In chapter 10 of the Book of John, Jesus criticizes the Jewish leaders for failing to give Israel proper spiritual guidance. By contrast, Jesus is the good shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep. Chapter 10 provides a commentary on chapter 9, which revealed the Jewish leadership’s legal pettiness, rigidity, and hardness toward God. Not only is Jesus the good shepherd, He is also the door through which believers find abundant, eternal life. The following interchange in this chapter, culminated in another attempt to stone Jesus for blasphemy.
Our next two “I Am” statements are both found in this chapter. The first is found in verses 7 and 9; I am the door (or gate in some versions), which is His third “I Am” statement. The week we will look at verses John 10:7–10.
7 Then Jesus said to the again, “Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door for the sheep. 8 All who ever came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. 9 I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. 10 The thief does not come except to steal, and kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
Verse 7 begins just like verse 1, but before Jesus actually identified himself as the Good Shepherd, he described his activity at the sheep gate. We know from Luke 15 that a shepherd counts his sheep and from Psalm 23 how carefully he takes care of them. First-century listeners would have been certain to link this teaching with that familiar psalm. Jesus was not just explaining the first paragraph of this chapter, but actually expanding it in these verses.
In verse 8 we do need to be careful of this verse with the words before Me. Jesus is not criticizing Moses or the prophets before him or even John the Baptist. But the religious leaders who listened to Jesus’ parables (notably the Pharisees) seem to be the direct target along with false messiahs who tried to entice the sheep.
In addition to guarding the sheep, the Good shepherd provides for them; unlike thieves who steal and kill and destroy. Throwing aside the metaphor to reveal spiritual truth, Jesus told the sheep that he had come to give live so they might live it to the full. False shepherd intends to injure the sheep, but that is never the behavior of the true shepherd.
We need to watch carefully the flow between metaphor and spiritual reality here. In verse 9 Jesus is clearly talking about peoples as spiritual sheep, while verse 10 falls back into the metaphor at the beginning and then talk about spiritual life.