John 10:2Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

He rightly called Scripture the door. It leads us to God and opens the way of the knowledge of God. It produces the sheep, protects them, and does not allow wolves to enter.

Like some secure door, it bars entrance to heretics. It sets us in safety from everything and does not allow us to fall into error.

If we ourselves do not open this door, we shall be inaccessible to enemies.

By it we recognize everyone, both shepherds and those who are not shepherds.

What does "into the fold" mean? It means to the sheep and to care for them.

Whoever does not use Scripture, but climbs up another way, does not go by the appointed path. He makes another path for himself. Such a man is a thief.

Do you see from this too that He agrees with the Father, because He brings Scripture into view?

Therefore He also said to the Jews, "Search the Scriptures" (Jn 5:39). He brought forward Moses and called him a witness, and likewise all the Prophets.

"All who have heard the Prophets," He said, "will come to Me" (Jn 6:45). And again: "If you believed Moses, you would believe Me" (Jn 5:46).

Here also He has said the same thing, only in a figure.

By the words, "climbs up another way," He was also pointing to the scribes. They taught commandments and traditions of men, but violated the law.

He rebuked them for this, saying: "None of you keeps the law" (Jn 7:19).

He rightly said, "climbs up," and not "enters." This is what a thief usually does when he wishes to get inside the enclosure, doing everything with risk.

Do you see how He has portrayed the robber? Notice also the marks of the shepherd. What are they?

Notice the marks of the robber. First, he does not enter openly. Second, he does not enter according to the Scriptures. This is what "not by the door" means.

Here Christ points both to those who were before Him and to those who will appear after Him, to Antichrist and to false christs, to Judas and Theudas, and to others like them.

He rightly called Scripture the door. It leads us to God and opens the way of the knowledge of God. It produces the sheep, protects them, and does not allow wolves to enter.

Like some secure door, it bars entrance to heretics. It sets us in safety from everything and does not allow us to fall into error.

If we ourselves do not open this door, we shall be inaccessible to enemies.

By it we recognize everyone, both shepherds and those who are not shepherds.

What does "into the fold" mean? It means to the sheep and to care for them.

Whoever does not use Scripture, but climbs up another way, does not go by the appointed path. He makes another path for himself. Such a man is a thief.

As for the fact that later He calls Himself the door, this again should not trouble us.

He calls Himself both shepherd and sheep, indicating different aspects of His ministry. When He brings us to the Father, He calls Himself the door. When He expresses His care for us, He calls Himself shepherd.

Because He sees the inward parts and the hearts, He also gave answers to thoughts alone. For "all things are naked and open to Him, and there is no creature hidden before Him" (Heb 4:13).

Therefore He also says to one of the saints: "Who is this who hides counsel from Me, who keeps words in his heart and thinks to hide them from Me?" (Job 38:2).

Now, as we have just said, the impious gathering of the Pharisees asked whether they also were blind.

They did this so that, if He spoke the truth and said that they too were blind, they could again condemn Him for insulting the leaders and reviling those who had received authority over the people.

For they were excessively high-minded about this.

Therefore our Lord Jesus Christ, again repelling this plot of theirs, considers it necessary and profitable to introduce this parable.

In a somewhat veiled and enigmatic way, He indicates that because of their greed they cannot be firm leaders. This dignity cannot be secure among those who, by arrogance, insult God, the giver of this dignity.

On the contrary, He teaches that this should belong only to those whom He Himself calls to guide the people.

Therefore He calls Himself the door, since by His own will He appoints experienced and God-loving men to guide rational flocks.

He calls the one who comes from elsewhere a thief and robber. This is the man who thinks that an honor not given to him can be obtained by violence and tyranny.

Such were those of whom He says through one of the prophets: "They reigned, but not through Me. They ruled, but not through My Spirit" (Hos 8:4; Is 30:1).

In these words He veils the indication that, although it pleases them to lord it over the people, only those who have believed and received the divine preaching through Him should seek this.

Thus they may have authority unshaken and well established. This belonged to the holy Apostles and to the teachers of the holy churches who followed them.

To them also "the doorkeeper opens." This means either the angel appointed to watch over the churches and to assist the sacred ministers for the benefit of the peoples, or again the Savior Himself.

