My sheep hear my voice. And I know them: and they follow me.
τα προβατα τα εμα της φωνης μου ακουει καγω γινωσκω αυτα και ακολουθουσιν μοι
13 Church Fathers comment on this verse
See how, even while He does not acknowledge them, He inclines them to follow Him. You do not listen to Me, He says, because you are not My sheep. But those who follow Me belong to the flock. He said this so that they might be moved by zeal to become sheep.
Having told them that they are not of His sheep, He now inclines them to become His sheep. For this reason He adds: “My sheep hear My voice, and they follow Me.” Then, to stir them further, He also tells what those who follow Him will receive.
The mark of Christ's sheep is ready obedience and willingness for faith. The mark of strangers is unbelief, for we understand "to hear" in the sense of "to believe what is said."
Those who hear God are known by Him. To be known means to be received into communion, since in general no one remains unknown to God; cf. Jn 10:14-15. Therefore, when He says, "I know My own," He declares this: I shall receive them and have them in mystical communion with Myself.
One may also reason in this way. Since He became man, He has communion with all men through unity of nature with them. Thus we are all sharers of Christ by a mystical relation to Him, because He became man.
Strangers, however, are those who do not preserve the form of holiness that befits Him. So also the Jews were kinsmen of faithful Abraham by race, through descent from him. Yet when they became unbelieving, they lost kinship with him through the dissimilarity of their ways.
He also says that "the sheep will follow Me." Those who have believed walk in the footsteps of Christ by a certain grace given by God. They no longer serve the shadows of the Law. Rather, by following Christ's commandments and His word, they will ascend by grace to His dignity, being called sons of God. For when Christ ascends into heaven, they too will follow Him.
The beginning of willing obedience is friendly nearness. Faith draws us near to God, and this nearness makes us wise. Yet these wise men do not receive the lessons that bring profit for salvation.
By calling them strangers, He indicates that those from the Gentiles who were going to believe were also His sheep. He threatens them with a transfer to the Gentiles, so that even by the threat of fear He might compel them to think what is right.
What is the Shepherd's voice? "That repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem" (Lk 24:47). This is the Shepherd's voice. Watch yourself and follow, if you are a sheep.
What He answered them is still greater than this. They wanted to accuse Him as the son of David, but He answered that He is the Son of God. How? Listen: "I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in My Father's name, they bear witness of Me. But you do not believe, because you are not of My sheep" (Jn 10:25-26).
You have already learned above who the sheep are. Be sheep. The sheep are those who have believed. The sheep are those who follow the Shepherd. The sheep are those who do not despise the Redeemer. The sheep are those who have entered through the door.
The sheep are those who go out and enter in to pasture. The sheep are those who enjoy eternal life. In what sense did He say to them, "You are not of My sheep"? In this sense: He saw that they were predestined to eternal destruction, not prepared by the price of His blood for eternal life.
"My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me, and I give them eternal life" (Jn 10:27). Behold the pasture. If you remember, He had said before: "He will go in and out and find pasture" (Jn 10:9).
We enter by believing, and we go out by dying. As we entered through the door of faith, so, as believers, we shall go out of the body. We go out through that same door, so that we may find pasture.
Eternal life is called good pasture. There the grass does not wither. Everything flowers; everything is full of strength. Some grasses are commonly called ever-living; there all grasses will be living.
"I give," He says, "eternal life to My sheep. But you only devise how to slander Me, because you think only of the present life."
Knowing the heart of these people, the Lord answered that the cause of their perplexities lay not in Him, but in their unbelief. He also said that He had ceased to count them as His sheep. Having said this, He showed with particular force what He was ready to do for those who believe in Him and are faithful to Him. He said that no one would snatch them from His hands, or, what is the same, from the hands of His Father. Then He added: “I and the Father are one.”
Jesus Christ, of course, could not speak of Himself in the spirit of the Pharisees. Indeed, because they joined false notions and expectations to the name Messiah, He did not use this name for Himself before, nor does He now.
Yet to the question put to Him, whether He is the Christ, Jesus answers quite clearly and directly that He is the Messiah, the Christ, as He had always told them. At the same time, by recalling His discourse on the Good Shepherd, He exposes the unbelief of the Jews.
He says that He has borne such witness to Himself by His word, and that by His works He has confirmed this testimony about Himself. Therefore, if after all this they remain in unbelief, it means that they do not belong among those called to salvation.
Such are those who, by their spiritual and moral condition, were capable and worthy for God the Father to call them to His Son. If their inner condition had been such, His word would have found an echo in their hearts.
