Jesus, some of whom, like Moses and the prophets, received and became vehicles of the word, while others proved disobedient.* To that extent, Gundry is correct: Jesus’ immediate hearers cannot be excluded. They are “gods” only implicitly, however, not explicitly. Yet even an implicit application to them serves to underscore how meaningless the designation really is. Titles do not matter, even when they are grounded in sacred Scripture that “cannot be abolished.”
What matters, as Jesus will shortly reiterate (vv. 37–38), are the “works” of God that he has done. The emphasis falls, accordingly, not on such titles as “the Christ” (v. 24), or “God” (v. 33), or “the Son of God” (v. 36), which lend themselves to easy categorization, or even “the Word of God” (see 1:14). Jesus could have phrased it, “If God said that those to whom the word of God came were ‘gods,’ then how can you accuse the Word of God himself of blasphemy?” Instead he adopts a rather nuanced and cumbersome self-designation centering not on himself as “the Word” but on the Father. He is simply the one “whom the Father consecrated* and sent into the world” (v. 36). He himself is only a pronoun (“whom” in the preceding sentence). All the initiative belongs to the Father, who did the “consecrating” and the “sending.” Jesus is the Father’s agent, acting on the Father’s behalf.
That the Father “sent” Jesus into the world is what he has been saying all along (for example, in 3:17; 5:38; 6:29, 57; 7:29; 8:42), but he adds here that the Father “consecrated” him to this mission. Thus, while avoiding the actual title, he confirms publicly what Peter and the Twelve had acknowledged to him in private, that he was “the Holy One of God”* (6:69). But what does “holiness” or “consecration” contribute to Jesus’ mission to the world? The terminology is used in a variety of ways, but conspicuous among them is the application to priesthood and sacrifice.* It is worth remembering that Jesus spoke first of God having “given” his Son (3:16) by being “lifted up” on the cross (3:14), and only after that of having “sent” his Son into the world (3:17). In 6:69, Peter’s recognition of Jesus as God’s “Holy One” comes in the wake of his rejection by other “disciples” for having spoken so explicitly of his violent death (see 6:51–58, 60, 66).* And here the reference to the Father having “consecrated” him in connection with his “sending” recalls the Father’s “command” (v. 18) empowering him to both “lay down his life” and “receive it back again” (vv. 17–18). All of this lends a certain priestly quality to Jesus’ mission, suggesting that he is “sent” specifically to offer himself as a sacrifice. This priestly aspect to his ministry will become explicit in his final report back to “the Father who sent him” (see 17:17–19).
37–38 Having demonstrated from Scripture that titles mean little or nothing, Jesus returns to his main point, his “works,”* which he had tried (unsuccessfully) to talk about twice before (vv. 25, 32). At the same time, he revisits previous debates, for in his first confrontation at Jerusalem he had claimed (as his “testimony greater than John’s”) that “the works that the Father has given me that I might complete them, the very works that I do testify about me that the Father has sent me” (5:36). And later, at the Tent festival, he had told “the Jews” that one’s “works” make known one’s paternity: “If you are Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works of Abraham” (8:39), and “You are doing the works of your father” (that is, the devil; see 8:41–44). Applying the same principle to himself, he now invites “the Jews” to take account of his “works” and assess his parentage: “If I do not do the works of my Father, don’t believe me. But if I do them, even if you don’t believe me, believe the works” (vv. 37–38a). All he asks for is simple fairness, just as earlier, after an argument based on Scripture (7:22–23), he had invited the crowd in Jerusalem to “judge the right judgment” (7:24). Instead of reminding “the Jews” that they “do not believe” (v. 25), he renews his long-standing invitation to “believe,” if not to believe him at least to believe his “works”* (v. 38a), which he has repeatedly identified as “the works of my Father” (v. 37).
