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Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of John 10:10

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The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have [it] more abundantly.

10. and to kill ] To slaughter as if for sacrifice.

I am come ] Better, I came. ‘I’ is emphatic, in marked contrast to the thief. This is the point of transition from the first part of the allegory to the second. The figure of the Door, as the one entrance to salvation, is dropped; and that of the Good Shepherd, as opposed to the thief, is taken up; but this intermediate clause will apply to either figure, inclining towards the second one. In order to make the strongest possible antithesis to the thief, Christ introduces, not a shepherd, but Himself, the Chief Shepherd. The thief takes life; the shepherds protect life; the Good Shepherd gives it.

that they might have ] Rather, in both clauses, that they may have.

have it more abundantly ] Omit ‘more;’ it is not in the Greek, and somewhat spoils the sense. More abundantly than what? Translate, that they may have abundance.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

The thief cometh not … – The thief has no other design in coming but to plunder. So false teachers have no other end in view but to enrich or aggrandize themselves.

I am come that they might have life – See the notes at Joh 5:24.

Might have it more abundantly – Literally, that they may have abundance, or that which abounds. The word denotes that which is not absolutely essential to life, but which is superadded to make life happy. They shall not merely have life – simple, bare existence – but they shall have all those superadded things which are needful to make that life eminently blessed and happy. It would be vast mercy to keep men merely from annihilation or hell; but Jesus will give them eternal joy, peace, the society of the blessed, and all those exalted means of felicity which are prepared for them in the world of glory.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Verse 10. But for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy] Those who enter into the priesthood that they may enjoy the revenues of the Church, are the basest and vilest of thieves and murderers. Their ungodly conduct is a snare to the simple, and the occasion of much scandal to the cause of Christ. Their doctrine is deadly; they are not commissioned by Christ, and therefore they cannot profit the people. Their character is well pointed out by the Prophet Ezekiel, Eze 34:2, c. Wo be to the shepherds of Israel, that do feed themselves! Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool ye kill them that are fed: but ye feed not the flock, c, How can worldly-minded, hireling, fox-hunting, and card-playing priests read these words of the Lord, without trembling to the centre of their souls! Wo to those parents who bring up their children merely for Church honours and emoluments! Suppose a person have all the Church’s revenues, if he have God’s wo, how miserable is his portion! Let none apply this censure to any one class of preachers, exclusively.

That they might have life] My doctrine tends to life, because it is the true doctrine-that of the false and bad shepherds tends to death, because it neither comes from nor can lead to that God who is the fountain of life.

Might have it more abundantly.] That they might have an abundance, meaning either of life, or of all necessary good things greater felicity than ever was enjoyed under any period of the Mosaic dispensation; and it is certain that Christians have enjoyed greater blessings and privileges than were ever possessed by the Jews, even in the promised land. If be considered the accusative fem. Attic, agreeing with , (see Parkhurst,) then it signifies more abundant life; that is, eternal life; or spiritual blessings much greater than had ever yet been communicated to man, preparing for a glorious immortality. Jesus is come that men may have abundance; abundance of grace, peace, love, life, and salvation. Blessed be Jesus.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

Look as it is with the true shepherd, that owneth the sheep, and whose the flock is; he cometh regularly into the care and conduct of it; he cometh into the sheepfold, to take care of the life and welfare of his sheep: but a thief and a robber, that climbeth into the window, and so gets into the sheepfold, he comes not there out of any good will to the sheep, but merely, by destroying the sheep to provide for himself. So it is with them that, without any call or derivation of authority from me, thrust themselves into the care and conduct of the church of God; they do it with no good design to the souls of people, not out of any care or respect unto their good, but merely that they may serve themselves in the ruin of my peoples souls. But that is not my end in coming into the world: I am not come to destroy them, but to save them; I am come, that they might have a spiritual life, and at last eternal life; that they might live the life of grace here, and not fail of the life of glory hereafter; and not only that they may barely live, but that their life may abound, through the upholdings, strengthenings, quickenings, and comfortings of my holy and gracious Spirit; that my beloved may not only drink, but drink abundantly; not only live, but live abundantly furnished with all the affluences and accommodations of a spiritual life.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

10. I am come that they might havelife, and . . . more abundantlynot merely to preservebut impart LIFE,and communicate it in rich and unfailing exuberance. What a claim!Yet it is only an echo of all His teaching; and He who uttered theseand like words must be either a blasphemer, all worthy of the deathHe died, or “God with us”there can be no middle course.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

The thief cometh not but for to steal,…. That is his first and principal view; to steal, is to invade, seize, and carry away another’s property. Such teachers that come not in by the right door, or with a divine commission, seek to deceive, and carry away the sheep of Christ from him, though they are not able to do it; and to steal away their hearts from him, as Absalom stole the hearts of the people from their rightful lord and sovereign, David his father; and to subject them to themselves, that they might lord it over them, and make a property of them, as the Pharisees did, who, under a pretence of long prayers, devoured widows’ houses.

And to kill and to destroy; either the souls of men by their false doctrines, which eat as doth a cancer, and poison the minds of men, and slay the souls that should not die, subverting the faith of nominal professors, though they cannot destroy any of the true sheep of Christ; or the bodies of the saints, by their oppression, tyranny, and persecution, who are killed all the day long for the sake of Christ, and are accounted as sheep for the slaughter, by these men, they thinking that by so doing they do God good service.

I am come that they might have life; that the sheep might have life, or the elect of God might have life, both spiritual and eternal; who, as the rest of mankind, are by nature dead in trespasses and sins, and liable in themselves to an eternal death: Christ came into this world in human nature, to give his flesh, his body, his whole human nature, soul and body, for the life of these persons, or that they might live spiritually here, and eternally hereafter; and so the Arabic version renders it, “that they might have eternal life”; Nonnus calls it, “a life to come”; which is in Christ, and the gift of God through him; and which he gives to all his sheep, and has a power to give to as many as the Father has given him:

and that they might have [it] more abundantly; or, as the Syriac version reads, “something more abundant”; that is, than life; meaning not merely than the life of wicked men, whose blessings are curses to them; or than their own life, only in the present state of things; or than long life promised under the law to the observers of it; but even than the life Adam had in innocence, which was but a natural and moral, not a spiritual life, or that life which is hid with Christ in God; and also than that which angels live in heaven, which is the life of servants, and not of sons: or else the sense is, that Christ came that his people might have eternal life, with more abundant evidence of it than was under the former dispensation, and have stronger faith in it, and a more lively hope of it: or, as the words may be rendered, “and that they might have an abundance”: besides life, might have an abundance of grace from Christ, all spiritual blessings in him now, and all fulness of joy, glory, and happiness hereafter.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

But that he may steal, and kill, and destroy ( ). Literally, “except that” ( ) common without (Mt 12:4) and with verb (Ga 1:7), “if not” (literally), followed here by final and three aorist active subjunctives as sometimes by (Mr 9:9) or (2Co 12:13). Note the order of the verbs. Stealing is the purpose of the thief, but he will kill and destroy if necessary just like the modern bandit or gangster.

I came that they may have life ( ). In sharp contrast () as the good shepherd with the thieves and robbers of verse 1 came Jesus. Note present active subjunctive (), “that they (people) may keep on having life (eternal, he means)” as he shows in 10:28. He is “the life” (14:6).

And may have it abundantly ( ). Repetition of (may keep on having) abundance (, neuter singular of ). Xenophon (Anab. VII. vi. 31) uses , “to have a surplus,” true to the meaning of overflow from (around) seen in Paul’s picture of the overplus ( in Ro 5:20) of grace. Abundance of life and all that sustains life, Jesus gives.

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

The thief [ ] . Christ puts Himself in contrast with the meaner criminal.

I am come [] . More correctly, I came. I am come would be the perfect tense.

More abundantly [] . Literally, may have abundance.

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

1) “The thief cometh not,” (ho kleptes ouk erchetai) ”The thief comes not,” approaches not of his own choice, of his own nature and design, except for three ulterior purposes of selfish, covetous, personal profit or aggrandizement, at the expense of the sheep and the flock.

2) “But for to steal,” (ei me hina klepse) “Except in order that he may steal,” seize with stealth that which belongs to another, not for sacrificial purpose for another, for which Jesus came, as the lamb of God, Joh 1:29; 2Co 5:21.

3) “And to kill,” (kai thuse) “And in order that he may kill,” slay the sheep, cause him to die in his own blood, to waste the life and pasture of the sheep.

4) “And to destroy:” (kai apolese) ”And in order that he may destroy,” for destructive purposes, to mangle and tear, to render helpless and useless to the shepherd, after his stealing into the flock, Mat 7:15-20; Act 20:27-29.

5) “I am come that they might have life,” (ego elthon hina zoen echosin) “I am come (by my own choice) in order that they may have life,” eternal life, unceasing spiritual life,” eternal life, unceasing spiritual life, and the food that sustains it, Joh 6:33; Joh 10:28; Joh 11:25; Joh 14:6; As a Shepherd, none of His sheep shall want or lack anything to sustain them in Him, Psa 23:1.

6) “And that they might have it more abundantly.” (kai perisson echosin) “And in order that they may have life more abundantly,” both now and hereafter, all needed to sustain this life, in excess of physical life. For this life more abundant, through the spirit, shall be quickened in the resurrection, for eternity, in a body that pleases the Master, Rom 8:11; 1Co 15:38; 1Co 15:41-42; 1Jn 3:2. It is an abundant or “surplus life,” in what it provides for the saved, more than enough to meet every soul need. God shed this life on us through Jesus Christ, Tit 3:6.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

10. The thief cometh not. By this saying, Christ — if we may use the expression — pulls our ear, that the ministers of Satan may not come upon us by surprise, when we are in a drowsy and careless state; for our excessive indifference exposes us, on every side, to false doctrines. For whence arises credulity so great, that they who ought to have remained fixed in Christ, fly about in a multitude of errors, but because they do not sufficiently dread or guard against so many false teachers? And not only so, but our insatiable curiosity is so delighted with the new and strange inventions of men, that, of our own accord, we rush with mad career to meet thieves and wolves. Not without reason, therefore, does Christ testify that false teachers, whatever may be the mildness and plausibility of their demeanour, always carry about a deadly poison, that we may be more careful to drive them away from us. A similar warning is given by Paul,

See that no man rob you through vain philosophy, (Col 2:8.)

I am come. This is a different comparison; for Christ, having hitherto called himself the door, and declared that they who bring sheep to this door are true shepherds, now assumes the character of a shepherd, and indeed affirms that he is the only shepherd Indeed, there is no other to whom this honor and title strictly belongs; for, as to all the faithful shepherds of the Church, it is he who raises them up, endows them with the necessary qualifications, governs them by his Spirit, and works by them; and therefore they do not prevent him from being the only Governor of his Church, or from holding the distinction of being the only Shepherd For, though he employs their ministry, still he does not cease to fulfill and discharge the office of a shepherd by his own power; and they are masters and teachers in such a manner as not to interfere with his authority as a Master. In short, when the term shepherd is applied to men, it is used, as we say, in a subordinate sense; and Christ shares the honor with his ministers in such a manner, that he still continues to be the only shepherd both of themselves and of the whole flock.

That they may have life. When he says that he is come, that the sheep may have life, he means that they only who do not submit to his staff and crook (Psa 23:4) are exposed to the ravages of wolves and thieves; and — to give them greater confidence — he declares that life is continually increased and strengthened in those who do not revolt from him. And, indeed, the greater progress that any man makes in faith, the more nearly does he approach to fullness of life, because the Spirit, who is life, grows in him.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

(10) The thief cometh not, but for to steal.Comp. Notes on Joh. 10:1; Joh. 10:8. The description of the thief is opposed to that of the shepherd, who constantly goes in and out and finds pasture. His visits are but rare, and when he comes it is but for his own selfish purposes, and for the ruin of the flock. Each detail of his cruel work is dwelt upon, to bring out in all the baseness of its extent the corresponding spiritual truth.

I am come that they might have life.More exactly, I came that they might have life. The pronoun should be emphasised. I came, as opposed to the thief. He does not further dwell upon the shepherd, but passes on to the thought of Himself, and thereby prepares the way for the thought of Himself as the Good Shepherd in the following verse. The object of His coming is the direct opposite of that of the thief, who comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy. He came once for all, that in Him the sheep may have life. (Comp. Joh. 6:50-51.) The Sinaitic MS. inserts the word eternal herethat they might have life eternal. The word is probably not part of the original text, and the thought is rather of the present spiritual life which every believer now hath, and which will issue in eternal life. But comp. Note on Joh. 10:28.

And that they might have it more abundantly.Better, and that they might have it abundantly. The word more is an insertion of the English version without any authority, and it weakens the sense. It is not that a greater is compared with a less abundance, but that the abundance of life which results through Christs coming is contrasted with the spiritual wants and death which He came to remove. This life is through Him given to men abundantly, overflowingly. We are reminded of the Shepherd-Kings Psalm singing of the green pastures, and waters of rest, and prepared table, and overflowing cup; and carrying all this into the region of the spiritual life we come again to the opening words of this Gospel, And of His fulness did we all receive, and grace for grace . . . grace and truth came by Jesus Christ (Joh. 1:16-17).

