John 10 - CSB Ancient Faith Study Bible

10:5 Gregory of Nazianzus: He offers you a shepherd. For this is what your good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep is hoping and praying for. . . . Do you on your side offer to God and to us obedience to your pastors? Will you dwell in a place of pasture and be fed by refreshing waters, knowing your Shepherd well and being known by him? Will you follow when he earnestly calls you as a Shepherd through the door? Or will you follow a stranger climbing up into the fold like a robber and a traitor? Will you listen to a strange voice when that voice would take you away by stealth and scatter you from the truth on mountains, and in deserts, and pitfalls, and places that the Lord does not visit? And would you be led away from the sound faith in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the one power and Godhead whose voice my sheep always heard—and may they always hear it—to follow deceitful and corrupt words that would tear them from their true Shepherd? May we all be kept from this, both shepherd and flock. May we guide and be guided away from such a poisoned and deadly pasture so that we may all be one in Christ Jesus our Lord, now and unto our heavenly rest. On Easter and His Reluctance, Oration 1.6–7.

10:11 Theodore of Mopsuestia: [A]fter giving evidence derived from these facts, [Christ] said to them, “I am the good Shepherd.” Therefore, if I act against the thieves, not only am I not the cause of destruction for those who obey me, but I even invite them to eternal life. And so I appear to be the Shepherd because I work for the good of the sheep. Since [the Lord] asserts this decisively, he proves his argument even more so, so that he may not appear to vainly portray himself as the good Shepherd. And so, with the intention of demonstrating this with different arguments, as well as the facts themselves, he says, “The good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” If, he says, the good Shepherd is the one who accepts suffering for every affliction of his sheep, since I am going to die for the salvation of the whole world, the testimony about me is beyond doubt. “I am the good Shepherd.” Indeed, if the thief kills, on the contrary, not only do I not kill, but I also give new life to men and women after taking death from them. Therefore, in every respect, I appear to be the good Shepherd according to these facts. Commentary on John 4.10.10–11.

10:12-13 Gregory the Great: There are some who love earthly possessions more than the sheep and do not deserve the name of a shepherd. . . . [The one in this passage] is called a hireling and not a shepherd because he does not pasture the Lord’s sheep out of his deep love for them but for a temporal reward. That person is a hireling who holds the place of shepherd but does not seek to profit souls. He is eager for earthly advantages, rejoices in the honor of preferment, feeds on temporal gain and enjoys the deference offered him by other people. Forty Gospel Homilies 15.

10:15 Peter Chrysologus: [B]y giving a pattern like this, the Shepherd went before his sheep; he did not run away from them. He did not surrender the sheep to the wolves, but he consigned the wolves to the sheep. For he enabled his sheep to pick out their robbers in such a way that the sheep, although slain, should live; although mangled, should rise again and, colored by their own blood, should gleam in royal purple and shine with snow-white fleece.

In this way, when the good Shepherd laid down his life for his sheep, he did not lose it. In this way he held his sheep; he did not abandon them. Indeed, he did not forsake them but invited them. He called and led them through fields full of death and a road of death to life-giving pastures. Sermon 40.

10:17-18 Chrysostom: What commandment was this? It was the commandment to die for the world. Did Jesus then wait first to hear and then choose, and did he need to learn the commandment? Who (if he had any sense at all) would say something like this? But before, when he said, “Therefore my Father loves me,” he showed that the first motion was voluntary and removed all suspicion of opposition to the Father. And so here when he says that he received a commandment from the Father, he declared nothing except that “what I do seems good to him.” . . . For if he had needed a commandment, how could he have said, “the good Shepherd lays down his life” on his own? For he that lays his life down on his own needs no commandment. He also assigns the cause for which he does this. And what is that? That he is the shepherd, and the good Shepherd. Now the good Shepherd needs no one to arouse him to his duty. If this is the case with people, it is even more so with God. This is why Paul said that “[Jesus] emptied himself” [Php 2:7]. So the “commandment” put here means nothing else but to show his unanimity with the Father. And, if he speaks in such a humble and human way, the cause is the infirmity of his hearers. Homilies on the Gospel of John 60.2–3.

10:30 Augustine: [We must understand] that the Father is not anything in respect to his own substance. We must also understand that what is said about him—that he is the Father and his very existence as Father—is all said in relation to the Son. How then can the Son be of the same essence as the Father, seeing that the Father—in respect to himself—is neither his own essence, nor does he exist at all in respect to himself? Rather, even his very essence exists in relation to the Son. But this establishes even more the fact that [the Son] is of one and the same essence [with the Father], since the Father and Son must be of one and the same essence, seeing that the Father has being itself—not in respect to himself, but to the Son. This is the essence he begot, and the essence by which he is whatever he is. Therefore neither [person] exists in respect to himself alone. And both exist in relationship to one another. On the Trinity 7.1.2

10:38 Augustine: The Son does not say, “The Father is in me, and I in him,” in the sense in which we say it. For if our thinking is in line with him, then we are in God. And if we live the way he wants us to, then God is in us. Believers, by participating in his grace and being illuminated by him, are said to be in him and he in us. But this is not how it is with the only begotten Son. He is in the Father, and the Father is in him as one who is equal is in him whose equal he is. In short, we can sometimes say, “We are in God, and God is in us,” but can we say I and God are one? You are in God because God contains you. God is in you because you have become the temple of God. . . . Recognize the prerogative of the Lord and the privilege of the servant. The prerogative of the Lord is equality with the Father; the privilege of the servant is fellowship with the Savior. Tractates on the Gospel of John 48.10.

10:40-42 Chrysostom: When [Christ] has spoken anything great and sublime, he quickly retires, giving way to their anger so that the passion may abate and cease through his absence. And thus he acted at that time. But why does the Evangelist mention the place? That you may learn that he went there to remind them of the things that had been done there and said by John, and of his testimony. At least when they came there, they immediately remembered John. Therefore also they said, “John indeed did no miracle,” since how did it follow that they should add this unless the place had brought the Baptist to their memory, and they had come to remember his testimony? And observe how they form incontrovertible syllogisms: “John indeed did no miracle,” “but this man does,” someone says and “so his superiority is shown. If therefore people believed in the one who did no miracles, how much more must they believe this man?” Then, since it was John who bore the witness—in case his having done no miracle might seem to prove him unworthy of being a witness—they added, “Yet if he did no miracle, still everything he said about this man was true.” And so, Christ is no longer proven to be trustworthy by means of John. Instead, John is shown to be trustworthy by what Christ had done. Homilies on the Gospel of John 61.3.