For He is Himself both the door and the Lord of the door.

Quite rightly He commands the flock of sheep to listen and submit properly to the voice of the shepherd. Conversely, they are to turn away with all diligence from "the voice of strangers."

You should understand the true state of the matter by taking the saying in its general sense.

For we teach in the churches by presenting the doctrines of Sacred Scripture. As a kind of spiritual food, we set forth the evangelical and apostolic word.

Those who heed such teaching are the believers in Christ and those distinguished by uncorrupted faith. They reject the voices of false shepherds and turn away from them as from a destructive evil.

But what, someone will ask, is being indicated from this to the Pharisees?

I shall repeat the matter again, generally and briefly. He shows Himself to be the master of the fold, the door, and the doorkeeper.

Thus they may know exactly that they will not have firm and stable authority unless they come to it through Him and receive the God-given good.

By adding that the sheep listen to their own shepherds and flee from strangers, He again nobly hints that they will by no means stand at the head of those who will believe in Him.

On the contrary, the sheep will flee from their teaching and follow the shepherds appointed by Him.

If you seek another person as the doorkeeper, the Holy Spirit may be found.

The Lord Himself says to His disciples concerning the Holy Spirit, "He will teach you all truth" (Jn 16:13).

What is the door? Christ. What is Christ? The Truth.

Who opens the door, if not the One who teaches all truth?

On verses 2-5: "But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper opens" (Jn 10:2-3).

We shall ask about this doorkeeper when we learn from the Lord Himself what the door is and who the shepherd is.

"And the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name" (Jn 10:3).

For He has their names written in the book of life. He calls His own sheep by name.

Therefore the Apostle also says, "The Lord knows those who are His" (2 Tim 2:19).

"And he leads them out. When he has brought out his own sheep, he goes before them. The sheep follow him, for they know his voice.

They will not follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers" (Jn 10:3-5).

All this is full of riddles. It raises questions and is filled with hidden intimations.

Let us therefore follow further and listen to the Teacher, who discloses something in these obscure matters and makes us enter within through what He discloses.

He comes only to steal, kill, and destroy (v. 10).

By contrast, the shepherd first enters by the door. Second, the doorkeeper opens to him.

Third, the sheep hear his voice. Fourth, he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

Fifth, when he has brought out his own sheep, he goes before them. The sheep follow him because they know His voice (vv. 2-4).

Under the image of robbers who climb over the fold's enclosure and kill the sheep, the Savior portrayed all who came before Him into the sheepfold, as He Himself declared.

For gathering sheep at night, enclosures are sometimes built there, often open above.

Into these enclosures not one flock only, but several flocks, are often driven.

The shepherd knew the sheep of his flock very well. Almost every one had from him a special nickname, according to its appearance or temperament.

So also the sheep recognized their shepherd very well by sight and voice, and willingly followed only him.

When a thief came, he naturally had to climb over the fence, because one of the shepherds, the doorkeeper, remained at the door.

In eastern countries flocks of sheep were driven at night into caves or specially made folds for protection from thieves and wolves.

Often flocks belonging to different owners were driven into one fold.

In the morning the gatekeepers opened the doors of the fold for the shepherds. The shepherds entered, separated their own flocks from the others, called their sheep by name, and went out to the pastures.

The sheep recognized their own shepherds by voice and appearance, obeyed them, and went out after them.

But thieves and robbers did not dare to enter the guarded doors of the fold. They secretly climbed over the enclosure.

All this was very well known to the Pharisees.

Taking such a familiar example, Christ says: "He who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up some other way, is a thief and a robber.

But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice.

He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out his own sheep, he goes before them.

The sheep follow him, for they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers."

This comparison of their despotism with His lawful mission became the occasion for the majestic discourse about the good shepherd.

In the East, as in remote mountainous districts of every other country, the relationship between a shepherd and his flock is entirely unlike the mechanical and soulless relationship observed elsewhere.

The solitude of pastoral life in these countries brings man and the animals he shepherds very close together.

It binds them to one another by a feeling of companionship, in which they share both dangers and pleasures.

Therefore the eastern shepherd often forgets the difference between himself and his flock, and becomes the friend of his sheep.