Then He would have preserved them from every temptation to unbelief. No hostile power can snatch from His hands those given to Him by the Father. There is no one and nothing greater or mightier than God, and He is one in essence with God. Therefore He is one with Him also in power.
An explanation of Jesus' consubstantiality with the Father.
Two months earlier, at the Feast of Tabernacles, the Pharisees had asked Jesus, "Where is Your Father?" and "Who are You?" (Jn 8:19, 25). If He did not answer these questions directly, still from His whole conversation with them they should have concluded this: if He calls Himself the Son of God, existing before Abraham, then He certainly acknowledges Himself as the Messiah, the Christ.
The Pharisees understood all this perfectly even then, and for that reason they wanted to stone Jesus. They could not have forgotten it so quickly. Therefore, if they now asked Jesus whether He was the Christ, it was certainly not from a desire to believe in Him, as some suppose.
The very question, posed in an insolently provocative tone, proves that they were enemies of Jesus. If the Pharisees had intended to believe in Him as Messiah, and hesitated to acknowledge Him openly only because He had never yet called Himself Christ, then there is no doubt that Jesus Himself would have met such a desire.
He would not have answered them evasively, nor left them in painful perplexity. But He knew their designs, and therefore answered them: I have already told you who I am, but you did not believe Me.
If you were unwilling to believe My words, then you should have believed My works, which I do in the name of My Father, for they bear witness of Me. But you do not give faith even to My works, because you are not sheep of My flock, as I have already told you.
"My sheep hear My voice, and I know them; and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life."
If they had been sheep of His flock, and here He reminded them of the discourse He had given earlier during the Feast of Tabernacles, they would have listened to His voice. He would have given them eternal life, and they would not have perished under His protection, because no one could then have snatched them from the hands of His Father.
“My sheep,” and so forth: the Lord briefly repeats the characteristic relations between His followers and Himself. He had expressed them more fully in the preceding discourse, and now shows His present listeners why they do not belong to the number of His sheep. “They hear My voice”: see the note on Jn 10:3-4. “And I know them”: see the note on Jn 10:14. “And they follow Me”: see Jn 10:4. All these features show the loving mutual relation between Christ and those who believe in Him.
Verses 24-28. "Then the Jews surrounded Him and said to Him, How long do You hold our souls in suspense? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly."
Αἴρειν ψυχάς means to keep hearts raised, to trouble them with doubts. If the Jews had asked their question with pure intentions, in order to learn the truth, the Savior's answer would not have been what we read.
They sought a direct answer to the question whether He was the Messiah, so that they might bring His answer before the Sanhedrin and summon Jesus there also. Therefore their complaint about the agitation of their souls was a hypocritical complaint.
"See," says Chrysostom, "what corruption and stubbornness were in them. When He preached to them and taught by words, they said, What sign do You do? Jn 6:30. But when He presented proofs in deeds, then they said to Him, If You are the Christ, tell us plainly. When the works cry aloud, they seek words. When the words teach, they run to works, always insisting on the opposite."
"I told you, and you do not believe." The Savior refers the Jews to His former proclamations about Himself, which they had received so favorably: Jn 5:19; Jn 6:32; Jn 7:16; Jn 8:14-16; Jn 10:1.
You do not believe because I am not the one whom you expect for yourselves. I am not a false Messiah, who will bring you nothing but troubles and lies.
"The works that I do, they bear witness of Me." If you do not believe the teaching, why do you not believe the works, such as the healing of the blind man?
"You are not of My sheep, as I told you." This is why you do not believe. When did Jesus say that the Jews were not among His sheep? He said it when He spoke of the Shepherd and the obedient sheep, Jn 10:14-15.
"My sheep hear My voice, and I give them eternal life." The Jews must understand that only their corrupted will is the reason they do not understand who Jesus is. Their condition is pitiable, since they deprive themselves of eternal life, prepared for sincere hearers of His teaching, Jn 3:16.
"And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish." Nothing destructive will remain in their souls, 1 Jn 5:18; Jn 17:12. "And no one will snatch them out of My hand." No hostile external power will take away from them the salvation guarded by the Son of God.
"My sheep hear My voice" (Jn 10:27), says Jesus Christ. Therefore the property of true sheep is to hear their shepherd.
Indeed, if sheep do not hear the shepherd, it is as though they had no shepherd at all. Whether he fills the air with the sound of a flute, calls with the voice of his mouth, or raises his staff, none of this will benefit or save the sheep.
It will not help if they go away and neither see nor hear, or if they are stubborn and do not listen, or if, being untrained, they do not heed. A sheep that does not hear the shepherd is sure prey for a ravenous beast.
