I am the good shepherd; and I know those that are mine, and am known of those that are mine,
Jesus has just described a hired man who runs when the wolf comes. Now He says what sets Him apart: the Shepherd and His sheep know each other — but how deep does that knowing go, and what does it cost Him?
One commentator explains that the hired man is not a criminal. His wages decide how he acts, and that is where the Shepherd stands apart.
The hireling is not necessarily evil like the thief; but being a man who works for wages, his interest is primarily a monetary one. The sheep are of interest to him only so far as they are the means of his livelihood. He does not really care for them enough to risk his skin on their behalf. It is far otherwise with the Shepherd, who lays down His life for them and establishes a link of wonderful intimacy.
Notice which half of the verse the Lord puts first. One writer shows how kind that order is for anyone who doubts their own grasp of Christ.
As for the sheep, they hear His voice, and follow Him. Then, speaking of Himself, He declares, "I know them." Of the sheep's knowledge of Him He here makes no mention. His knowledge of them He makes prominent. How gracious was this! Many a person might question his or her knowledge of Christ. Did they know Him rightly? Did they know Him as they ought? And then write bitter things against themselves. Now here He gives no room for such morbid thoughts. The question for them is a very different one. Do they hear His voice? Do they follow Him?
That knowledge takes in everything a sheep could worry about in itself.
He knows His sheep with a perfect knowledge. Their weakness, their ignorance, their tendency to wander, their many needs — He knows them all. And knowing them, He loves them with a love that led Him to lay down His life for the sheep.
He has already given His life for the flock. What more could He add? One writer finds the answer in the second half of the verse.
It might be said, if He has given His life for them, He can do nothing more. But no! it is not so with Him. See verse 14, "I know my own and my own know me." There is not only caring for the flock as a whole, but for the individual sheep.
One writer insists the sentence does not stop at the end of verse 14. What follows gives the measure of this knowing.
The 14th and 15th verses really form one sentence. They are not divided as we have them in our Bibles. The meaning is that He showed Himself as the good Shepherd because He knew the sheep, and they knew Him, just as He knew the Father and the Father knew Him. The knowledge that the Father and the Son have of each other is the pattern for the knowledge between the Shepherd and the sheep.
Another writer weighs that closeness against what the Jewish people knew before.
The Lord Jesus Christ wants to give us an idea of the intimacy that will exist between Himself, the Good Shepherd, and the sheep. To do it, He has to tell us of the intimacy that exists between the Father and the Son. This is far better than visiting terms: these are at home terms… What a contrast to Judaism, where there was distance.
The sheep know Him too, and one writer says this goes well past knowing a voice.
This is the highest blessing the sheep are capable of. It means entering into His own thoughts, ways, and desires — yes, the knowledge of Himself. This is how He brings us into communion with Him. We may know His voice, and be following Him, and yet have little acquaintance with His character.
Even the weakest believer can rest on the Shepherd's side of this knowing.
The feeblest believer finds no difficulty when the Son of God says, "I know my own"… We are sure that He knows us. He knows all things and all men. Deep inside, we know that He knows and loves His own… Not one of His sheep ever escapes the watchfulness of His eyes! Not one is ever forgotten for one moment by His loving heart!
- Cost. The hired man values the sheep for his wages. The Shepherd values them enough to die, and that death opens the way into this closeness.
- His knowing first. He speaks of His knowledge of the sheep before theirs of Him. That comforts anyone unsure how well they know Christ. His test is simple: do they hear His voice and follow?
- Each one. His care is not only for the flock as a whole but for the single sheep, weakness, wandering and all.
- The pattern. Verse 15 gives the measure: Shepherd and sheep know each other as the Father and the Son do. These are at home terms, not distance.
- The reach. Knowing His voice is the start. Knowing Him is the highest blessing a sheep can reach. And no sheep slips out of His sight along the way.
as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.
Here Jesus compares His knowledge of His own sheep to the knowledge the Father and the Son have of each other. Two questions follow: what kind of knowing does He promise ordinary people, and why does a claim about knowing end in dying?
Verses 14 and 15 belong together as a single thought, and older translations broke the link with a full stop. One writer traces the damage that punctuation did:
This mutual knowledge almost entirely disappears in the Authorised Version because of the unhappy full stop between verses 14 and 15, and the mistranslation of the earlier clause of verse 15 that follows from it.
Read as one sentence, the comparison sets the standard for the whole relationship.
Verses 14 and 15 really form one sentence. They are not divided as we have them in our Bibles. The meaning is that He showed Himself to be the good Shepherd because He knew the sheep and they knew Him, just as He knew the Father and the Father knew Him. The mutual knowledge between the Father and the Son is the pattern of the knowledge between the Shepherd and the sheep.
Can the sheep really know Christ the way the Father and the Son know each other? One writer answers by separating the measure from the character.