This feeling is not limited to his side alone. The sheep themselves become as accustomed and attached to their shepherd as he is to them.

They become his silent friends, sharing together the quiet and the same majesty of the mountains or the desert.

We learn to love what we often undergo danger for.

Therefore the various dangers from robbers, wolves, and the like make dear to the shepherd the flock with which he must live.

Thus, in a pastoral country such as Palestine, nothing could be more moving than the picture of tenderness and mutual care from shepherd life which Christ set forth in His discourse on the good shepherd.

For He came into the world in order to gather the new Israel into one great flock, and Christ compares the nations to flocks of sheep.

Already in the Old Testament, Jehovah, through the mouth of the prophet Ezekiel (Ezek 34:31), spoke while promising to deliver His people from the tyranny of bad shepherds.

"You are My sheep, the sheep of My pasture. You are men, and I am your God, says the Lord God."

A door usually leads into the sheepfold, and the true shepherd must enter through it to his sheep.

No shepherd can lay claim to the sheep unless he has been chosen, authorized, and sent by the father of the household, the actual owner of the flock.

One who comes without permission usually does not enter by the door, because he would not be admitted there.

Therefore he must resort to cunning or violence in order somehow to penetrate the sheepfold. When he breaks into the flock, he brings only destruction and death among it.

This was precisely the sect of the Pharisees. Through their hypocrisy and insolence they exercised authority over the people of God without any authorization from the true owner of the sheep.

Since they had no divine commission, as was often proved by their deeds, they plundered the sheep in the interest of their pride, prejudices, and egoism.

Their malice knew no bounds. They not only zealously spread the most abominable teaching, but also spread slanders in order to prevent Israel from coming to the truth.

Even at that very moment, had they not gone so far as to threaten to excommunicate the One who alone was the true Shepherd?

He was guiding the sheep of His heavenly Father to the true pastures.

Hence: "He who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up another way, is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. And when he has brought out his own sheep, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, because they know his voice. But they do not follow a stranger; rather, they flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers."

In the East a sheepfold is under the open sky, but enclosed by a low stone wall. At the gate of the fold stands a watchman.

He opens and shuts the gate for the shepherd and the flock.

A thief can only climb over the wall to get into the fold for plunder, and only by night.

The shepherd freely enters the fold through the gate, for the watchman knows him.

The sheepfold is the Church of God. So it was portrayed by the prophets: Mic 2:12; Ezek 34:14.

The sheep are the believers (Jn 21:17).

Who is the guardian of the fold? If one were to say that it is God the Father, such a service would not seem fitting to His Person.

The guardian is the Holy Spirit. He sanctifies the true shepherds for their ministry.

He also opens the doors for the flock into the sheepfold, the Church of God.

Apart from Him, only thieves and robbers, wolves and predatory beasts, can appear in the fold.

"To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out."

In the West the shepherd walks behind the flock. In the East, among shepherding peoples, among Kurds and Syrians, the shepherd walks before the flock, and the sheep follow him.

There the diligent shepherd so accustoms the sheep to himself that each is called by a special name.

When the shepherd calls it by its name, it leaves its feed and runs to him with signs of affection and pleasure.

He loves them tenderly and cares for them. If one of them falls sick, he tends it.

Thus the sheep do not run from their own shepherd.

On the contrary, they do not know a stranger and fear him. He can seize them only by force, and he must chase the sheep in order to catch it.

The meaning of the whole beautiful eastern image is this: whoever presents himself as a teacher outside the order established by Christ the Lord is a dishonorable impostor and destroyer of souls (v. 1).

The true shepherd of the people of God is appointed according to the will of Christ the Lord by the Holy Spirit (v. 2).

He acts freely within his sphere. With all love he cares for the salvation of each soul and diligently cares for the happiness of all (v. 3).

The members of the Church of God know and love him as their true shepherd. They repay his love with love (v. 4).

But the self-appointed teacher is an object of dread and fear for them. His teaching is foreign to them, and he catches them only by craftiness and schemes (v. 5).

The same Lord, the Son of Man, is the Door into this kingdom of God. No one can pass from the world of material interests to the higher spiritual world except through that Door, which stands at the boundary of the two worlds.