Let us explain the parable. Christians are the sheep of Christ's pasture. The Shepherd whom they must hear is, originally and essentially, Jesus Christ Himself. After Him, they must also hear whoever visibly represent His invisible shepherding and act by the authority entrusted to them by Him.
For, as the Apostle says, He gave the Church "pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of ministry" (Eph 4:11-12). In order that those given by Him might be recognized, He set this sign: "He who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep" (Jn 10:2). That is, one who enters this ministry through gracious election.
And so that these ministering shepherds might be heard as the supreme Shepherd Himself, He proclaimed that to hear them and to hear His words are one: "He who hears you hears Me" (Lk 10:16).
The sheepfold and spiritual pasture, where we hear the Shepherd's voice and where the sheep find food and salvation, is the Church. The Shepherd's voice is prayer, teaching, sacramental action, governance, and counsel profitable for the soul.
If people who call themselves Christians leave the Church and wander through the wilds of schisms, "tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine," by human deceit and cunning craftiness (Eph 4:14), what then?
If instead of the true shepherd, who enters by the door, they listen to those who climb in another way (Jn 10:1), then, according to the judgment of the Chief Shepherd, these are thieves and robbers.
Or if, even without visibly separating from the Church, they do not cleave to her with a sincere and obedient heart, what then? If they neglect to hear the shepherd when he prays, teaches, and performs the mysteries, and if they do not seek spiritual counsel, what then?
If through ignorance and pride they imagine that they can shepherd and save themselves, such people, and those like them, are not true sheep, because they do not hear the true Shepherd.
By turning aside from obedience to the true and saving voice of the Chief Shepherd, they imperceptibly go to meet the lion who "walks about roaring, seeking whom he may devour" (1 Pet 5:8).
The Lord is the Shepherd. All His sheep follow Him, following His teaching and fulfilling His holy commandments. Sinners are sick and weak sheep, yet they still trail along there with the flock. But those who have lost the faith are those who have fallen completely behind and have been abandoned to be eaten by beasts. These are the truly straggling ones. They are not of Christ’s flock and do not listen to His voice. He does not know them, because they do not make themselves known, as the woman with the issue of blood made herself known. At the judgment it will be said to them: I do not know you; depart.
You do not believe and cannot follow Me, the Lord says to the Jews, not because I am not the Shepherd, but because you are not My sheep. Chrysostom interprets this passage in this way, in Homily 61 on John.
He also observes that even throughout this teaching the Lord does not cease drawing them, so that they may follow the example of the Lord's sheep and go after Him, that He may heal them too.
But they were "of this world" and therefore could not understand Him who was "not of this world" (Jn 8:23-24). Therefore they did not believe and were "dying in their sins"; cf. Mk 6; Mt 13:14-15; Is 6:9-10.
On the other hand, the Lord points to His own sheep and mentions the sign by which they are known: "They hear the Lord's voice, and the Lord knows them, and they follow the Lord."
The expression "I know them" is very important and is already found in the Old Testament, as in Ex 33:12, 17 and Is 43. The expression "the Lord knows by name" is equivalent to this: I have called you because your soul is worthy to draw near to Me.
This was said of chosen instruments of God in the Old Testament. But in the New Testament the Lord calls every human soul to draw near to Him. Every human soul became worthy to draw near to the Lord only after it had been redeemed and cleansed by the mercy of God.
Therefore we must compare the Lord's words, "I know them," with the prophecy of Isaiah. "Now thus says the Lord to saved Israel: Fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by your name; you are Mine."
Naturally, as we have often said above, only those souls follow the Lord's call which do not resist the voice calling them by an evil will. These alone are the Lord's sheep, not only by calling, but also by their own human free choice. The precious gift of God, human will, is never taken away from man.
We must note that in some Western teachings this passage of John the Theologian is interpreted as indicating "predestined salvation." This theory leads to quietism, reaching negligence and passing into the Muslim belief about predestination.
But the Lord promises salvation to the sheep who remain in His flock, not to those who fall away from the flock. The grace given by the Lord to the Church as the assembly of believers acts eternally. Yet one must desire it and thirst to use it, in order to receive it.
Those who neglect this gift are not the Lord's sheep. "The opponents of the Lord Jesus Christ," says St John the Theologian, "went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have remained with us. But they went out, that it might be revealed that not all are of us" (1 Jn 2:19).
It is a great gift to have the assurance that, remaining faithful to Christ and abiding in His Church, we shall receive salvation. But we must "work out" this salvation "with fear and trembling," as the Apostle teaches (Phil 2:12), and serve God with reverence (Heb 12:28).
Passages read together with this verse.
Greek text, 14 words with lemma, transliteration and Strong’s number. Tap to expand.
THEOSIS