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

10-18. Continuing the antithesis, just noted, between Joh 10:8-9, Jesus draws a contrast between the thief, the hireling, and the wolf on one side, and the Good Shepherd on the other. The former destroy, desert, and devour the sheep; the latter gives his own life for the sheep.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

10. The three characters are here not to be confounded. The thief is the religious impostor, the heretic, the schismatic, and the persecutor. The hireling is the worldly pastor who means no mischief, specially, but regards his own interest solely. The wolf is the devil; presenting himself in all the outward forms of temptation, sin, and destruction. Opposed to all these is the Good Shepherd, with his blessed flock of true pastors, who, as sheep also, take places in the flock and fold through and under him.

Kill life The enemy brings death; the true Shepherd life.

More abundantly Not merely a continued living existence, but the fulness of immortal, heavenly, glorified life.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

‘The thief does not come for any other reason but that he may steal and kill and destroy. I came that they might have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”

The thief is now contrasted with the shepherd. The thief is pictured in terms of a thieving rustler or wild beast who breaks into the fold to ravage the sheep. The thief ‘comes only to steal, kill and destroy’ (compareJer 23:1-2). The men who are pictured in this description would not have thought of themselves in this way, but sadly this was the result of their behaviour. The way the Pharisees had treated the healed man, blind from birth, is one example of their depredations. He discerned between the different voices and followed the shepherd, and so they threw him out of their flock. But he was welcomed into Jesus’ flock.

And later when Jerusalem lay in ruins, the Temple was destroyed, and the people were scattered among the nations, they would have to acknowledge that what Jesus had warned would happen had come about. Great numbers of them had died in the conflict, they had been ravaged by their shepherds and had lost everything, and all they believed in had been destroyed.

But, says Jesus, ‘I have come that you might have life, and that you might have it more abundantly’ (v. 10). He is the Bread of life (Joh 6:35), the Water of life (Joh 4:13-14; Joh 7:37-38), the Light of life (Joh 8:12), now He is the sacrificial and life-giving Shepherd. To receive that life by full commitment to Him is to enter and be saved and to enjoy abundance of life.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Joh 10:10. The thief cometh not but for to steal, &c. “I am no thief or robber, as you may easily know, by considering that the intention of such is only to steal, and kill, and destroy the flock. They assumed the character of teachers divinely commissioned, for no other reason but to promote their own interest, at the expence of their souls: whereas I am not come merely to give you life, but to give it more abundantly than it is given by Mosesin the dispensation of the law.” The phrase more abundantly may at the same time refer ultimately, to the provision which Christ has made for the future and eternal happiness of his faithful people. “I am come that they might have life now by their entrance into my church and fold, through me, the door of the sheep; and that, persevering unto death, they might have a more abundant life of glory, when they go out and depart from the present life of grace: and for this life of grace they shall find sufficient pasture and support in the appointed means; but for the life of glory, the Lamb himself in the midst of the throne, shall feed them.” See Psalms 23.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Joh 10:10 . The opposite of such a one as entered , is the thief to whom allusion was made in Joh 10:1 ; when he comes to the sheep, he has only selfish and destructive ends in view. Comp. Dem . 782. 9 : , .

, etc.] Quite otherwise I! I have come (to the sheep), etc. By this new antithesis, in which Christ contrasts Himself , and not again the shepherd appointed through Him, with the thief, the way is prepared for a transition to another use of the figure which represents Him no longer as the door (from Joh 10:11 onwards), but as the true Shepherd Himself (Mat 26:31 ; Heb 13:20 ; 1Pe 2:23 ). Compare the promise in Exo 34:23 ; Exo 37:24 , in contrast to the false shepherds in Eze 34:2 ff.

]. The opposite of . .; the sheep are not to be slaughtered and perish, but are to have life; and as the nature of the reality set forth requires, it is the Messianic life in its temporal development and eternal perfection that is meant.

.] and have it abundantly (over-flowingly), i.e . in the figure: rich fulness of nourishment (comp. Psa 23 ); as to the thing, abundance of spiritual possessions (grace and truth, Joh 1:14 ; Joh 1:17 ), in which the consists. Incorrectly Vulgate, Chrysostom, Euth. Zigabenus, Grotius, and many others, compare also Ewald, who interpret the passage as though were used, more than , wherewith is meant the kingdom of heaven; or, according to Ewald, “Joy, and besides, constantly increasing blessing.” The repetition of gives the second point a more independent position than it would have had if alone had been used. Comp. Joh 10:18 ; Xen. Anab . i. 10. 3 :

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

DISCOURSE: 1663
LIFE ABUNDANTLY BY CHRIST

Joh 10:10. I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

THE parables of our blessed Lord, though exceedingly clear and striking, lose much of their force by reason of the difference of our habits from those which obtained amongst the Jews. For instance, the office of a shepherd, though simple in itself, was widely different in Canaan from that which men are called to discharge in our land. In Canaan, where there were beasts of prey, it was attended with danger; and a man was often called to expose his own life for the protection of his flock. Such was the office which Christ undertook for us: only, instead of endangering his own life for the preservation of ours, he actually laid down his life, in order that we might obtain life. He was the Good Shepherd, who gave his own life for the sheep [Note: ver. 11.]; and who came, not only that we might have life, but that we might have it more abundantly.

To elucidate these words, I will shew,

The gracious purpose of our Lords advent

He came that we might have life.
We could not, by any means, obtain it for our-selves
[We were in the state of the fallen angels, so far as respects both guilt and condemnation; and were as incapable of removing these, and of restoring ourselves to the Divine favour, as they ]
But Christ came in order that we might be restored to the possession of it
[He came in order to purchase life for us, and to impart it to us; to purchase it by his blood and to impart it to us by his Spirit And this he has effected, so far, that every one who believes in him has actually a title to life, and the very beginning of it in his soul ]
But the text leads us further to consider,

II.

The extent to which he has accomplished it

He has come, that we might have life more abundantly. And, the very instant we believe in him, we have life,

With more abundant evidence than was enjoyed under the Mosaic dispensation

[The promises given to the Jews were mostly temporal. It is surprising how little is spoken of eternal life in the Old Testament, and especially of the resurrection of the body to a participation of it. And the access which men had to God was very distant. No one could offer sacrifice, except through the instrumentality of the priest; nor could any one but the High Priest go into the holy of holies; and he only on one day in the year; nor could even he go then, without the blood of his sacrifice. But the Lord Jesus Christ has opened a way for us, a new and living way, into the holiest of all, with his own blood; and, the vail, having been rent in twain from the top to the bottom, the way is made quite plain, and all his people, as a royal priesthood, may go, every one for himself, into the very presence of his God Moreover, a spirit of adoption is now given by Christ to his believing people; and every one of his true followers is authorized to claim God as his Father, and to consider himself as possessed of an inheritance which, in body as well as in his soul, he shall enjoy to all eternity Yes, in this sense are life and immortality brought to light by the Gospel: nor has any believer now any more doubt respecting either the present acceptance of a saint, or of his future reign with Christ in glory, than he has of the existence of a God. All this, though very partially and indistinctly known under the Mosaic dispensation, is now so clearly revealed, that a little child may see it, and he who runs may read it ]

In a more abundant measure than it would ever have been enjoyed, if man had never fallen

[By the Prophet Zechariah, God says, Turn ye to the strong-hold, ye prisoners of hope: even to-day do I declare that I will render double unto thee [Note: Zec 9:12.]: so Christ here offers to us a double measure of life. Man, if he had never fallen, would have possessed but a creature-righteousness; whereas, through faith in Christ, he becomes possessed of a divine righteousness, and is entitled to address the Saviour himself as Jehovah, our Righteousness Moreover, if man had never fallen, he would have had very narrow and contracted views of God, in comparison of those which are revealed to him in and through the Lord Jesus Christ. As a creature, he would have beheld the goodness of God: but he could have formed no conception of the justice, and holiness, and mercy, and truth of God; and much less of the union and harmony of all these attributes, as simultaneously exhibited in the person of a crucified Redeemer I add, too, that had he never fallen, his happiness would have been only the gift of grace; whereas, through the coming of Christ, every blessing that he shall enjoy in the eternal world, will bear upon it a stamp of the price it cost, and will be enjoyed by the soul as the fruit and purchase of the Redeemers blood Take this view of the blessedness which Christ has obtained for us; and I hesitate not to say, that it as far exceeds all that man would otherwise have enjoyed, as the noon-day sun exceeds in radiance the morning-star, or the feeble glimmering of the glow-worm ]

Let not any of you, then, be satisfied without this light

[Shall the Son of the living God have left the bosom of his Father, and assumed our nature, and died upon the cross for us, and we be indifferent about the life that he has purchased for us? Would not the very stones cry out against us? Tell me, would the apostate spirits, if they were favoured with one such message of mercy as is vouchsafed to you, make light of it as you do? I charge you, then, be in earnest; and, whilst the invitations of the Gospel are yet sounding in your ears, go to this good Shepherd, and seek from him the life which he has come from heaven to bestow ]

Let not any be satisfied with a small measure of life

[Christ came, that you might have it more abundantly. O brethren! you should not be content to live; but should seek to live in the richest possible enjoyment of the Divine favour, and in the most perfect meetness for glory. St. Paul, after all his attainments, forgot what was behind, and reached forward to that which was before. And that should be the habit of your minds. This is the way to answer the ends of Christs first advent; and it will be your best preparation for his future advent, when he shall come to judge the world in righteousness, and to bestow, in all its fulness, the life which he has purchased for you ]

Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)

10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

Ver. 10. The thief cometh not but for to steal ] However so sly heretics seek to insinuate with their pithanology and feigned humility, whereby they circumvent and beguile the simple, it is deadly dealing with them. Shun their society as a serpent in your way, as poison in your food. Spondanus (the same that epitomized Baronius) gives his reader Popish poison to drink so slyly, saith one, as if he were doing somewhat else, and meant no such matter. Perniciosissimum Hildebrandinae doctrinae venenum lectoribus ebibendum, quasi aliud agens, propinat. And learned Billius observes the like of Socrates, the ecclesiastical historian, a cunning Novatian. Swenckfeldius, who held many dangerous heresies, did yet deceive many by his pressing men to a holy life, praying frequently and fervently, &c., by his stately expressions, ever in his mouth, as of illumination, revelation, deification, the inward and spiritual man. (Scultet. Annal.) Some are so cunning in their cogging the dice, as St Paul phraseth it, , Eph 4:14 ; in the conveyance of their collusion, that, like serpents, they can sting without hissing; like cur dogs, suck your blood only with licking; and in the end kill you and cut your throats without biting. Muzzle them therefore, saith St Paul, and give them no audience. , Tit 1:11 ; Tit 3:10 . Placilla the empress, when Theodosius, senior, desired to confer with Eunomius the heretic, dissuaded her husband very earnestly; lest, being perverted by his speeches, he might fall into heresy. Anastasius II, Bishop of Rome, in the year 497, while he sought to reduce Acacius the heretic, was seduced by him. (Soremen, vii. 1.) A little leaven soon soureth the whole lump. One spoonful of vinegar will quickly tart a great deal of sweet milk, but a great deal of milk will not so soon sweeten one spoonful of vinegar. Error (saith a noble writer) is like the Jerusalem artichoke; plant it where you will, it overruns the ground and chokes the heart.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Joh 10:10 . The tenth verse introduces a new contrast, between the good shepherd and the thieves and hirelings. . The thief has but one reason for his coming to the fold: he comes to steal and kill and destroy; to aggrandise himself at the expense of the sheep. has probably the simple meaning of “kill,” as in Act 10:13 , Mat 22:4 ; cf. Deu 22:1 . With quite other intent has Christ come: , that instead of being killed and perishing the sheep “may have life and may have abundance”. This may mean abundance of life, but more probably abundance of all that sustains life. in Xen., Anab. , vii. 6, 31, means “to have a surplus”. “The repetition of gives the second point a more independent position than it would have had if alone had been used. Cf. Joh 10:18 ; Xen., Anab. , i. 10, 3, ,” Meyer. Cf. Psa 23:1 .

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

but = except. Greek. ei me.

for to steals = sin order that (Greek. hina) he may steal. and. Note the Figure of speech Polysyndeton (App-6), for emph.

