Church Fathers Commentary John 10:1-5

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. When he hath put forth all his own, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice. And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers." — John 10:1-5 (ASV)

St. John Chrysostom: After our Lord reproached the Jews for their blindness, they might have said, “We are not blind; we avoid you as a deceiver.” Our Lord, therefore, gives the marks that distinguish a robber and deceiver from a true shepherd. First are the marks of the deceiver and robber: Truly, truly, I say to you, the one who does not enter by the door into the sheepfold, but climbs up some other way, is a thief and a robber.

There is an allusion here to the Antichrist and to certain false Christs who had come and were yet to come. He calls the Scriptures the door. They admit us to the knowledge of God, they protect the sheep, they shut out the wolves, and they bar the entrance to heretics. The one who does not use the Scriptures but “climbs up some other way”—that is, a self-chosen and unlawful way—is a thief. He says “climbs up,” not “enters,” as if describing a thief getting over a wall and running every risk. “Some other way” may also refer to the commandments and traditions of men that the Scribes taught while neglecting the Law.

When our Lord later calls Himself the Door, we should not be surprised. According to the office He bears, He is in one place the Shepherd and in another the Sheep. Because He introduces us to the Father, He is the Door; because He takes care of us, He is the Shepherd.

St. Augustine of Hippo: Or, to put it another way: many people go by the name of good men according to the world’s standard and observe the commandments of the Law to some degree, yet they are not Christians. These people generally boast of themselves, as the Pharisees did: “Are we blind also?” But since they do everything foolishly, without knowing the purpose to which it tends, our Lord said of them, Truly, truly, I say to you, the one who does not enter by the door into the sheepfold, but climbs up some other way, is a thief and a robber.

Let the Pagans, the Jews, and the Heretics say, “We lead a good life.” If they do not enter by the door, what good is it? A good life is profitable only if it leads to eternal life. Indeed, those cannot be said to lead a good life who are either blindly ignorant of, or willfully despise, the very purpose of good living. No one can hope for eternal life who does not know Christ, who is the life, and who does not enter the fold by that door.

Whoever wishes to enter into the sheepfold, let him enter by the door. Let him preach Christ; let him seek Christ’s glory, not his own. Christ is a lowly door, and he who enters by this door must be lowly if he wishes to enter with his head intact. The one who does not humble himself but exalts himself, who wishes to climb up over the wall, is lifted up only to fall. Such men generally try to persuade others that they can live well without being Christians. In this way, they climb up by some other way, so that they may rob and kill. They are thieves because they claim what is not theirs as their own; they are robbers because they kill what they have stolen.

St. John Chrysostom: You have seen His description of a robber; now see that of the Shepherd: But the one who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.

St. Augustine of Hippo: He who enters by the door is the one who enters by Christ, who imitates Christ’s suffering, and who is acquainted with Christ’s humility, so that he feels and knows that if God became a man for us, a man should not think himself to be God, but only a man. The one who, being a man, wishes to appear as God does not imitate Him who, being God, became a man. You are not told to think of yourself as less than you are, but simply to know what you are.

St. John Chrysostom: The porter is perhaps Moses, for to him the oracles of God were committed.

Theophylact of Ohrid: Or, the Holy Spirit is the porter, by whom the Scriptures are unlocked to reveal the truth to us.

St. Augustine of Hippo: Or, the porter is our Lord Himself, since there is much less difference between a door and a porter than between a door and a shepherd. And He has called Himself both the Door and the Shepherd, so why not the Door and the Porter? He opens Himself—that is, He reveals Himself. If you seek another person for the porter, consider the Holy Spirit, of whom our Lord said later, He will guide you into all truth. The door is Christ, the Truth. Who opens the door but the One who will guide you into all Truth? Whoever you understand this to be, be careful not to consider the porter greater than the door, for in our houses, the porter holds a higher rank than the door, not the other way around.

St. John Chrysostom: Since they had called Him a deceiver and appealed to their own unbelief as proof (Which of the rulers believes in Him?), He shows here that it was because they refused to hear Him that they were excluded from His flock. The sheep hear His voice. The Shepherd enters by the lawful door, and those who follow Him are His sheep. Those who do not, voluntarily exclude themselves from His flock.

St. Augustine of Hippo: He knew the names of the predestinated, as He said to His disciples, Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.

St. John Chrysostom: He led out the sheep when He sent them not away from the wolves, but into their very midst. There seems to be a subtle allusion to the blind man. He called him out from the midst of the Jews, and he heard His voice.

St. Augustine of Hippo: And who is He who leads them out, but the same One who loosens the chains of their sins, so that they may follow Him with free, unfettered steps?

Glossa Ordinaria: And when He brings out His own sheep, He goes before them. He leads them out from the darkness of ignorance into light, just as He went before them in the pillar of cloud and fire.

St. John Chrysostom: Shepherds always go behind their sheep, but He, on the contrary, goes before them to show that He would lead all people to the truth.

St. Augustine of Hippo: And who is this that goes before the sheep, but He who, being raised from the dead, dies no more, and who said, Father, I will also that they, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am?

St. John Chrysostom: The strangers are Theudas, Judas, and the false apostles who came after Christ. So that He might not appear to be one of them, He gives many marks that distinguish Him from them. First, Christ brought people to Himself by teaching them from the Scriptures; they drew people away from the Scriptures. Second, the obedience of the sheep; for people believed in Him not only during His life but also after His death, whereas their followers vanished as soon as they were gone.

Theophylact of Ohrid: He alludes to the Antichrist, who will deceive for a time but will lose all his followers when he dies.

St. Augustine of Hippo: But here is a difficulty. Sometimes those who are not sheep hear Christ’s voice; for Judas, who was a wolf, heard it. And sometimes the sheep do not hear Him; for those who crucified Christ did not hear, yet some of them were His sheep. You might say that while they did not hear, they were not sheep, and that the voice, when they heard it, changed them from wolves into sheep. Still, I am disturbed by the Lord’s rebuke to the shepherds in Ezekiel: Neither have you brought again that which was driven away. He calls it a stray sheep, but a sheep all the while, even though, if it strayed, it must have heard the voice of a stranger and not the Shepherd.

What I am saying, then, is this: The Lord knows those who are His. He knows the foreknown; He knows the predestinated. They are the sheep. For a time they do not know themselves, but the Shepherd knows them, for many sheep are outside the fold, and many wolves are inside. He is speaking, then, of the predestinated.

And now the difficulty is solved. The sheep, and only the sheep, do hear the Shepherd’s voice. When is that? It is when that voice says, The one who endures to the end will be saved. His own people hear this word; the stranger does not.