These are Jesus’ last words in the Gospel to “the Jews,” and it is striking that after all the recrimination that has gone on through five chapters, he can still end with an open invitation to believe—plus the hope “that you might learn and know that the Father is in me and I in the Father” (v. 38b). Not since 8:32 (“and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free”) has he sounded such a positive note toward “the Jews,” and there it was to “the Jews who had believed him,” inviting them to become “truly my disciples” (8:31). But it ended badly, with an attempted stoning (8:58), and this time will be no better. “That you might learn and know” is, literally, “that you might come to know* and continue to know”*—another way of urging them (as in 8:32) to “know the truth” by becoming his disciples. Realistically, this is not going to happen. The notion “that you might learn and know that the Father is in me and I in the Father” is not so much an actual expectation for these “Jews” at the Rededication as it is an explanation to the reader of what those who “believe” in Jesus (or in his works) can expect to know and understand by virtue of their faith. It is something of which they have not yet been told, but of which they will hear more, the mutual indwelling of the Father and the Son. “The Father is in me,”* Jesus claims, “and I in the Father.”*
Mutual indwelling goes a step beyond mutual knowledge: “I know mine and mine know me,” Jesus had said earlier, “just as the Father knows me and I know the Father” (vv. 14–15). But only once before (in 6:56) has he used the language of mutual indwelling, and that in relation to himself and his disciples (those who “eat his flesh” and “drink his blood”), not himself and the Father.* In each instance, the reference was “wasted” on its immediate audience, “the Jews,” being intended instead for the reader of the Gospel. Jesus will spell it out (without quite explaining it) for the Gospel’s readers four chapters later, in his farewell discourse. After expressing surprise that Philip does not yet believe that “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (14:10), he will tell them all explicitly, “Believe me, that I am in the Father and the Father in me,” adding (just as he said to “the Jews”) “or if not, believe on account of the works themselves” (14:11). Finally—mystery of mysteries—he will draw even the disciples themselves into the intimate mutual relationship between himself and the Father (see 14:20; 17:21, 23).
The mystery remains, because in such expressions as “the Father is in me and I in the Father,” or “You are in me and I in you,” the pronoun “in” is being used in two contrasting senses. The Father is not “in” the Son in quite the same sense that the Son is “in” the Father. Nor are the disciples “in” Jesus in quite the same sense that he is “in” them. In both instances the mutuality is limited, in that the Father and the Son (much less the Son and his disciples!) do not have interchangeable roles. As we have just seen (v. 36), the Father “consecrated” and “sent” the Son into the world, not the other way around! All that can be said of the expression of mutual indwelling here is that it restates and reinforces what Jesus said earlier, “I and the Father are one” (v. 30).* That much even “the Jews” can grasp, and inevitably their reaction will be much the same as before.
39 Without hesitation “they sought to arrest him again, and he went out from their hand” (v. 39). “Again” is striking, for we must look all the way back to the Tent festival for a previous attempt to arrest Jesus (see 7:30).* The writer in fact repeats almost word for word the language of 7:30: “So they sought to arrest him, and no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come.” Yet the circumstances of the two abortive “arrests” are quite different. The first was an official act of “the Pharisees” involving a delegation of officers (see 7:32–36, 45–47), while the present one appears to have been as impulsive and spontaneous as “lifting stones that they might stone him” a few moments before (v. 31). The reader can visualize “the Jews” still with stones in their hands at least through verse 33, and quite plausibly throughout Jesus’ entire speech in verses 34–38. Now in saying “they sought to arrest him again,” the writer seems to be making the point that they were simply trying to seize* him in order to carry out their stated intention of stoning (see v. 33). In contrast to the confrontation at the Tent festival, which began with a failed arrest (7:30) and ended with a failed stoning (8:59), stoning and “arrest” here are seen as pretty much interchangeable. This is confirmed in the next chapter, when Jesus’ disciples will remind him, “Just now the Jews were seeking to stone you, and you are going there again?” (11:8). Yet the outcome is much the same as before: Jesus “went out from their hand” (v. 39),* just as two chapters earlier he “was hidden and went out of the temple” (8:59). Here too an exit from the temple is presupposed, though not stated (see v. 23, “in the temple, in the portico of Solomon”).
40 It is tempting to view verses 40–42 as an introduction to chapter 11 rather than as a conclusion to chapter 10, because they identify where Jesus was when he first heard of the illness of his friend Lazarus in Bethany of Judea (11:1, 3), and where he waited two days before making a journey there (see 11:5). Yet the natural sequence from “he went out” (v. 39) to “he went” (v. 40) ties these next three verses more closely to what has preceded than to what follows.* The reader who wants to know where Jesus “went” when he “went out” learns the answer immediately: he “went back again across the Jordan, to the place where John was at first baptizing, and remained there”* (v. 40). It was also called “Bethany” (see 1:28), but the name is omitted here, concealing the odd coincidence of a journey from one Bethany to another (see 11:3, 18). It was the place where Jesus had been “with” John (3:26), where John had hailed him as “the Lamb of God” (1:29, 36) and “the Son of God” (1:34), and where he had taken up at least temporary residence (1:39) and gained his first disciples (see 1:35–51). That he “went back again”* and again took up residence for a time (as in 1:38–39) is therefore not surprising. But why just now?