I am come = I came.

that = in order that (Greek. hina).

life. Greek. zoe. App-170. See note on Joh 1:4.

might = may.

more abundantly, i.e. life in abundance.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

Joh 10:10. , that he may steal) That is peculiarly the act of a thief. There follow worse things. A thief, 1) steals for the sake of his own advantage: 2) he inflicts loss on others, a) by killing the sheep, b) by destroying the remainder of their food. There is a climax in the division, not in the subdivision: , the destruction caused by a thief, is not spiritual, but civil; but a spiritual injury is metaphorically described by it, just as by theft and murder.- and that he may kill) In antithesis to life.- , and that he may destroy) In antithesis to abundance []: concerning which see Psa 23:1, The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want,

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Joh 10:10

The thief cometh not, but that he may steal, and kill, and destroy:-The false Christ comes only for selfish purposes and will kill and destroy others for his selfish ends. [All those who enter otherwise than by the door wish to prey upon the flock. Their object is not to save the flock, but to destroy it. False religion robs men; true religion blesses and enriches them. After having served for the satisfaction of their pride, ambition, and cupidity they will perish morally, and at least even externally by the effect of this pernicious guidance. The false and selfish teacher is not only a thief who steals the substance and the opportunities of the flock, but a destroyer. This is a universal truth that any person of wide observation has seen illustrated too often. He destroys the spiritual life of the flock, leads it away from God, fills it with false doctrines, destroys the faith that is in mens hearts, and scatters the flock abroad until the sheep can no longer be found at the Lords house. My observation is that this is, sooner or later, the picture of the pastor system. Too many preach to satisfy the money and popular sides.]

I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.-[Overflowingly; richfulness of nourishment (Comp. Psalms 23); abundance of spiritual possessions (grace and truth) (Joh 1:14) in which the life consists.] Jesus the true Shepherd will lay down his life to save the sheep and for their growth to a higher good.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

The Greatest Thing in the World

The thief cometh not, but that he may steal, and kill, and destroy: I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.Joh 10:10.

Jesus is here contrasting Himself with other teachers; with those who taught the people only in order to win their following, while He, in the spirit of disinterested love, taught them for their own good. Those were more worthy of the title thieves than shepherds, for their object was a selfish and a sectarian, not a humanitarian one. They wanted men for their church. He wanted men for their salvation. He claimed to be the Good Shepherd because He secured for the sheep life at the cost of His own. And not merely that. It was not bare life that He secured for them, but abounding life, life that it is a joy to live.

The sheepfold of the East is an enclosure made of high stakes or palings. As the evening closes in, the shepherd comes from the pasture-land leading his flock of sheep. It is a small flock always, such as he can oversee easily; and he knows every sheep by nature and by name. He leads the flock into the fold. Another shepherd comes with his flock. And when all the flocks are housed, the porter shuts the door (each shepherd having gone home to his cottage in the neighbour village), and stays beside the flocks till morning. In the night a thief comes stealthily, climbs over the palings, and slips down noiselessly into the fold. He lays hold of one of the sheep, but the porter has seen him. There is a struggle. If not the porter himself, at least the sheep the thief has seized is killed, and probably destroyed. He escapes before the shepherds arrive in the morning. With the early dawn the shepherds come. Each shepherd knocks at the door of the sheepfold; the porter opens. He calls his own flock by name, and they follow him away to the pasture-ground for the day.

Jesus is the Shepherd of the sheep. The Pharisees and Sadducees are the thieves. Jesus comes to give: they come to steal. Jesus comes to give life: they come to take life away. Jesus comes to give life in abundance: they come to destroy it altogether. The Pharisees and Sadducees of to-day are the enemies of Christ, be they who they may. They are the world, the flesh, the devil. The sheep are those for whom the choice is waiting. Choose ye this day. We are the sheep of some ones pastureHis or the Devils. We may follow Him to receive, to receive life, to receive life in abundance. We may follow Satan to lose, to lose life, to lose it utterly!

1. The thief takes: the Shepherd gives. The thief cometh not, but that he may steal: I came that they may have. This is the ineffaceable distinction between the world and the Saviour. The world cries, Give me: the Saviour cries, I give thee. The world is selfish: the Saviour is unselfish. The princes of this world exercise lordship: I am among you as He that serveth. Selfishness, they say, is the essence of sin: it is certainly the essence of the world, which is the sphere of sin. The world saysand practises itthat it is more blessed to receive than to give: Jesus says it is more blessed to give than to receive; and He gave His life a ransom.

2. The thief takes life: the Shepherd gives life. The thief cometh not, but that he may kill: I came that they may have life. Life and death are the great words of Scripture, and their meaning must be watched. Death on the lips of Jesus is not physical, but spiritual. The maid is not dead, but sleepethand they laughed Him to scorn. As if they did not know when a person was dead! But He spake not of the death of the body. That was not death. She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth. So also with Life. Life was not physical health and strength, it was fellowship with God, in the language of Jesus. Life, say the men of science, is correspondence with the things around us; death comes when we get out of touch. Spiritual life is correspondence with Him who is a spirit; it is trust, it is truth. Every antagonist of Godthe world, the flesh, the devilseeks to break our fellowship with God. Till Satan came, Adam walked with God; then he hid himself. Jesus comes to the hidden Adam that He may restore the fellowship. That they all may be one as we are: I in them, and thou in me. If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

3. The thief comes to destroy: Jesus comes to give life abundantly. Before the thiefbe he world, flesh, devilcan destroy, he must get us in his grasp. This is a late stage of the process. We lose when we begin to follow the world; then we are killed, the very conscience becoming blunt and blind; then we are utterly destroyed, generally body and soul, though the body does not always visibly show it. Before Jesus can give us life in abundance, He must give us life. We are first born again, and then we are changed into the same image from glory to glory.

Life

1. Suppose we were asked any of the following questions:Can you tell me in a word the subject of the New Testament? Or, can you explain, just as briefly, the object with which Christ came into the world? Or, can you indicate the final purpose of the multitude of various religious organizations and movements which we find at work all round us, many of them tending, like other kinds of modern machinery, to become more and more complex? Can you say why all the sermons are preached, why all the various services are held, why all our Communions are made?

Will not a single word answer all these questions? Surely the one word life is a sufficient reply to them all. Is not life the one subject of all Christian teaching and study? Is not life the one object of every kind of Christian effort?

2. From time to time in the course of His ministry our Lord briefly, yet quite comprehensively expressed, by means of some pregnant phrase, His whole purpose and object. For instance, in the hearing of the Pharisees, He said it was for judgment that He came into this world. Then He told Pilate that He came to bear witness of the truth. But never more fully or completely did our Lord express the whole purpose of His mission than in these words of the textI came that they may have life.

Sum up the gospel in a single word, and that one word is life. Get at the heart of all Christ had to teach, and life is nestling against that heart. One thought determines every other thought; one fact interprets and arranges everything, and that one fact, so dominant and regal, is the deep fact of life. Deeper than faith, for faith is but a name, unless it issue from a heart that lives; deeper than love, though God Himself be love, for without life love would be impossible, life is the compendium of the gospel, the sweet epitome of all its news; it is the word that gathers in itself the music and the ministry of Christ. The words that I speak unto you, He said, they are spirit, and they are life. I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly. I am the way, and the truth, and the life. I am the resurrection and the life. All that He came to teach, all that He was, is summed and centred in that little word.1 [Note: G. H. Morrison]

3. There are always two ways of interpreting such a word as life, when we find it in Holy Scripture. There is the exclusive or distinctive meaning, in which, e.g., life stands for the life that is life indeed, eternal life, the highest life of the soul. And there is the inclusive or general meaning, in which the word gathers up and covers all the meanings of which it is capable, so that in this case life would mean vitality in all its forms, from physical vigour up to the highest energies of mans spirit inspired by the Spirit of God.

Before all things beware of narrow and unworthy conceptions of life. That which God hath joined, let not man put asunder. The animal life, the social life, and the spiritual life form one organic whole; and though we can have the lower without the higher, we cannot have the higher without the lower. The social life is unsound if the animal life is stunted in the slums or the monasteries, and the life to God is maimed if either the social life or the animal life is counted profane. No doubt it is better to enter into life with one eye than to be cast into outer darkness, but it is better still to enter having two eyes. As the plant feeds on things without life, so the animal life feeds ultimately on plant life, the social life feeds on the animal life, and the life to God feeds on the social life.2 [Note: H. M. Gwatkin, in The Interpreter, January, 1912, p. 146.]

4. Life as we see it is manifested in a succession of rising grades. Lowest, there is the vegetable world or plant life, with no volition or consciousness, tied down by invariable laws. Higher, we witness in the animal world the rise of life from the physical to the psychical; in even the lowest forms of animal life there would seem to be some dawning consciousness and volition. In man, the inner, psychical life shows itself superior to the physical. It is lighted by reason, capable of deliberate choice and self-direction, able to discern the moral ideal, and it is the seat of spiritual aspirations.

We may therefore speak separately (1) of physical or natural life, (2) of intellectual, (3) of moral, and (4) of religious or spiritual life.

(1) Physical Life.Man is a self-conscious Personality with the power of self-formation. Life is given us, a fresh supply comes to us day by day, given into our hand, as it were, and in a large measure we can shape it as we choosemake it larger and fuller, keep it much the same, or let it dwindle away almost into nothingness. How we shall shape our lives will depend for the most part on what we deem the true good. Each mans life is governed by that which seems to him, from moment to moment, most desirable for him to attain to and enjoy. We may not deliberately think about it, yet there is always some end which we seek to gain. The greatness of man and his responsibility lie in the fact that he is capable of determining what his end in life shall be. He is thus, so far, his own creator and the master of his fate. He may remain largely on the level of the merely vegetative life, dominated unconsciously by moods and circumstances. Except when self-interest becomes so keen as to assert itself, he may be entirely a slave to what is outside himself. This cannot be the true life of man. Or he may suffer himself to be swayed in the main by the appetites and passions and necessities of his physical or animal nature, thus also failing to rise to manhood.

The worship of material well-being, with its unceasing round of distractions and occupations, cannot bring rest to its devotees. Nor, again, can the nobler activities and pleasures which attract others exhaust their capacities or satisfy their nature. These at the best show life under the limitations of time, and, as one of our great poets has said,

Lifes inadequate to joy,

As the soul sees it.

A man can use but a mans joy

And he sees Gods.

Therefore by the necessity of our being we cry from the depths of our heart for life, not for the instruments of life only or for the means of living; but for life, for more life, fuller, deeper, more certain, more enduring; for the prospect of untroubled calm with fruitful activity; of strenuous labour without weariness; for the pledge of

Some future state

Unlimited in capability

For joy, as this is in desire for joy:

for a life, that is, reaching through the seen into the unseen: a life able to unite and interpret all objects of all thought: to satisfy and inspire all effort. So the voice comes to us from the Gospels with a new meaning and a new power: I came that they may have life.

(2) Intellectual and emotional Life.Christ vitalizes the intellect and the emotions. A man does not live until his intellectual nature is truly awake. Is there anything more calculated to quicken the mental faculties and arouse intellectual enthusiasm than a consideration of those lofty and inspiring topics that were the theme of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth? He made everybody think. Indeed, what is called conversion is often as much an intellectual as a spiritual awakening. The Christian life tends to develop the thinking faculty and is a culture by itself. Interest is aroused in questions that can be solved only by thought and reflection, and spiritual awakening appears often to be accompanied by an accession of intelligence. Plain, uneducated people seem suddenly to attain to a much greater fulness of intellectual life. The man who is born from above is raised to a higher plane of contemplation. He holds commerce with larger ideas, and is greatened in his whole nature thereby. And what is true of the intellect is true, and generally much more obviously, of the emotions.

(3) Moral Life.The moral life is higher than the merely intellectual and emotional. The honest manhonest all overis king o men for a that, in spite of all that shines more brightly or that towers above him. The man who can conquer and command himself in loyalty to the visions of justice and duty which shine upon him, who dares to do right though the heavens should fall, who will act honestly whatever the consequences to himself, who seeks always to do justly in relation to himself and his fellows, to respect them as persons equally with himself, whatever their outward position may be, and to serve and help them in whatever way he can, has risen, every man in his inmost self feels and knows, to a far higher conception of life than that which is governed by intellect and emotion merely. He has got, in some measure at least, beyond himself into the larger life of his fellows. The simple fact that he has done so proves that he has reached a higher and truer, richer and fuller life. Christ comes to give moral life.

(4) Spiritual Life.The moral life may not be the highest, although it is inseparable from it. However perfect in itself, it may still have its limitations. It may be bounded by time and limited to earth. While it has a due regard for others as having equal rights and mutual duties, it may fail to recognize a Will above us all, with which we are meant to be in harmony, which, indeed, seeks to operate through us. It may fail to rise to the Infinite, to expand into the Universal, to ally itself with the Divine, to become as far as possible one with God. To be alive to the world around us and our fellow-men therein, but dead to the Eternal Source of being, to whom we owe our all, is surely to come far short of the true life. The spirit of life that moves within us and seeks expression through us makes us feel and know that there is a still higher, wider, truer life open to us, inviting us, into which we ought to rise. It is in the life of religion, as Jesus Christ set it before us and called us to it, and as God by His Spirit in our heart moves us thereto, that we find the highest and truest life of man. For man is conceived in the image of God Himself, created and called to be His son and heir.