Of course this does not state the measure of the intimacy between the sheep and the Shepherd. They could never reach the same measure that exists between the Father and the Son. Still, it is true that the same character of intimacy is theirs with Him... By God's Word and Spirit, His grace and power and love have produced in the sheep a nature fitted by God for this wonderful privilege.
The comparison also tells us what kind of knowledge the sheep have.
From this comparison we can be sure that the knowledge of Christ's sheep here is neither uncertain nor unclear. It is the knowledge of a Person, not knowledge about Him. Knowledge about the Lord does grow over time. But knowing Him is what marks the very youngest lamb of the flock, as one who is not of the world, which does not know Him.
Another writer shows what this knowing brings, and what a believer may still lack.
This is the highest blessing the sheep are capable of, for it means entering into His own thoughts, ways and desires — yes, the knowledge of Himself. This is how we are brought into communion with Him. We may know His voice, and be following Him, and yet not be well acquainted with His character.
Jesus states the intimacy here without explaining the means. One writer looks to the letters of the New Testament for the answer.
From what the letters make clear, I can tell you how it can exist. It exists through the gift of the Holy Spirit, by the indwelling Spirit... The Lord is saying, "I am going to start something that far outshines anything known before I came. I am going to bring My sheep into this wonderful position where they may have intimate knowledge and communion with Me."
The verse ends with the Shepherd giving His life. One writer weighs the words closely:
"Lays down His life," or soul (compare Isaiah 53:10). The word for "life" here is quite different from the one in verse 10 (life in contrast with death). The following "for," as Meyer says, shows substitution, not just benefit.
Another writer sets the Shepherd beside the hired man:
The hired man cares only for his wages. The sheep are not his own, and he takes no personal interest in them... By contrast, between the Good Shepherd and His own there is a bond of the most tender intimacy... His sheep know Him, for they have received His life and nature, and in this way have been brought into communion.
Later in the chapter Jesus gives a second reason for the same act. One writer marks the difference:
He adds, "For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life." Here He does not say "for the sheep." He says simply "that I may take it up again." So besides laying down His life for the sheep, He laid it down to prove His perfect confidence in His Father... It was the most complete, absolute giving up of Himself.
- Pattern — Verses 14 and 15 are one sentence. The Father and the Son know each other, and that is the model for the Shepherd and His sheep.
- Measure — The sheep never reach that measure of knowledge, but the same character of it is theirs.
- Person — This is knowing Him, not knowing facts about Him. It is not vague, and even the youngest believer has it.
- Means — One writer points to the indwelling Spirit, who gives the sheep this nearness, unknown before Christ came.
- Proof — Love proves itself in death: the hired man cares only for his pay, the Shepherd gives His life in the place of His own.
And I have other sheep which are not of this fold those also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one flock, one shepherd.
The Good Shepherd is speaking to Jewish hearers, inside their own enclosure, about sheep He already owns outside it. The verse raises three questions: what is the "fold," who are these other sheep, and why does He say He must bring them?
The word "fold" pictures a walled enclosure. Commentators identify it with the religious system Israel lived under. They also link the reach of Christ's love to the death He has just mentioned.
Here the Lord can speak clearly for the first time of other objects of His love. He might come as minister of the circumcision for the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matthew 15:24). But His love could not be so limited, when His death opens the floodgates. The mention of His death leads Him to speak of what was quite outside Israel. "And I have other sheep that are not of this fold" — not the Jewish people, inside their enclosure of law and ordinance.
A reference work sums up what happened to that enclosure afterwards:
This was the system of Jewish ordinances that God appointed. It formed the enclosure the Lord entered by the door, to find His own sheep and lead them out. Gentile believers were added to them. They became one flock (not "one fold") with one Shepherd, the Lord Himself... There is no longer a fold on earth for those that are Christ's. They are formed into the church — the one flock.
Notice the tense. He does not say I will have other sheep. He says He has them already.
I would not say a sheep is a sheep from all eternity, because the person did not exist. But I hold clearly that he was a sheep before he was converted. Christ says, "I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also"; and, "My sheep hear my voice."
The word "must" carries an obligation. Where does it come from? And why does the verb change from leading out to bringing?
"I must bring them also" — it was an obligation on Him from His Father, and what was due from His own love. "Bring," not "lead out," as before with the Jewish sheep.
Another writer asks what that word means for us:
The Lord refers to us — "must bring." Don't you delight in that word must? It is a strong word of power, but it is a strong word of divine affection too. "Bring" them from where? From wherever their hiding-places are. "I must bring them out," and He has "brought us to God."
What holds these sheep together is not a wall. It is a voice they know. And that hearing rests on His death.
His own voice was heard in the deepest part of the soul, in Gentile as well as Jew. That formed a precious link between each sheep and Christ Himself. So His flock was made up, with all the blessing He had been opening out for those who entered in by Christ as the door. It rests, as all blessing does, on His laying down His life for the sheep.
So who were these other sheep, and what held them together?