This higher world is the world of lofty moral striving, contempt for earthly joys, and the radiant joys of the spirit. The Word of God, the second Hypostasis of the Holy Trinity, was pleased to descend to earth and to man, and to assume man’s flesh.

He did this so that, when man freely goes toward the incarnate God, He might meet him with the mercy of the Son of Man. He then brings him into the spiritual world, the world of absolute truth, goodness, pure love, and joyful eternal life.

Such is the meaning of the Shepherd and the Door in our life. Our life has already been formed under Christian influence, though of course it is still far from perfect.

But let us turn our thought to the Old Testament Church. Especially in the last four centuries before the Nativity of Christ, it became a community pastured, as the prophets had said before, by shepherds for themselves. From Malachi to John the Baptist there were four centuries of silence of the prophetic spirit in Israel.

These shepherds destroyed and scattered the sheep of the Lord’s pasture. In place of the Spirit of the Lord, they introduced a spirit of casuistry and petty ritualism. They lowered the level of feeling and thought in the human soul.

Or, in the words of the Lord Himself, they ‘took away the key of knowledge. They did not enter themselves, and they hindered those who were entering’ (Lk 11:52).

Then the Lord removes these shepherds. He Himself becomes the one Shepherd of His flock and establishes the Church of Christ, saying to her: ‘I am the Shepherd.’ ‘I am the Door.’ And, ‘I am with you always, even to the close of the age’ (Mt 28:20).

The Lord’s discourse does not break off from the last verse of the preceding chapter, as Chrysostom says. It is connected with His statement to the Pharisees and scribes that they are blind. By claiming that they see, they bring themselves under condemnation.

At the same time it is clear whom the Lord calls a thief and robber. ‘Here Christ indicates,’ says Chrysostom, ‘both those who came before Him as false teachers and those who will appear after Him.’

St. John Chrysostom further says that in the first two verses the Lord calls Scripture the door. For Scripture brings us to God, opens the way to the knowledge of God, guards the sheep, and does not allow wolves to come in.

Let us note that in this sense the Door is also the Word of God, who spoke ‘in many portions and in many ways through the prophets,’ and ‘in these last days has spoken in the Son’ (Heb 1:1-2). Therefore the Lord said to the Jews, ‘If you believed Moses, you would believe Me’ (Jn 5:46).

This was precisely the meaning of the Pharisees and scribes as thieves and robbers in the flock of God. They did not believe Moses, and they fed the flock for themselves, not for God. This was already indicated above in the citation from Ezek 34:2.

They were ‘teaching as doctrines the commandments of men’ (Mt 15:9; see also Isa 29:13). The Lord reproached them for this by pointing to Isaiah’s prophecy.

In that prophecy God says to the people that this people draws near to the Lord with its mouth and honors Him with its lips, but its heart is far from the Lord. Its reverence before the Lord is only the study of human commandments.

These men did not wish to know the Spirit of the Lord in Scripture. They are those who ‘climbed in by another way.’ They brought human thoughts and strivings into the flock, not divine ones. Therefore they ‘climbed in by another way,’ because they could not enter by the Door, since the truth guarded the flock.

The Door into the sheepfold is the Lord Himself. No one may introduce his own inventions into Scripture, as the Pharisees and scribes dared to do from love of power and greed.

Jeremiah also reproached the princes and teachers of the people for this (Jer 23:1). After the Lord Jesus, representatives of various sects did the same from boastful self-confidence and pride of thought.

The doorkeeper opens the door only to the shepherd who enters by the doors, that is, by the Lord. The sheep must listen to him. Here, as Chrysostom beautifully observes, ‘the Lord calls Himself both Door and Shepherd, and also Lamb, indicating different aspects of His ministry.

When He brings us to the Father, He calls Himself the Door. When He expresses His care for us, He calls Himself the Shepherd. He Himself goes before the sheep.’

Yet this does not exhaust the whole deep meaning of this parable, which those who heard the Lord did not at first understand (v. 6). First, it established that a shepherd can enter only through the Door of truth, that is, through the Lord Himself.

Second, it indicated the headship of the Lord Himself as Shepherd. Third, it also established the Christian hierarchy of the Lord’s servants, who likewise are shepherds of His flock. They must unfailingly enter the sheepfold by the Door.