Sometimes the Bible speaks as if the spirit were non-existent in the natural man; but in other places, and perhaps more exactly, it speaks of it as not developed. At all events, it has not attained its position of superiority and supremacy because the spirit ought to stand up above the other faculties of man and command life. And so essential is this to the Divine conception of man, that where this spiritual element is not operative the Bible speaks of human beings as dead, however much they may be alive in the lower ranges of their faculties. For instance, as already quoted, She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth. Just look at a woman or a girl who lives in pleasure. Why, is not she the very picture of life? Her body is so glowing with life that her beauty attracts all who see her; her mental life may also be so rich that, wherever she moves in the circles where she seeks her pleasures, she is accompanied by a crowd who admire her wit and cleverness; and her emotional life may be in so healthy a condition that she has a heart rich in love to give to the happy man who is able to win it. She seems to be the very picture of life. Yes! but follow her into another sphere of existence, where a different set of powers comes into operation, and there you will find that she prays not, she thinks not of God, she neither loves nor serves Christ, she is not laying up treasure in heaven; in short, her spirit, the true glory of womanhood, in her is dead; and so, as Scripture says, she is dead while she liveth.

It goes without saying that Christ confers upon a man completeness of spiritual life. In most the spiritual principle lies latent, dormant. It is there, but overlaid by the physical instincts, the animal nature. Christ evokes it, kindles it, raises it to a passion; and when the Spirit of Christ has its perfect work, all the elements that go to a spiritual life are balanced; faith with love; strength with sympathy; courage and steadfastness with tolerance and tenderness; so that there is produced a noble symmetry of character. Everything is full-grown and yet subordinated to everything else. The whole man comes under the elevating and inspiring influence of Christs life-idea.

The spiritual life is too much regarded as something quite distinct and separate from the other expressions of human faculty. This is a matter rightly urged by Eucken in his writings, and it deserves the serious attention of Christians. As the life of God in manthe life represented in Christ and proceeding from Him to the worldought to be the deepest influence and the dominating power in the entire life of men, giving direction and character to what we term the secular life and its manifestations as well as to that which we mark off as religiousbringing every thought, as St. Paul puts it, into captivity to the obedience of Christ; as the whole lower life in the world contributes to the human, so should the physical and entire psychical life of man contribute to the spiritual. Ideally, that was first, although last in appearance. It is life in its truth and therefore should embrace all lower manifestations without exception.1 [Note: W. L. Walker, The True Christ, 180.]

5. We are now able to see in some measure what Christ meant when He said, I came that they may have life. He meant realization of self, service for others, and fellowship with God.

(1) Life is fellowship with God.The life which Christ is and which Christ communicates, the life which fills our whole being as we realize its capacities, is active fellowship with God. This is, not this shall be in some unimaginable future, this is, Christ said, even now, in the light and shadow of our changing days, life eternal, that they might know, with ever fuller knowledge, thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent (Joh 17:3). For the knowledge by which we live is a knowledge which grows: not truth given and mastered once for all, but truth to be illuminated and interpreted by the ever increasing sum of human experience. Thus the coming of Christ, the Incarnation, binds together two worlds, and makes the earthly with all its workings a sacrament, so to speak, of the heavenly.

A few years ago a famous book called attention to a definition of life, given by an eminent man of science, whose attitude towards Christianity can hardly be regarded as friendly; and then proceeded to make good use of it. Perfect life was defined as perfect correspondence with environment. Working with that definition, the meaning of this verse becomes blessed indeed. For the environment of a mans soul consists on the one hand in God and in influences from God (always the most important things about a man), and on the other hand in the opportunities for the discipline and perfecting of character, which the ordinary circumstances of life afford. It is Christ alone who can put a man into proper correspondence with the former part of that environment, or enable him to meet the urgent and ceaseless demands of the latter. A profitable, if not altogether necessary, exercise of thought would be the attempt to re-state some of the leading doctrines of Christianity from the same point of view. The Incarnation, for instance, might be regarded as God opening up to man the possibility of correspondence with Himself through Jesus Christ. Because Christ thus brings us right conceptions of what God is and of what we may become in relation to Him, and, better still, because He breathes into us the power to become it all, the statement of this verse admits almost of a scientific defence. It is Christ alone who can give men what science itself has to recognize as life; and He gives that with such largesse and abundance that, if we like, it will survive all the dangers of this world, and last on in undecaying vigour and ever richer functions throughout eternity.1 [Note: R. W. Moss, The Discipline of the Soul, 27.]

(2) Life is service for others.What is the highest duty of life? It is certainly not personal acquisition, but the rendering of the fullest service that lies within our power; it is also bestowing upon others the fullest possible opportunity of rendering that service. To enable men to do this Christ taught and healed; but also, and this was His most important work of all, He transformed their characters from sin to holiness. In the light of Christs teaching what is the joy of life? It does not consist in thinking how much we have obtained. Does it not rather consist in inspiring others with life? Is it not found in awakening others to high ideals? Indeed, is it not the highest happiness to struggle, and to encourage others to struggle, after those ideals? What, again, in the light of Christs teaching, is the end or purpose of life? Is it not to bestow life upon others, to impart to others that deep, personal, experimental knowledge of God which we have received through our own personal communion with God, which communion is the essence of eternal life?

Many years ago religion became strongly individualistic. We need not underrate the importance, we should rather speak of the necessity, of cultivating individual knowledge and individual holiness, that is, of making individual effort after the closest personal communion with God in Christ; for by these means we largely obtain that supply of life which it is our duty to bestow. But if we study the lives of some so-called religious people, we might imagine that the text read, I am come into the world that I may have life, that I may secure as much life as possible for myself. By these people life here is apparently regarded only as an opportunity of making themselves as sure as possible of heaven hereafter. But that is not the teaching of Christ.

We have now a deepening consciousness of the unity, the solidarity of mankind. The truth lies in the phrase, The Word became flesh; He took to Himself not simply a human life but humanity. If the Gospel is necessarily addressed to the individual, it is not to the individual alone and isolated, but to the individual as a member of a body. And more than this: Christians are a kind of firstfruits of Gods creatures (Jam 1:18). They are taught to look to an end in which the differences of race and condition and even the fundamental distinctions of sex shall be done away: There can be, St. Paul writes, neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female; for ye are all one (man) in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:28).

On all sides there is an indefinite desire for closer fellowship among men; a restless, almost impatient, striving to alleviate distress and to remove its causes; a willingness to acknowledge that all wealth, material, intellectual, moral, spiritual, is a trust to be administered for the common good. Numberless lines of reflection constrain us to confess that our life is in no sense our own either in its origin or in its development; that the ideal which in hours of insight rises before us is not of our creation, but a Divine disclosure, the fountain light of all our day, a master light of all our seeing. Many and unexpected lessons from the interpretation of history and the interpretation of nature press upon us the ennobling duty of taking our part in the fulfilment of a purpose of unimaginable grandeur and infinite hope, at length discernible in its broad outlines, of obeying the call addressed to our age and nation, the call to service of man and fellowship with God in Christ.

One of the most distinguished men in this country once described in a public address what he called his creed. He disclaimed any intention of speaking in the name of religion. I do not trench, he said, on the province of spiritual guides. None the less, he was led to sum up his faith in what he called the triune formula of the joy, the duty, and the end of life. What is the joy of life? It is to use ones powers. And what is the duty of life? It is to do with thy might what thy hand finds to do. And what is the end of life? It is nothing else than life itself. So to live as to live more truly, wisely, effectively, abundantly,that is at once joy, duty, and end. It is most interesting to observe a man who may be properly called, in the best sense, a man of the world, approaching so closely to the language of the Christian religion. Throughout the New Testament the aim of life is to gain more life. I came, says Jesus, that they may have life, and may have it abundantly. What is the reward of ones bodily exercise? It is the capacity to use the body more effectively. You train your life, and the result of your training is more life. What is the reward of keeping your temper? It is the capacity to keep your temper better. What is the consequence of doing your duty? It is the ability to do more duties. Out of the duty done opens the strength to do a larger duty. You have been faithful over a few things and become the ruler over many things.

There is, however, one striking difference between the self-cultivating life and the Christian life. The man of the world finds the joy and duty and end of life in its increase of his own resources. The Christian teaching finds that joy and duty and end, not in getting, but in giving life. I came, says Jesus, not to secure more life for Myself, but that they may have life. He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it. Death worketh in us, says the Apostle Paul, but life in you. The triune formula of joy, duty, and end, according to the Christian teaching, is discovered in the communicative and self-propagating nature of spiritual power. What is the joy of life? It is the discovery of the capacity to inspire life. And what is the duty of life? It is not acquisition, but service. And what is the end of life, or, in the language of the New Testament, its crown? It is not a crown of gold, or gems, which one may wear on his own head; it is, as the Book of Revelation says, a crown of life,the increase of capacity, the enrichment of opportunity, the chance to be of use, the power to say with Jesus Christ: I give unto them eternal life.1 [Note: F. G. Peabody, Mornings in the College Chapel, ii. 107.]

(3) Life is the realization of self.What a responsibility it is to live at all, to be one link in that great chain of existence which God is ever weaving in the secrets of His providence. Just as in some great carpet factory you see the coloured threads darting in under the swift-gliding machineryto be lost, as you think, in the intricacies of the meshesbut reappearing, a tuft here, a shade there, a colour there, in a pattern slowly unfolding at your feet, so nations, individuals, lives great and small appear, disappear, reappear in the great secrets of Gods will. It is a wonderful thing to live; even to have opened our eyes on the order, the beauty of this world, with its marvellous history and its glorious possibility, is to merit that burst of approving wonder, if one may venture to say so with reverence, which escaped from the lips of our blessed Lord, Blessed are the eyes which see the things that; ye see.

But what is that undertone of sorrow which we see stamped sometimes as the dominant mark of expression on the faces we meet? What is that awful mystery of pain and death and sickness and bereavement? It is the echo of the old wail of the Greek tragedy, Not to be born is the best thing in the world, and failing that, to die as quickly as possible, and to fade away into nothingness. A life alone, unilluminated, unspiritualized, unhelped, may be a doubtful blessing after all.

It was just when men had found out this, just when it was bursting upon them in the most bitter anguish of a startling truth, when emperors were offering a reward to any one who could teach them a new pleasure, when Stoics were asserting that death was the end and the only mode of escape from the evils of lifeit was then that a new revelation burst upon the world, heralded by the angels who appeared in the heavens on that Christmas Eve; God came to make life a richer blessing, a truer happiness, to make possible that life which alone can be called life. He came in His Incarnation, with His glorious proclamation, to which the suffering world clings with eager tenacity, I came that they may have life. Man may now claim something more than existence, something more even than a conscious contribution to the great widening out of the ages; he can claim life in its highest form, supernatural life, by the power and the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ. Supernatural life, what is this? A life which is above nature, above its aches and pains, its failures, its disappointments, above death itself. I came that they may have life.

Here, then, lies our duty. It is, first and above all, to realize this life, and then to display it. It is our task not merely so to argue that the world shall listen to us when we ask, Why do you not believe as we do? but so to act that the world of its own accord shall ask, Why cannot we live as you do?

I believe that the great reason why so much of our toil and giving, our work and self-denial, counts for so much less than it should is because so many of us men and women are living on the wrong side of our poweras somebody has put iton the wrong side of Pentecost. Chronologically, we are living on the right side. Many of us know Christ, are following Christ, some closer, some further off; but some have not claimed our own Pentecost, and sought at Christs hands that equipment without which all other equipment counts for nothing, the Holy Ghost of God in the life, that which is to the Christian more of what genius is to the artist, and without which, whatever his technique, there can be no soul because there is no life. All Christians have the Spirit, but all Christians have not the fulness of the Spirit, and it is the fulness of the Spirit that is the clamant want to-day, as it is the clamant want of every day.1 [Note: A. Shepherd.]

Since most remote times and among the different nations, the great teachers of humanity have revealed to men ever clearer definitions of life, which solve its internal contradiction, and have pointed out to them the true good and the true life that are proper for man. Since the position of men in the world is the same for all men, and, therefore, the contradiction between his striving after his personal good and the consciousness of its impossibility is the same also, all the definitions of the true good and, therefore, of the true life, as revealed to men by the greatest minds of humanity, are by their essence the same.

Life is the dissemination of that light which came down from heaven for the good of men, Confucius said, six hundred years before Christ.

Life is a wandering and perfecting of the souls attaining a greater and ever greater good, said the Brahmins of about the same time.

Life is self-renunciation for the sake of attaining blissful Nirvana, said Buddha, a contemporary of Confucius.

Life is the path of humility and abasement for the sake of attaining the good, said Lao-tse, another contemporary of Confucius.

Life is that which God blew into the nostrils of man, in order that he, fulfilling the law, might attain the good, says the Jewish wisdom.

Life is subjection to reason, which gives men the good, said the Stoics.

Life is love of God and of our neighbour, which gives man the good, said Christ, including all the former definitions into His own.2 [Note: Tolstoy, On Life (Complete Works, xvi. 244).]

Abundance of Life

And may have it abundantly.

What does this mean? It can hardly denote that some further gift will be added to that of life, inasmuch as spiritual life in its processes and issues includes all that even a God can give. It means that the life will be given so plentifully that there will be no need for a devout soul ever to languish, that its life will become buoyant, possessed always of just a little more vital energy than is really needed either for its endurance of pain or for its triumph over sin. One of the greatest of Methodist theologians once expounded the phrase as a pledge of more spiritual life than Adam lost, more than unfallen man could ever have known, more than eternity itself can contain.