God was going to call out a chosen number from among the Gentiles. We see the start of it early in Acts — the Ethiopian in Acts 8, Cornelius and his friends in Acts 10. Sheep held together by outward restrictions: that was Judaism. Sheep made a flock by the Shepherd's own power and attraction: that is Christianity.
Older English versions read "one fold" here. The ESV reads "one flock." Writers say the change of word matters.
The translators probably thought a fold was absolutely necessary for sheep. So they rendered John 10:16 "one fold, one Shepherd." It is now well known to be "one flock, one Shepherd." The two ideas are quite different. The first makes the Shepherd not enough for the flock. The second states that He is enough by Himself.
So who belongs to this one flock?
There is one flock as there is one Shepherd; one body, as there is one Lord. All who have heard His voice, believed on Him, and entered in by Him are members of the one flock.
- One death. His life laid down opens the subject. His love could not stay inside Israel once the cross was in view.
- One claim. "I have other sheep" — they were His before they were converted, before they had heard anything.
- One must. The word carries obligation from the Father and the pull of His own love. He brings them from their hiding places all the way to God.
- One voice. Hearing His voice links Gentile and Jew to Him — drawn by a Shepherd, not fenced in by a wall.
- One flock. Not "one fold." To rebuild an enclosure is to say the Shepherd is not enough. The verse says He is.
On this account the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it again.
The Good Shepherd has just spoken of dying for the sheep. Now He lifts the curtain higher. His death is not only for us; it draws out the Father's love toward Him. Two questions press: how can the Father love the Son because of something, when that love has no beginning? And why does the Son speak of laying His life down only to take it up again?
The Father's love for the Son did not begin at Calvary. Yet here the Son gives a reason for that love.
Here the Lord leaves behind the figures of shepherd and door. We stand, as it were, on holy ground. There, in the relations the divine Persons have with one another, we may even learn the manner of the love in which they exist eternally... And yet He was the object of the Father's love before the foundation of the world. Like the glory He had with Him before the world was, the love also was eternal.
At Calvary that love found a new occasion.
The Father always loved His Son: He lived in His bosom. When, however, that well-loved Son laid down His life at Calvary, His love went out to Him in a new way. It gave the Father a fresh motive to love Him.
The wonder is not only the motive, but who could give it.
In this act of devotedness, the gift of His life, the point is not only the feelings of the sheep, but of the Father. Jesus could give a motive to the Father that He should love Him: it is only a divine Person who could do this. The Father takes pleasure in the faithfulness of His children. But something more was a motive for the Father's affection: to lay down His life, to give Himself even to death, and to take His life again in resurrection, restoring the Father's glory that sin and death had tarnished. To give Himself in this way was His own act, an act of voluntary devotedness; but, having become Man and Servant, it was still an act according to His Father's will.
Earlier in this chapter the Shepherd gives His life for the sheep. Here He leaves that phrase out.
The Lord does not add here "for the sheep," nor should we limit His death to ourselves. He lets us see the value His own laying down of His life had in itself. No wonder, if only for the depth beyond measuring to which His own devotedness went down. But no one except the Father knows what He found in it: love, confidence in Him, self-surrender, and moral excellence in every way. It was crowned by the personal dignity of the One who stood in a nearness to the Father beyond words, and who was pleased to die.
The words "that I may take it up again" are not an afterthought. Resurrection belongs to the very act the Father loves, and it is the Son's own act.
The Father loves Him not only for laying down His life, but for laying it down that He might take it again. In this last clause we have resurrection. Death was His own act and so also resurrection. This does not contradict or clash with the part both the Father and the Spirit had in His glorious resurrection (Rom. 6:4; 1 Peter 3:18).
What He takes back is not a discarded garment. It is manhood kept forever.
What follows that? Does He simply go back as He came, finished with His humanity, having no more use for it, because the work is done? No! The life He laid down He takes up again. In another way, of course — in the way of glory — but He still takes it up. He takes up the human life, to live as a Man among the men gathered around Him forever and forever. Oh, think of the Father's love delighting in Him just because He does that!
One writer explains which life He laid down, and what changed when He took it again.
The laying down of this life refers to His condition as a man in subjection and responsibility. In resurrection He takes it again, but without the responsible condition He took on so that He could die. He is a divine Person, equal with the Father and the Spirit in Deity, and that life He could never give up. But He had come into a life of responsibility, and He laid down His life as One who is God when He gave up His life of responsible manhood in dying on the cross.
- Eternal — The Father's love for the Son had no beginning; it is as old as the glory He had before the world was.
- Fresh — The cross did not create that love. It gave it a new occasion: the Father's love went out to Him in a way it never had before.
- Unique — Only a divine Person could give the Father a motive to love. The Father delights in His children's faithfulness, but this went beyond it.
- Unlimited — Here He leaves out "for the sheep." The worth of what He gave is not measured by what we gained from it.
- Forever — He laid His life down to take it up again. The Man the Father delights in is a Man still, in glory, among His own forever.