The two sojourns at “Bethany across the Jordan” stand like bookends to Jesus’ public ministry. After the rejections and attempted stonings at the Tent festival and the Rededication in Jerusalem, Jesus returns to where faith and discipleship began. Unbelief is not the end of the story. The principle that “He came to what was his own, and his own did not receive him” (1:11) still has as its sequel, “But to as many as did receive him he gave authority to become children of God” (1:12). Before the public ministry of Jesus ends, therefore, we see a kind of reenactment, brief and anonymous though it may be, of the call of his first disciples.* We are not told that those first disciples (now twelve in number, see 6:70) accompanied him across the Jordan. Even though he has spoken of them fondly as his “sheep” and a gift from the Father, they have not been participants in the story since the healing of the man born blind (9:2). Yet by the time Jesus learns of Lazarus’s illness, their presence with him is presupposed, and the reader learns (belatedly) that they were also with him in Jerusalem (see 11:8, where they remind him of the recent attempted stoning). For the moment, attention will focus instead on a new group of believers (vv. 41–42), who will replicate the disciples’ initial encounter with Jesus and (possibly) join their number.
41 To the Gospel writer, the memory of John still haunts the place where he first baptized and bore testimony to Jesus, and where Jesus’ first disciples acknowledged him as “Messiah” (1:41), “Son of God,” and “King of Israel” (1:48). Even though Jesus claimed a “testimony greater than John’s,” the testimony of his works (see 5:33–36), and even though he has just said that titles mean little in comparison to his works (see vv. 34–38), the Gospel writer reminds us that John’s testimony and the titles of Jesus to which he testified are valid as well, now confirmed in retrospect by those who heard him. When Jesus arrived, “many came to him, and they were saying that ‘Though John did no sign, still everything John said about his man was true’ ” (v. 41).* They were saying this repeatedly, almost axiomatically,* not to Jesus but to one another, or to no one in particular. Such down-to-earth wisdom, while quite different from the divine revelation that Jesus brings, still represents the Gospel writer’s viewpoint, and like other such comments in the Gospel is characteristic of those who believe in Jesus—or at least give him a fair hearing. Its closest parallel is perhaps the rhetorical question of some in the crowd at the Tent festival, “The Christ, when he comes, will he do more signs than this man did?” (7:31).*
The notice bristles with unanswered questions. Who were the “many” who came to Jesus? Had they been disciples of John, or were they simply residents of the place? If we assume that they were John’s former disciples, their comment represents a very different perspective from those at Aenon (3:23) who had complained to John that Jesus was “baptizing, and they are all coming to him!” (3:26). Now they themselves have “come to him,”* and the questions multiply. Are they now “coming to Jesus” for baptism? Or are they simply coming to welcome him back? None of these questions are answered for us. The comment that “John did no sign” could imply an ongoing difficulty that his disciples—and others—had had with him during the course of his ministry. If some thought he was “the Christ,” or “Elijah,” or “the Prophet” (see 1:19–21), miraculous signs may well have been expected of him. But if this were the case, his immediate disclaimers should have lowered such expectations. Perhaps more likely, the notion that he “did no sign” arose simply out of the inevitable comparison with Jesus, who was known to have done many signs (see 2:23, 3:2, 6:2, and 7:31).* This does not mean that Jesus performed signs right here on the spot (as, for example, in Lk 7:21) for the benefit of those who remembered John. Nothing is said to that effect. Rather, just as he had been seen as “making and baptizing more disciples than John” (4:1), so it was by now common knowledge that Jesus performed miracles and John did not.
In any event, the point of the notice is not that “John did no sign,” as if to accent the contrast between John and Jesus (that has already been amply demonstrated), but rather the affirmation that “everything John said about this man was true.” “Everything”* embraces all that John said about Jesus at “Bethany, across the Jordan” (see 1:19–34), and probably all that he said at “Aenon near the Salim” (3:23) as well (see 3:27–36)—that is, that Jesus was “the Lamb of God” (1:29) and “the Son of God” (1:34), “the bridegroom” to whom “the bride” belonged (3:29), that he was “from above,” or “from heaven” (3:31), that the Spirit was his “without measure” (3:34), that the Father loved him and gave him all things (3:35), and that only those who believe in him have eternal life (3:36). “Everything” embraces even what has not yet happened—that Jesus will “take away the sin of the world” (1:29), and “baptize in Holy Spirit” (1:33)—assuring us that these things will in fact happen.* In short, virtually all that we learn about Jesus in the first three chapters of the Gospel finds confirmation here, in the endorsement of John’s testimony—without even using the words “testify” or “testimony.”
42 The conclusion is natural, almost anticlimactic. “And many believed in him there” (v. 42) is little more than an echo of the preceding verse, “And many came to him,” for in this Gospel “coming to Jesus” and “believing” in him are closely linked, in some cases almost synonymous (see, for example, 3:26; 6:35, 37; 7:37–38). “There” (
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