Holy Scripture is fond of large promises. In one passage, for instance, the writer was unable to find in the language he was using a word that was adequate, and so he coined a new one, and in that way managed to express what the Authorized Version renders, God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. Even in the Old Testament large words are occasionally met with, especially when there is any reference to the patience or bounty of God. Jeremiah teaches one or two ethical truths more forcibly than they are taught in any other part of Scripture, but he is probably regarded, justly or unjustly, as the dullest and most depressed of inspired writers. Even Jeremiah represents Jehovah once as saying, I will satiate the soul of the priests with fatness, and my people shall be satisfied with my goodness. This verse goes beyond that; for, whilst that speaks of satisfaction and satiety, this speaks of superfluity. It sets forth the purpose of Christs coming as being to bring to man Gods gift of a life that can never be exhausted, the energies of which may always exceed our duties, and the range of which has no limit.1 [Note: R. W. Moss, The Discipline of the Soul, 27.]

1. The abundant life is a life of great vitality.In the spiritual world, as in every other sphere of being with which we are acquainted, various degrees of vitality are to be found. The rule obtains among all organisms on the globe that the unknown force which we call life exhibits itself with feebler intensity in some species than in others, and in some individuals within each species. Weak vitality in animals is marked by dulness of sensation, by a more restricted range of action, by less sensibility to pain, and by the comparative absence of intelligence. A similar diversity obtains among human beings. In many cases delicacy of constitution may be the index to a low vitality. We speak, too, of the slow understanding, the cold heart, and the feeble will. What we mean is that in such cases the life-power is scanty. On the other hand, individuals are found who seem to be all force and fire. A robust physique and a vigorous personality are far from being always combined in the same individual; but where these do combine, we recognize the conditions of exceptional power. When we meet with a man of quick perception and keen feelings, whose sympathies run swiftly in many directions, who is prompt in his decisions and so energetic in action that he can infuse into others a little of his own ardent temperament, then we all acknowledge the presence of a strong or exuberant vitality. Of him it may be said that he has abundance of life.

The striking words of the text imply that it is just the same in the higher region of Christian experience. They prepare us to find in the Church, as we do, examples of every degree of spiritual animation. This depends partly on natural capacity, partly on the extent to which the Holy Spirit is suffered to operate and rule within the interior life. There are lukewarm believers, and believers aflame with fervour; molluscous Christians, torpid or inert, and Christians full of faith and power. If a low type of religious vitality be unhappily prevalent in most Churches, yet we are now and then taught by illustrious exceptions of what consecration and saintliness a man is capable when he not only has in him the life of Christ, but has that life abundantly.

It is deficient vitality more even than ignorance that makes the mischief and misery of the world. To be weak, a poet has said, is to be miserable, doing or suffering; whereas to be alive is to be strong in faith and hope and loveis to be in tune with all holy and beautiful influences that lift up the soul above sordid aims and mean thoughts. To be alive is to be open to sympathy at every pore, to face lifes ills in a cheerful and resolute spirit, to be full of the moral energy that throws off the poison of evil, as a perfectly healthy body repels the germs of disease.1 [Note: J. W. Shepard, Light and Life, 250.]

If An embankment is to be thrown up, or a cutting to be dug out. You want labourers. Here are your spades, and your picks, and your wheelbarrows, but the men are required. See, a number of persons offer themselves for hire. They are very thin, they have singularly bright eyes, sunken cheeks, and hollow churchyard coughsthey are a choice company from the Consumptive Hospital. Will you hire them? Why do you look so dubious? These men have life. Oh, yes, you say, but I wish they had it more abundantly: they cannot do such work as I have to offer them.1 [Note: C. H. Spurgeon.]

2. The abundant life is a life of wide interests.It has come true, even with reference to ordinary secular affairs, that the effect of Christianity has been, not to deaden men to the interests of this life, with its common joys and sorrows, but, on the contrary, to make their experience larger and more intense. This is not the prevalent opinion. Both the injudicious friends of Christianity and its shrewd opponents have represented it as rendering its disciples dead to the world, in a quite different sense from that of the New Testament. Perhaps the ancient error of the ascetics is in part responsible for this current view. It is true enough that the gospel does deliver a man from exorbitant and unreasonable concern about affairs which are merely private or personal. It rids usor it ought to rid usof excessive longing after temporal good for its own sake; and it makes it impossible for us to indulge in extravagant regret when we forfeit temporal advantages. It teaches us to regard this world mainly as a scene of discipline. But it is a mistaken inference from this that secular pleasure and pain, gain and loss, birth and death, and whatever goes to fill up our daily round, must have lost interest or meaning for the true Christian. On the contrary, everything which happens gains in meaning and in interest by being brought, as the Gospel brings it, into relationship with God and with eternity. This world itself is become a graver and a vaster place to Christians since Jesus Christ died for it. Each trifling incidentsay when a sparrow fallsis seen now to be linked to the will of our Heavenly Father and woven into a plan which has mans spiritual good for its issue. Homes with their births and death-beds, their daily tables and nurseries for Christs little ones, are infinitely more sacred spots, so near are they seen to lie to the gate of heaven. Common business rises in importance when by it you have to glorify your Saviour and serve your brother-men. Social and political problems of the hour do not claim less attention from the Christian, but more, because in them is wrapt up the welfare of that humanity for which Jesus suffered and which He calls upon us to seek and save along with Him. Christianity is so far from being a deadening influence, dulling ones concern in everything which touches the well-being of society, that it is precisely Christianity that has elevated this mean life by letting in upon it the light of eternity. It has brought into relief all its possibilities, and has made every small thing grand and every dull person noble by linking them to the destinies of our raceto the everlasting God and to the solemn cross of His dear Son.

Christ came that we might have life, and life in all its range. He was not like some who have even boasted that they care for nothing but immortal souls. In a far deeper sense than the Roman ever dreamed of, nothing that is human can be foreign to its incarnate Lord. Every creature of God claimed His loving sympathy. He could rejoice in the glory of the lilies and the joy of the birds. The beginning of His mighty signs He did at the marriage feast, and the first of His royal gifts was of the wine that maketh glad the heart of man. He feeds the multitude, and does not forget to command that something be given to the child to eat. He passes through a short and bright career of doing good. To the sick, and even to the dead, He gives the bounding joy of life restored; and yet it is no formal gift, but the natural outflow of the loving spirit of the sinless Man 1:1 [Note: H. M. Gwatkin.]

Richard Le Gallienne, in The Religion of a Literary Man, tells of a friend of his who lost her husband by a sudden and violent death. It was a heart-breaking tragedy, and some of her friends looked to see her sink beneath the shock. But she did not. With courage and self-command she came back from the graveyard to resume her work. And when some of her friends marvelled at it, one who knew her intimately said, Noshe is a woman of many interests. That sounded strange, a woman of many interests. What had that to do with her loss? Simply this: her life was too large to be defeated by any loss death could inflict. It was not that she did not love her husband with the love that makes the world a temple. But the power that made her capable of one intense affection, made her capable of inviolable attachments to children, and friends, and mission schools, and charities. So when death left her a widow, instead of withdrawing herself from lifes activities, she enshrined in her heart the memory of the absent one, and gave herself anew to the work of her life.1 [Note: C. C. Albertson, The Gospel According to Christ, 193,]

3. The abundant life is a life of deep enjoyment.A man is not fully living, who does not enjoy living. It is when we are weak and only half alive that life is a burden and a sigh. Fulness of life is fulness of joy. This Christ came to confer.

Life is gladness, save where Death has touched it in sickness, in sin, or in what the lawyers call the Act of God; and the gladness takes higher forms as we move up the scale of life. Only the higher animals can play, and only man can laugh with gladness. Then come the higher joys of social life, with their chequering of sorrow; and yet again, crowning all and blending with them all, the joy that overcometh sorrow, the joy of peace with God, the peace that passeth understanding, the peace of Christ, the peace our own good Lord has left us.

Nothing is more interesting or more remarkable in the history of Christianity than the radiant joy which filled the hearts of its first disciples. Read how with gladness and singleness of heart they broke their bread, how they took joyfully even the spoiling of their goods; how they went singing to their martyrdoms as to a festival. Go into the Catacombs and read the inscriptions inspired by their simple, happy faith. It was because the word and life of Christ dwelt in them richly that for very gladness they broke out into incessant psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. That is the ideal Christian temperament. Rejoice, and again I say unto you rejoice. But the joy will come only as the life comes. You have seen the sportive lamb in the meadows in the springtime. He is full of life and consequently full of joy in life. He frisks and gambols all the day long. He leaps in useless leaps; he leaps with all his legs up at once into the air; in his abounding life and happiness he cannot help it; and to the wise man every leap of that little heart is a new note of the heavenly anthemfulness of life. And truly those who can accept Christs revelation of the Father in Heaven earing for His children, and the hope full of immortality which He disclosed, ought to be the happiest of men and to show it.

No wonder the Christian has joy. No wonder the Apostle Peter could exclaim, Believing, ye rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and full of glory (1Pe 1:8). Believing, we rejoice. In other words, faith produces joy. The relation is that of inseparability, of cause and effect. The believing is the cause of the rejoicing. Faith brings gladness. Trusting brings happiness. Let us not fail to notice also the nature of the joy faith produces. It is unspeakable. That is, it is unspeakably great. It is also in its nature not a noisy, but a deep and silent thing. In this sense, too, it is unspeakable. And that is the reason, we doubt not, why it is so often mistaken for the opposite. Because it is calm and sometimes even grave, the world thinks it severe. But, as has been said, The gods approve the depth and not the tumult of the soul. Joy may be a very quiet thing, a calm rapture, as Jonathan Edwards once denned it.1 [Note: G. B. F. Hallock, The Christian Lifte, 123.]

Old sorrows that sat at the hearts sealed gate

Like sentinels grim and sad,

While out in the night damp, weary and late,

The King, with a gift divinely great,

Waited to make me glad;

Old fears that hung like a changing cloud

Over a sunless day;

Old burdens that kept the spirit bowed,

Old wrongs that rankled and clamoured loud

They have passed like a dream away.

In the world without and the world within

He maketh the old things new;

The touch of sorrow, and stain of sin,

Have fled from the gate where the King came in,

From the chill nights damp and dew.

Anew in the heavens the sweet stars shine,

On earth new blossoms spring;

The old life lost in the Life divine,

Thy will be mine, my will is thine,

Is the new song the new hearts sing.2 [Note: Mary Lowe Dickinson]

4. The abundant life is a life of eternal duration.This is the most familiar aspect of the life which Christ came to give. Its most common title is eternal life. Now eternal is not the exact equivalent of everlasting; it is more than everlasting; but it includes the idea of endlessness. The life in Christ can never cease to be. Here in the body, in whatever degree we possess that life, it must come to an end as far as its continued expression through these bodies of flesh and blood is concerned. But there is something in that life that has never found expression, and that cannot find expression, in and through these bodies. There is something in its depths, not of man merely, but of God, something, not finite only but infinite, not merely temporal but eternal. This is why the true life that Christ called men to is always described as eternal life. It is life above and beyond time and sense. It is eternal because it is nothing less than the life of God in us.

You have seen the aged, whose hearts expanded with their years into even wider and more unselfish affections; whose passions seemed to have been filtered away in lifes discipline; over whom the floods of trial had swept only to leave their richness behind; who had passed through struggle into peace; whose serene virtues, as the sun makes bright whatever it shines on, inspired all around with a higher justice and humanity; whose hopeful faith loved to make excursions into that world which they approached; who lived in an atmosphere of beneficent, trusting, and devout thoughtyou have seen them going down that valley, often so dark, but not dark to them, because there shone into it from above a heavenly lightand here was life. The body might be dying, but the breaking up of the senses only seemed to reveal more and more the souls light. I have seen such persons die, and laid in the grave, and yet in a few days the remembrance of that event seemed gone from the mind. I could never think of them except as alive. It seemed as if you might meet them at every turn, so entirely did the spiritual life in them overtop and embrace in its radiance, and keep out of view, all the circumstances of mortality. This is life. And more of it is often seen in the patience and submission and cheerful trust of those who can only wait Gods will than in those who with their grasping and struggling energies shake the world. The true life is not in length of days; that is but an inferior life which beats in the throbbing blood and flames in the whirl and tempest of the passions.1 [Note: E. Peabody.]

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;

In feelings; not in figures on a dial.

We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives

Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.

Lifes but a means unto an end; that end,

To those who dwell in Him, He most in them,

Beginning, mean and end to all things, God.1 [Note: Bailey, Festus.]

The Greatest Thing in the World

Literature

Abbey (C. J.), The Divine Love, 211.

Albertson (C. C.), The Gospel according to Christ, 187.

Banks (L. A.), Hidden Wells of Comfort, 106.

Brooks (P.), The More Abundant Life, 31.

Chadwick (W. E.), Christ and Everyday Life, 1.

Dykes (J. O.), Plain Words on Great Themes, 199.

Gordon (A. J.), The Twofold Life, 1.

Hague (D.), The Life Worth Living, 75.

Hallock (G. B. F.), The Teaching of Jesus concerning the Christian Life, 107.