That is, they must receive authority and command to govern the flock of God from our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. ‘So it was,’ says Chrysostom, ‘with the apostles. They freely went in and out, as though they possessed the whole universe, and no one could drive them out.’

From the Christian point of view, this parable, together with its later development, signifies the Church of Christ. In it, shepherds who enter only by the Door, that is, by the Lord, feed the flock not for themselves and not from themselves.

They feed it only as trustees of the Lord, who is the one Shepherd. These shepherds, when appointed as ‘stewards of the Lord,’ are sanctified by the Holy Spirit in the sacrament of priesthood.

‘Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household?’ (Mt 24:45). Speaking in the name of the Lord, they represent on earth ‘the voice of the Lord, which the sheep hear’ (v. 3).

‘It is like a man going on a journey, who left his house and gave authority to his servants, to each his work, and commanded the doorkeeper to watch’ (Mk 13:34). So the Lord, departing visibly from the earth, prepares those servant-shepherds who will feed His flock.

Therefore the Lord said three times, in the person of Peter, to all the Apostles, to the bishops ordained by them, and to those who received priesthood from them, including the diaconate as a special ministry (Acts 6:3-6): ‘Feed My lambs. Feed My sheep’ (Jn 21:15-17).

On bishops in general, compare Acts 20:28, 1 Tim 4 and 5, Titus 1, and other passages. At the same time, in the person of Peter, the Lord asked the whole succession of pastors by ordination a deeply significant question: ‘Do you love Me?’

One must distinguish what concerns Peter personally, and his cleansing from the sin of denial, from what in the Lord’s words applies to all pastors. The first matter belongs to the study of Jn 21:15-17.

This is a necessary condition, fully equivalent to the sayings, ‘I am the Door’ and ‘he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.’ He who does not love the Lord cannot be a shepherd.

If he does not love the Lord, he is certainly a thief and robber, one who climbs in by another way. He cannot enter through the Door, which is the Lord Himself.

Therefore the scribes and Pharisees presented a monstrous spectacle. They guided the people while ‘not having the love of God’ in themselves (Jn 5:42). When such a thing, to our misfortune, occurred in the Christian world, it became the cause of heresies and calamities in the Church.

God preserve the Church of Christ from ever seeing a shepherd who is a hypocritical atheist, as was not rare in Rome, or a shepherd who thinks that piety is a means of gain (1 Tim 6:5; cf. 1 Pet 5:2-3).

‘Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you bishops, to shepherd the Church of the Lord and God, which He obtained with His own blood,’ said the Apostle Paul when taking leave of the bishops of Asia Minor.

‘The Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to demonic teachings through the hypocrisy of liars’ (1 Tim 4:1-2). For, as the Apostle also says elsewhere, false apostles sometimes appear, disguising themselves as Apostles of Christ (2 Cor 11:13).

All these were foretold by the Lord in the parable we are reading, under the name of thieves and robbers. They climb in by another way and do not enter by the Door, which is Christ.

We must say a few words about the word παροιμὶα, ‘parable,’ used in this place of St. John’s Gospel. In the Vulgate this word is proverbium, and in Biblia Sacra it is similitudo. It is not the word παραβολὴ, used in the Synoptic Gospels and rendered in Latin translations as parabola.

The word παροιμὶα carries the notion of a more mysterious saying than παραβολὴ. We find these two words placed together in verse 17 of chapter 47 in the Greek text of the Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach.

This verse corresponds to verse 19 in the Russian translation of 1872. In that verse we read: ‘Your name, Solomon, spread abroad,’ and, ‘for songs and sayings (παροιμὶαις), for parables (παραβολαῖς) and interpretations, the nations marveled at you.’

Compare in the same chapter of the Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach, verses 15-17, concerning an enigmatic or mysterious parable. Παροιμὶα seems to differ from parable in that it contains higher teaching about the works of God.

Παραβολὴ, a parable, is divine teaching about human actions. In the present section of John’s Gospel, as we have seen, the Lord points to Himself as the Door and as the Shepherd. He mentions human actions only to guard His flock from harmful workers who climb in by another way.