Halsey (J.), The Beauty of the Lord, 305.

King (T. S.), Christianity and Humanity, 90.

Magee (W. C.), The Gospel and the Age, 155.

Mellor (E.), In the Footsteps of Heroes, 172.

Moss (R. W.), The Discipline of the Soul, 25.

Peabody (F. G.), Mornings in the College Chapel, ii. 107.

Potts (A. W.), School Sermons, 71.

Shepard (J. W.), Light and Life, 242.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xx. (1874) No. 1150.

Talbot (E. S.), The Trusteeship of Life for the World, 1.

Walker (W. L.), The True Christ, 169.

Wardell (R. J.), Studies in Homiletics, 40.

Westcott (B. F.), Lessons from Work, 285.

British Congregationalist, June 1, 1911, p. 463 (Adeney).

Christian World Pulpit, xlv. 347 (Stalker); Leviticus 22 (Welldon), 254 (Bliss); lx. 98 (Abbott); lxiv. 376 (Beeby); lxix. 195 (Shepherd); lxxii. 1 (Griffith-Jones), 4 (Horne); lxxiv. 161 (Holland).

Church Times, October 27, 1911, p. 556 (Donaldson).

Churchmans Pulpit: Whit-Sunday: ix. 246 (Sadler), 250 (Battershall), 253 (Peabody).

Contemporary Pulpit, 2nd Ser., iv. 321 (Newbolt).

Interpreter, January, 1912 (Gwatkin).

Sunday at Home, August, 1910, p. 799 (Morrison).

Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible

thief: Joh 10:1, Joh 12:6, Isa 56:11, Eze 34:2-4, Hos 7:1, Mat 21:13, Mat 23:14, Mar 11:17, Rom 2:21, 2Pe 2:1-3

I am: Joh 3:17, Joh 6:33, Joh 6:51, Joh 12:47, Mat 18:11, Mat 20:28, Luk 19:10, 1Ti 1:15

more abundantly: Rom 5:13-21, Heb 6:17, Heb 7:25, 2Pe 1:11

Reciprocal: Gen 27:33 – yea Gen 47:11 – Rameses Psa 23:5 – preparest Psa 119:40 – quicken Jer 23:1 – pastors Jer 33:6 – and will Jer 50:17 – a scattered Hab 3:2 – O Lord Zec 13:7 – my shepherd Luk 9:56 – the Son Joh 4:14 – shall be Joh 20:31 – believing Rom 5:17 – abundance Rom 5:20 – But 1Co 15:45 – a quickening 2Co 12:15 – will Eph 2:1 – you Eph 3:20 – exceeding 1Jo 4:9 – we

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

MOTIVES OF WORK FOR GOD

I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

Joh 10:10

We are living in a day that will be remembered for the nobility of its aims. From the student in our colleges to the working-man in his club the world is pulsing with high aims.

I. Character is a product: what we need is the force that produces it.If, with Mazzini, we set aside the house for the man who is to live in it, we must, if we are to succeed, set aside the man for that which is to reside in him if he is to be a man at all. We are not to tie clusters of grapes on to the branch. Our motive touches that very thing which will produce the grapes itself. Not conditions. Not character. I camethat they may have life. There is our aimLife. To link up life with Life: to wedge the graft into the Stock and fold it round with clay, till in that secrecy where no eye can ever penetrate the tiny sap-cells of the branch burst into the greater sap-cells of the Tree, and severed life is one with abundant Lifethis is the compelling motive that brought the worlds supreme benefaction, and that accounts for all the wonder of that I am come. And it is as we allow ourselves to be caught up into the passion of that Divine aim that we possess also a power that will reach to the extremest human need, and work out for victory in the end.

II. At what precise point, psychologically and spiritually, shall life in Christs sense of the word be found?The question is a concrete one. We have special men and women for whom we are anxious before our mind. The question is a religious one. We care not as to how, philosophically, life may be attained; but, quite practically, how has life as an actual fact been won? Take the most potent lives you can find. How and where did this new force come into them? Take, e.g., John Wesley. What empowers him, according to his own Journal, is not so much the earnest self-discipline of his Oxford days, or the Holy Club, or of his work for the S.P.G. in the States, as his new experience at the age of thirty-five, realised first at the meeting in Aldersgate Street. I felt, he says, my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given unto me that He had taken away my sins. Or take John Bunyan, or St. Paul himself. How did these men, men in each case the movers of millions, receive Life? In each case by the assurance of an overwhelming love that embraced them there as they stoodan assurance of the rush of God into their souls, Who, by His own self-sacrifice, had cut out the intercepting barrier of sin, and their life was one with His. In a word, in each case the point at which they receive Life is the Cross.

Christ Jesus came that we may have life. He came, He tells us also, that we may have it abundantly. There are two supreme discoveries in our human experience. The first is the discovery of the Cross: there is life. The second is the discovery of the Blessed Sacrament: there is the abundant life. And happy are we if we know them both in their miraculous power. For these twain are one. And just as we never really know the Sacrament without the Cross, so do we never really know the continuous life that flows from Calvary without the Sacrament.

III. Here, it would seem, is the Christians aim in the present day.Our aim is Life. And by that we mean not conditions only, not education only, not character only; but that revivifying from within of mans entire being. We mean that reanimation of his inner spirit which can only come by making proper contact with the great Divine Spirit. And, through the despair and gloom and paralysis and ruin produced by sin, this union with God is adequately secured by the acceptance of the Cross, and adequately maintained, by constant resetting and renewal, in that sacrament ordained to perpetuate this very thing. Thus, in a perfectly natural and personal way, love answers to love, and the man lives.

Rev. H. Gresford Jones.

Illustration

In the refectory of the Madeleine at Florence, there is a picture by Perugino, and in the central cartoon he reveals to us, in a fair sunlit valley, two figures alonethe Crucified Saviour and one kneeling at His feet. Words fail us before the worlds most glorious vision of perfect holiness and perfect love. The artist is true. When we do find ourselves there we are quite alone, and it is very beautiful and full of sunshine.

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE GIFT OF LIFE

Life is the gift of God. Look at it in the gift of nature. From the lowest to the highest, from the highest to the lowest, we see life given to man, and man, the creature, is to use it again. No mere effort of the mind, no mere emotion, no power of civilisation can grant to man the gift of Divine Life; that stands out in contradistinction to his natural life. We watch man as a complex being.

There are the two spheres, the two great kingdoms: the kingdom of the natural life, the kingdom of the spiritual.

I. In baptism the tiny seed is sown, and man in time becomes conscious of that life within him; is conscious of the throb of a strange life that is not his ownthat life which strives to live amid all the adverse powers that surround it. Watch, I say, man at length conscious of the presence of that Divine Life in his being. See, first of all, the human will, uncertain, unreliable, afraid of this life that has entered into the being of man. See the heart stirred by the presence of this gift of Divine Life, and yet shrinking from it. It is a consuming fire that will burn up all that is contrary to the Giver of that Life, God Himself. Watch, again, as the passions one by one rally their forces and determine at whatever cost to destroy this gift of Divine Life. Reason stands on one side, and rebels against the demands made by this gift of life. Such is the seed of Divine Life sown in the being of man, so small that it looks as if it must perish, that it must give way before the natural powers.

II. This life has been developed.It must be used, and so we kneel down and make our plans. We want to advance in the spiritual life. We cannot bear to stay exactly in the spot in which we find ourselves to-day. We make our plans for the future. We make good and true rules, and then, when the future comes, I dare say things do not work out exactly as we want them to. We are disappointed, we are cast down. We must wait for God to work in His own way. We must not hurry Him; we must leave all to Him. See, in the world of nature, the patient farmer casts the seed to the ground, he waits till the precious weeks are past; he may be disappointed, but he trusts. So surely we must trust God. We must trust Him as He has given this life to us, that it will increase more and more day by day.

III. What must I do with this great gift of life?Use it for the salvation of my own soul? Use it in the life that I live upon earth, wherever it is lived, to glorify God? Is that all? God forbid! Go forth with the power of it, and bring some hope and consolation to those who know it not. That surely is the work of those who realise that they have the gift of life: that they go forth and use it. And nothing, if they will, shall conquer it, because to limit its power would be to limit the power of God. When you are tempted to despair, or to grow lax, or to give up, listen to those words rolling over the centuries that have passed, I am come that they might have Life. And then, when perhaps the battle waxes sore, and you feel you must fall, you will never triumph, listen again, not only that they might have Life, but that they might have it more abundantly.

Rev. G. R. Wynn-Griffith.

Illustration

The service of Christ is the business of my life.

The will of Christ is the law of my life.

The presence of Christ is the joy of my life.

The glory of Christ is the crown of my life.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

A thief attempting to get possession of a flock not belonging to him, could have no good motive for his action. He would count on slaughtering the animals, either for food or material for clothing or for both. The true shepherd would love the flock and would be interested in its growth in numbers and increase in weight.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

These verses show us, for one thing, the great object for which Christ came into the world. He says, I am come that men “might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”

The truth contained in these words is of vast importance. They supply an antidote to many crude and unsound notions which are abroad in the world. Christ did not come to be only a teacher of new morality, or an example of holiness and self-denial, or a founder of new ceremonies, as some have vainly asserted. He left heaven, and dwelt for thirty-three years on earth for far higher ends than these. He came to procure eternal life for man, by the price of His own vicarious death. He came to be a mighty fountain of spiritual life for all mankind, to which sinners coming by faith might drink; and, drinking, might live for evermore. By Moses came laws, rules, ordinances, ceremonies. By Christ came grace, truth, and eternal life.

Important as this doctrine is, it requires to be fenced with one word of caution. We must not overstrain the meaning of our Lord Jesus Christ’s words. We must not suppose that eternal life was a thing entirely unknown until Christ came, or that the Old Testament saints were in utter darkness about the world to come. The way of life by faith in a Savior was a way well known to Abraham and Moses and David. A Redeemer and a Sacrifice was the hope of all God’s children from Abel down to John the Baptist; but their vision of these things was necessarily imperfect. They saw them afar off, and not distinctly. They saw them in outline only, and not completely. It was the coming of Christ which made all things plain, and caused the shadows to pass away. Life and immortality were brought into full light by the Gospel. In short, to use our Lord’s own words, even those who had life had it “more abundantly,” when Christ came into the world.

These verses show us, for another thing, one of the principal offices which Jesus Christ fills for true Christians. Twice over our Lord uses an expression which, to an Eastern hearer, would be singularly full of meaning. Twice over he says emphatically, “I am the Good Shepherd.” It is a saying rich in consolation and instruction.

Like a good shepherd, Christ knows all His believing people. Their names, their families, their dwelling-places, their circumstances, their private history, their experience, their trials,-with all these things Jesus is perfectly acquainted. There is not a thing about the least and lowest of them with which He is not familiar. The children of this world may not know Christians, and may count their lives folly: but the Good Shepherd knows them thoroughly, and, wonderful to say, though He knows them, does not despise them.

Like a Good Shepherd, Christ cares tenderly for all His believing people. He provides for all their wants in the wilderness of this world, and leads them by the right way to a city of habitation. He bears patiently with their many weaknesses and infirmities, and does not cast them off because they are wayward, erring, sick, footsore, or lame. He guards and protects them against all their enemies, as Jacob did the flock of Laban; and of those that the Father has given Him He will be found at last to have lost none.

Like a Good Shepherd, Christ lays down His life for the sheep. He did it once for all, when He was crucified for them. When He saw that nothing could deliver them from hell and the devil but His blood, He willingly made His soul an offering for their sins. The merit of that death He is now presenting before the Father’s throne. The sheep are saved for evermore, because the Good Shepherd died for them. This is indeed a love that passes knowledge! “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (Joh 15:13.)

Let us only take heed that this office of Christ is not set before us in vain. It will profit us nothing at the last day that Jesus was a Shepherd, if during our lifetime, we never heard His voice and followed Him. If we love life, let us join His flock without delay. Except we do this, we shall be found at the left hand in the day of judgment, and lost for evermore.

These verses show us, lastly, that when Christ died, He died of His own voluntary free will. He uses a remarkable expression to teach this: “I lay down my life that I might take it again. 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.”

The point before us is of no mean importance. We must never suppose for a moment that our Lord had no power to prevent His sufferings, and that He was delivered up to His enemies and crucified because He could not help it. Nothing could be further from the truth than such an idea. The treachery of Judas, the armed band of priests’ servants, the enmity of Scribes and Pharisees, the injustice of Pontius Pilate, the rude hands of Roman soldiers, the scourge, the nails, and the spear,-all these could not have harmed a hair of our Lord’s head, unless He had allowed them. Well might He say those remarkable words, “Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and He shall presently give Me more than twelve legions of angels? But how, then, shall the Scripture be fulfilled?” (Mat 26:53-54.)

The plain truth is, that our Lord submitted to death of His own free will, because He knew that His death was the only way of making atonement for man’s sins. He poured out His soul unto death with all the desire of His heart, because He had determined to pay our debt to God, and redeem us from hell. For the joy set before Him He willingly endured the cross, and laid down His life, in order that we, through His death, might have eternal life. His death was not the death of a martyr, who sinks at last overwhelmed by enemies, but the death of a triumphant conqueror, who knows that even in dying he wins for himself and his people a kingdom and a crown of glory.

Let us lean back our souls on these mighty truths, and be thankful. A willing Savior, a loving Savior, a Savior who came specially into the world to bring life to man, is just the Savior that we need. If we hear His voice, repent and believe, He is our own.

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Notes-

v10.-[The thief…destroy.] In this passage our Lord entirely drops the figure of “the door,” and presents Himself under a new aspect, as “the Shepherd.” And the first thing He does is to show the amazing difference between Himself and the false teachers who bore rule among the Jews. He had already told the Pharisees that they were no better than “thieves and robbers.” He now contrasts their objects with His own. A thief does not come to the fold to do good to the flock, but harm; for his own selfish advantage, and for the injury of the sheep. Just so the Pharisees only became teachers of the Jewish Church for their own advantage and interest, and taught doctrine which was only calculated to ruin and destroy souls.

A. Clarke observes, “How can worldly-minded hirelings, fox-hunting, card-playing priests, read these words without trembling to the center of their souls!”

Bickersteth suggests, that “the thief in the singular number may remind us of the prince of darkness, the great chief robber and thief of souls.”

[I am come…life…abundantly.] Our Lord here puts in strong contrast with the false teachers of the Jews, His own purpose and object in coming into the world. He drops the figure of “the door,” and says plainly and distinctly, stating it in the widest, broadest way, that as a personal Savior, He came that men might have life. The thief came to take life: He came to give it. He came that the way to eternal life might be laid open, the life of justification purchased by His blood, the life of sanctification provided by the grace of His Spirit. He came to buy this life by His sacrifice on the cross. He came to proclaim this life and offer it to a lost world. To bring life and hope to a lost, dead, perishing world, was the grand object of His incarnation. The ministry of the Pharisees was death, but that of Christ was life. The word “they” before “might have,” must be taken generally here for “men.” There is nothing else to which it can apply.

But this was not all. Our Lord came that men who had life already “might have it more abundantly:” that is that they might see the way of life more clearly, and have no uncertainty about the way of justification before God; and that they might feel the possession of life more sensibly, and have more conscious enjoyment of pardon, peace, and acceptance. This seems to me by far the simplest view of the text. Of course there were millions in the world who before Christ came knew nothing of life for their souls: to them Christ’s coming brought “life.”-But there were also many believing Jews who had life already when Christ came, and were walking in the steps of Abraham: to them Christ’s coming brought “life more abundantly.” It enlarged their vision and increased their comfort. So Paul tells Titus that “Christ’s appearing brought life and immortality to light.” (2Ti 1:10.)

Most commentators do not admit the comparative idea in “more abundantly,” but interpret it as simply meaning the abundance of grace and mercy which Christ brings into the world: as Rom 5:20-21. This is true, but I venture to think it is not all the truth.

Chemnitius, following Augustine, thinks that “more abundantly” may refer to the life of glory hereafter, which saints will have after the life of faith here. But I cannot see this.

v11.-[I am the Good Shepherd.] Here our Lord declares that He Himself is the great Head Shepherd of God’s people, of whom all ministers, even the best, are only faint imitators. It is as if He said, “I am towards all who believe in Me, what a good shepherd is to his sheep, careful, watchful, and loving.” The article in the Greek is twice used to increase the emphasis: “I am the Shepherd, the good or excellent One.” In the second verse of the chapter, before the word “Shepherd,” in the Greek, we may remember, there is no article at all. (Joh 10:2.)

It is probable that the name “shepherd,” in Jewish ears, would convey, much more clearly than it does in ours, a claim to be regarded as the Messiah or Shepherd of souls. (See Gen 49:24; Psa 23:1-6; Eze 34:1-31.)

[The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.] Our Lord here shows the distinguishing mark of a good shepherd. Such an one will lay down his life for his sheep, to save, protect, and defend them. He will die rather than lose one. He will peril his life, like David attacking the lion and the bear, rather than let one be taken from him. “All this,” our Lord implies, “I have come to do for my spiritual sheep. I have come to shed my life-blood to save their souls: to die that they may live.” The word “giveth” here should have been translated “layeth down.” It is so rendered in Joh 10:15.

Flacius observes how our Lord here, as elsewhere, always brings round His discourse to His own atoning death.

Hengstenberg observes, “This expression, ‘laying down the soul or life’ for anyone, does not occur anywhere else independently in the New Testament. It is never found in profane writers. It must be referred back to the Old Testament, and specially to Isa 53:10, where it is said of Messiah, ‘He shall make, or place, His soul an offering for sin.’ “

Tittman says, “Those who maintain that Christ died only to confirm the truth of His doctrine, or to confirm the certainty of the promises of pardon and acceptance with God, are under a mistake. The death of Christ was not necessary for either of those purposes. The truth of His doctrine and the certainty of His promises must be established by other evidence. Neither does our Lord say, that He laid down His life for His doctrines, but for His sheep.”

v12, v13.-[But he that is an hireling, etc.] Our Lord in these two verses illustrates the subject He has taken up, by showing the wide difference between a mere hired shepherd, and one who feels a special interest in his sheep, because they are his own. A mere hired servant, who has not spent his money in buying the sheep, but only takes charge of a flock for pay, and cares little so long as he gets his money, such an one, as a general rule, will make no sacrifice and run no risk for the sheep. If he sees a wolf coming he will not meet him and fight, but will run away, and leave the flock to be scattered and devoured. He acts in this way because his whole heart is not in his work. He feeds the flock for money and not for love,-for what he can get by it, and not because he really cares for the sheep. Of course the picture must be taken as generally true: we cannot suppose our Lord meant that no paid servant was trustworthy. Jacob was a hired shepherd, yet trustworthy. But doubtless His Jewish hearers knew many such “hirelings” as He here describes. The picture of a faithless shepherd in Eze 34:1-31 would also occur to those who were familiar with Old Testament Scripture.

It is worth remembering that Paul specially warns the Ephesian elders, in Act 20:29, that “grievous wolves” would enter in among them, not sparing the flock. Our Lord also in the Sermon on the Mount compares false prophets to “ravening wolves.” (Mat 7:15.)

Musculus observes how great a misfortune it is to Christ’s sheep when they are deserted by ministers, and left without regular means of grace. It has a scattering weakening effect. The best of ministers are poor weak creatures. But churches cannot keep together, as a rule, without pastors: the wolf scatters them. The ministry no doubt may be overvalued, but it may also be undervalued.

We cannot doubt that the latent thought of our Lord’s language here was as follows. The Pharisees and other false teachers were no better than hireling shepherds. They cared for nothing but themselves, and their own honor or profit. They cared nothing for souls. They were willing to have the name and profession of shepherds, but they had no heart in their work. They had neither will nor power to protect their hearers against any assault which that wolf, the devil, might make against them. Hence the Jews, when our Lord came on earth, were without help for their souls, fainting, and scattered like sheep without a shepherd, a prey to every device of the devil.

Let it be noted that the great secret of a useful and Christlike ministry is to love men’s souls. He that is a minister merely to get a living, or to have an honorable position, is “the hireling” of these verses. The true pastor’s first care is for his sheep. The false pastor’s first thought is for himself.

Our Lord’s strong language about the false teachers of the Jews ends here. Those who think that unsound ministers ought never to be exposed and held up to notice, and men ought never to be warned against them, would do well to study this passage. No class of character throughout our Lord’s ministry seems to call forth such severe denunciation as that of false pastors. The reason is obvious. Other men ruin themselves alone: false pastors ruin their flocks as well as themselves. To flatter all ordained men, and say they never should be called unsound and dangerous guides, is the surest way to injure the Church and offend Christ.

Chrysostom, Theophylact, and most commentators think that the “wolf” here means the devil, even as he is called elsewhere a roaring lion, a serpent, and a dragon.

Lampe, on the other hand, thinks that the wolf signifies the same as the thief and robber, and that it must mean the false prophet, the wolf in sheep’s clothing. (See Zep 3:3; Mat 7:15.)

In interpreting this whole passage we must be careful not to strain it too far. Our Lord did not mean that in no case is flight from danger lawful in a pastor. He Himself says elsewhere, “When they persecute you in one city, flee ye to another.” (Mat 10:23.) So Paul left Damascus by stealth to escape the Jews. (Act 9:25.)

Calvin remarks, “Ought we to reckon that man a hireling who for any reasons whatever shrinks from encountering the wolves? This was anciently debated as a practical question, when tyrants raged cruelly against the Church. Tertullian and others were, in my opinion, too rigid on this point. I prefer greatly the moderation of Augustine, who allows pastors to flee on certain conditions.”

No unbending rule can be laid down. Each case must be decided by circumstances. There are times when, like Paul or Jewell, a man may see it a duty to flee, and await better days; and times when, like Hooper, he may feel called to decline flight and to die with his sheep. Barnabas and Paul were specially commended to the Church at Antioch (Act 15:25), as those who had “hazarded their lives for the name of the Lord Jesus.” Paul tells the Ephesian elders, “I count not my life dear unto myself so that I may finish my course with joy.” (Act 20:24.) Again he says, “I am ready to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” (Act 21:13.)

v14.-[I am the Good Shepherd.] These words are repeated to show the importance of the office our Lord fills as the Good Shepherd, and to bring into stronger light the wide difference between Him and the Pharisees.

[And know my sheep, and am known of mine.] These words express the close and intimate union there is between Christ and all His believing people, an union understood fully by those alone who feel it, but to the world foolishness. Our Lord, like a good earthly shepherd, knows every one of His people,-knows them with a special knowledge of love and approval; knows where they dwell and all about them, their weaknesses, trials, and temptations, and knows exactly what each one needs from day to day. His people, on the other hand, know Him with the knowledge of faith and confidence, and feel in Him a loving trust of which an unbeliever can form no idea. They know Him as their own sure Friend and Savior, and rest on the knowledge. The devils know that Christ is a Savior. The sheep know and feel that He is their Savior.

The fullness of this verse would be far more plain to Jews accustomed to Oriental shepherds and their flocks, to the care of a good shepherd and the confidence of a flock, than it is to us in this Northern climate. At any rate it teaches indirectly the duty of every Christlike pastor to be personally acquainted with all his people, just as a good shepherd knows each one of his sheep.

Musculus points out the strong contrast between “I know my sheep,” and the solemn saying to the virgins, “I know you not,” and to the false professors, “I never knew you,” in Mat 25:7; Mat 7:23.

Besser remarks that “I am known of mine” is a sharp rebuke to those doubters who in voluntary humility refuse to be sure of their salvation.

v15.-[As the Father…me…I the Father.] I believe this sentence ought to be read in close connection with the last verse, and without any full stop between. There is nothing in the Greek against this view. The sense would then be, “I know my sheep and am known of mine, even as the Father knoweth Me and I know the Father.” The meaning will then be that the mutual knowledge of Christ and His sheep is like the mutual knowledge of the Father and the Son,-a knowledge so high, so deep, so intimate, so ineffable, that no words can fully convey it. The full nature of that knowledge which the First Person of the Trinity has of the Second and the Second has of the First, is something far beyond finite man’s understanding. It is in short a deep mystery. Yet the mutual knowledge and communion of Christ and believers is something so deep and wonderful that it can only be compared, though at a vast distance, to that which exists between the Father and the Son.

To understand this knowledge a little, we should read carefully the language used in Pro 8:22-30.

[And I lay down my life for the sheep.] Our Lord, to show how truly He is the Good Shepherd, declares that like a good shepherd He not only knows all His sheep, but lays down His life for them. By using the present tense, He seems to say, “I am doing it. I am just about to do it. I came into the world to do it.” This can only refer to His own atoning death on the cross: the great propitiation He was about to make by shedding His life-blood. It was the highest proof of love. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (Joh 15:13.)

Taken alone and by itself this sentence undoubtedly contains the doctrine of particular redemption. It declares that Christ “lays down His life for the sheep.” That He does so in a special sense I think none can deny. The “sheep” alone, or true believers, obtain any saving benefit from His death. But to argue from this text, that in no sense and in no way did Christ die for any beside His “sheep,” is to say what seems to me to contradict Scripture. The plain truth is that the extent of redemption is not the leading subject of this verse. Our Lord is saying what He does for His sheep: He loves them so that He dies for them. But it does not follow that we are to conclude that His death was not meant to influence and affect the position of all mankind. I venture to refer the reader to my own notes, in this commentary, on Joh 1:29; Joh 3:16; and Joh 6:32, for a full discussion of the subject.

Both here and in Joh 10:11, I do not think the Greek word translated “for” should be pressed too far, as if it necessarily implied the doctrine of substitution, or the vicariousness of Christ’s death. That doctrine is a blessed and glorious truth, and is taught plainly and unmistakably elsewhere. Here, however, we are reading parabolic figurative language, and I doubt whether it is quite fair to explain it as meaning more than “on account of,” or “in behalf of,” the sheep. Of course it comes to the same thing at last: if the Shepherd did not die, the sheep would die. But I do not quite think “vicariousness,” at any rate, is the primary idea of the sentence.

I fully agree with Parkhurst, at the same time, that the Greek expression for “dying for anyone,” in Rom 5:6-8, never has any signification other than that of “rescuing the life of another at the expense of our own.”

v16.-[And other sheep I have…fold.] In this sentence, our Lord declares plainly the approaching conversion of the Gentiles. The sheep He specially died for were not merely the few believing Jews, but the elect Gentiles also. They are the “other sheep:” “this fold” means the Jewish Church. It reads as though He would show the real measure and size of His flock. It was one much larger than the Jewish nation, of which the scribes and Pharisees were so proud.

Let it be noted here that our Lord uses the present tense. The heathen sheep were as yet heathen, and not brought in; yet He says, “I have them.” They were already given to Him in the eternal counsels, and foreknown from the beginning of the world. So it was with the Corinthians before their conversion: “I have much people in this city.” (Act 18:10.)

Augustine remarks: “They were yet without, among the Gentiles, predestinated, not yet gathered in. These He knew who had predestinated them: He knew who had come to redeem them with the shedding of His own blood. He saw them who did not yet see Him: He knew them who yet believed not in Him.”

[Them also…bring.] Our Lord here declares that it is necessary for Him, in order to fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testament, and to carry out the great purpose of His coming, to bring in and add to His flock other believers beside the Jewish sheep: “It is part of my work, office, and mission, to gather them out from the heathen by the preaching of my Apostles.”

The prediction here made was contrary to Jewish prejudices. The Jews thought they alone were God’s flock and favored people. Even the Apostles afterwards were slow to remember these words.

Hutcheson observes, “Christ Himself is chief in bringing in His elect, whatever instruments He employs; and He is at pains to seek them, and gain their consent, as being bound in the covenant of redemption to present all that are given Him blameless before the Father.” Saints are “the called of Jesus Christ.” (Rom 1:6.)

[They shall hear my voice.] This is a prophecy and a promise combined. It was a prophecy that the elect among the heathen, however unlikely it might appear, would hear Christ’s voice speaking to them in the Gospel preached; and hearing, would believe and obey.-It was a promise that would encourage His Apostles to preach to the heathen: “They will listen, and be converted, and follow Me.”-It is a saying that was wonderfully forgotten by the Apostles afterwards. They were backward to bring in the other sheep, after their Master left the world.-It is a sentence that should nerve and cheer the missionary. Christ has said it: “The sheep who are scattered among the heathen will hear.”

The text, “He that heareth you heareth Me” (Luk 10:16), is the Divine explanation of the expression, “hear my voice.”

[And there shall be one fold…shepherd.] This sentence contains one word which ought to have been differently translated. It ought to be, as Tyndale renders it, “one flock and one shepherd.” There is an evident difference. Christ’s universal Church is a mighty company, of which the members may be found in many different visible churches, or ecclesiastical “folds:” but it composes only one “flock.” There is only “one Holy Catholic Church,” which is the blessed company of all faithful people; but there are many various visible churches.

The sentence is true of all believers now. Though differing in various points, such as government or ceremonies, true believers are all sheep of one flock, and all look up to one Savior and Shepherd. It will be more completely fulfilled at Christ’s second coming. Then shall be exhibited to the world one glorious Church under one glorious Head. In the view of this promise unity with all true Christians should be sought and striven for by every true sheep.

Gualter remarks that there never has been, or can be, more than one Holy Catholic Church, and unless we belong to it we cannot be saved, and he warns us against the pernicious error that all men shall get to heaven if sincere, whether they belong to the Holy Catholic Church or not.

Chemnitius observes that we must be careful not to make this one Church either too narrow or too broad. We make it too narrow when, like the Jews and the Papists, we exclude any believer who does not belong to our particular fold. We make it too broad when we include every professing Christian, whether he hears Christ’s voice or not. It is a flock of “sheep.”

In every other place in the New Testament the word here wrongly translated “fold,” is rendered “flock.” (Mat 26:31; Luk 2:8; 1Co 9:7.) The word “fold” before us, is evidently an oversight of our translators.

v17.-[Therefore…my Father love me because, etc.] This is a deep and mysterious verse, like all verses which speak of the relation between the First and Second Persons of the Trinity. We must be content to admire and believe what we cannot fully understand. When, as in Joh 5:20, and here, our Lord speaks of “the Father loving the Son,” we must remember that He is using language borrowed from earthly affection, to express the mind of one Person of the Trinity towards another, and accordingly we must interpret it reverently.-Yet we may surely gather from this verse that our Lord’s coming into this world to lay down His life for the sheep by dying on the cross, and to take it again for their justification by rising again from the dead, was a transaction viewed with infinite complacency and approbation by God the Father.-“I am about to die, and after death to rise again. My so doing, however strange it may seem to you Pharisees, is the very thing which my Father in heaven approves, and for which He specially loves Me.” It is like the Father’s words, “In whom I am well pleased;” and Paul’s, “Wherefore God hath highly exalted Him” (Mat 3:17; Php 2:9), and Isaiah’s, “I will divide Him a portion with the great, because He hath poured out His soul unto death.” (Isa 53:12.)

Our Lord, by mentioning His resurrection, seems to remind His hearers that in one respect He was different from the best of shepherds. They might lay down their lives; but then there would be an end of them. He meant to lay down His life, but after that to take it again. He would not only die for His people, but also rise again.

Guyse thinks the true meaning is, “I cheerfully lay down my life for the expiation of my sheep’s offenses, in order that I may rise again for their justification.”

Let it be noted here, that there is no part of Christ’s work for His people that God the Father is said to regard with such special complacency as His dying for them. No wonder that ministers ought to make Christ crucified the principal subject of their teaching.

Gualter thinks these words were specially meant to prevent the offense of the ignominious death of Christ on the cross. That death, whatever the Jews might think, was part of Christ’s plan and commission, and one reason why the Father loved Him.

Brentius thinks that there is here a reference to the story of Abraham offering Isaac, when the words were used, “Because thou hast done this thing, and not withheld thy son, therefore blessing I will bless thee.” (Gen 22:16-18.)

Hengstenberg remarks that the Father’s love “was the very opposite of that wrath of God, of which the Jews regarded Christ’s death as a proof and sign.” They thought that God had forsaken Him, and given Him up to be crucified in displeasure, when in reality God was well pleased.

v18.-[No man taketh…of myself.] In this sentence our Lord teaches that His own death was entirely voluntary. An earthly shepherd may die for his flock, but against his own will. The great Shepherd of believers made His soul an offering for sin of His own free will. He was not obliged or compelled to do it by superior force. No one could have taken away His life had He not been willing to lay it down: but He laid it down “of Himself,” because He had covenanted to offer Himself as a propitiation for our sins. His own love to sinners, and not the power of the Jews or Pontius Pilate’s soldiers, was the cause of His death.

The word “I” is inserted emphatically in the Greek. “I myself” lay down my life “of myself.”

Henry observes, “Christ could, when He pleased, slip the knot of union between body and soul, and without any act of violence done to Himself, could disengage them from each other. Having voluntarily taken up a body, He could voluntarily lay it down again. This appeared when He cried with a loud voice and ‘gave up’ the ghost.”

[I have power…down…take it up.] Our Lord here amplifies His last statement, and magnifies His own Divine nature, by declaring that He has full power to lay down His life when He pleases, and to take it again when He pleases. This last point deserves special notice. Our Lord teaches that His resurrection, as well as His death, was in His own power. When our Lord rose again, He was not passive, and raised by the power of another only, but rose by His own Divine power. It is noteworthy that the resurrection of our Lord in some places is attributed to His Father’s act, as Act 2:24-32; once, at least, to the Holy Spirit, as 1Pe 3:18; and here, and in Joh 2:19, to Christ Himself. All leads to the same great conclusion,-that the resurrection of our Lord, as well as every part of His mediatorial work, was an act in which all three Persons of the Trinity concurred and co-operated.

Hutcheson observes that if Christ had power to take life again, when He pleased, “so He can put a period to the sufferings of His own when He pleaseth, without any help of their crooked ways.”

[This commandment…received…Father.] Chrysostom, and most other commentators, apply these words strictly to the great work which our Lord has just declared He had power to do: viz., to lay down His life and to take it again. “This is part of the commission I received from my Father on coming into the world, and one of the works He gave Me to do.”

No doubt this is good exposition and good divinity. Yet I am rather inclined to think that our Lord’s words refer to the whole doctrine which He had just been declaring to the Jews: viz., His office as a Shepherd, His being the true Shepherd, His laying down His life for the sheep, and taking it again, His having other sheep who were to be brought into the fold, His final purpose to exhibit to the world one flock and one Shepherd. Of all this truth, He says, “I received this doctrine in charge from my Father, to proclaim to the world, and I now declare it to you Pharisees.” I suspect that both here and elsewhere the word “commandment” has a wide, deep meaning, and points to that solemn and mysterious truth, the entire unity of the Father and the Son in the work of redemption, to which John frequently refers: “I am in the Father, and the Father in Me. The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself, but the Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works.” (Joh 14:10.) “The Father gave Me a commandment what I should speak.” (Joh 12:49.) Our Lord’s object in these often repeated expressions seems to be to keep the Jews in mind that He was not a mere human Prophet, but one who was God as well as man, and in whom, both speaking and working, the Father always dwelt.

When our Lord speaks of “receiving a commandment,” we must take care that we do not suppose the expression implies any inferiority of the Second Person of the Trinity to the First. We must reverently remember the everlasting covenant between Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for the salvation of man, and interpret “commandment” as meaning a part of the charge or commission with which the Second Person, Christ, was sent into the world, to carry out the purposes of the Eternal Trinity.

Fuente: Ryle’s Expository Thoughts on the Gospels

Joh 10:10. The thief cometh not but that he may steal, and kill, and destroy. This verse forms a link of connection between Joh 10:9 and Joh 10:11, presenting first the contrast between a true shepherd and the thief, and then preparing the way for the highest contrast of all, that between the thief and the Good Shepherd. The rightful Shepherd has entered (Joh 10:9) that He may lead out His flock to the pastures; the thief cometh only to steal and kill, feeding himself and not the flock, even seeking its destruction.

I came that they may have life, and that they may have abundance. To this point the figure contained in I am the door has been more or less clearly preserved, for the shepherd has, and the thief has not, entered the fold by the door. The language now before us does not really depart from this conception (for in opposition to those who came before Him professing to be the door of the sheep, Jesus here says I came), although it agrees still better with the thought of Joh 10:11. In fact the words I came stand in double contrast,with the words of Joh 10:8, and with the first words of this verse the thief cometh. By whatever figure Jesus is represented, the object of His appearing is the same, that His sheep may live. The life and abundance are the reality of which the pasturage (Joh 10:9) has been the symbol. As in chap. 7 the blessings of Messiahs kingdom are represented by abundant streams of living water, so here the regions into which Jesus is leading His flock are regions of life and of abundance. To His people He gives eternal life; there shall be no want to them for maintaining their life in all its freedom and joy; their cup runneth over.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

Ver. 10. From the idea of pasture Jesus deduces that of life; He even adds to this that of superabundance, of superfluity. By this He certainly does not designate, as Chrysostom thought, something more excellent than life, glory, for example; but He means to say that the spiritual pasturage will contain still more nourishment than that which the sheep can take to itself; comp. Joh 6:12-13, and the expressions: fulness, grace upon grace, Joh 1:16. Such is the happy condition of the Messianic flock; Jesus puts it in contrast with the terrible fate reserved for the mass of the people which remains under the leadership of the Pharisees. After having served for the satisfaction of their pride, ambition and cupidity, they will perish morally, and at last even externally by the effect of this pernicious guidance. It seems that the three verbs express a gradation: (steal), the monopoly of souls; (kill) the advantage taken of them and their moral murder; (destroy), the complete destruction which is to result from itall this as an antithesis to the salvation through the Messiah (Joh 10:9-10). To understand such severe expressions, we must recall to mind the measures of this haughty sect in Israel. The Pharisees disposed as masters of the Divine kingdom: they assumed the attitude of accredited intercessors, distributed the certificates of orthodoxy, and caused even the legitimate rulers to tremble (Joh 12:42; Mat 23:13-14, and in general the whole chapter, and Luk 11:39; Luk 11:44).

Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)

Impostors’ aims are ultimately selfish and destructive, but Jesus came to give life, not take it.

"The world still seeks its humanistic, political saviours-its Hitlers, its Stalins, its Maos, its Pol Pots-and only too late does it learn that they blatantly confiscate personal property (they come ’only to steal’), ruthlessly trample human life under foot (they come ’only . . . to kill’), and contemptuously savage all that is valuable (they come ’only . . . to destroy’)." [Note: Carson, The Gospel . . ., p. 385.]

Jesus on the other hand not only came to bring spiritual life to people, but He came to bring the best quality of life to them. The eternal life that Jesus imparts is not just long, but it is also rich. He did not just come to gain sheep but to enable His sheep to flourish and to enjoy contentment and every other legitimately good thing possible.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

Disfruta de miles de canciones cristianas en exclusiva sólo en Bibles