John 10:5Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

To this one may add a third distinction, and it is not slight. They did everything as tyrants and with the aim of stirring rebellion. But He was so far from such intentions that, when they wished to make Him king, He withdrew.

And when He was asked whether it was lawful to give the census tax to Caesar, He commanded that it be given, and He Himself paid the didrachma.

Moreover, He came for the salvation of the sheep, "that they may have life, and have it abundantly" (Jn 10:10). But those men deprived them even of the present life.

They betrayed those who believed them and fled. But He stood so firmly that He laid down His own life. They suffered unwillingly, by necessity, because they had failed to escape. But He endured everything voluntarily and by His own will.

For “all things are naked and open to Him, and there is no creature hidden before Him” (Heb 4:13). Therefore He says to one of the saints: “Who is this that hides counsel from Me, keeping words in his heart, and thinks to conceal them from Me?” (Job 38:2).

As we have just said, the impious assembly of the Pharisees asked whether they also were blind. If He spoke the truth and said that they too were such, that is, blind, they could again condemn Him.

They would accuse Him of insulting the leaders and reviling those who had received authority over the people. For they were excessively proud about this.

Therefore our Lord Jesus Christ, repelling this design of theirs, judges it necessary and profitable to introduce this parable. In a somewhat veiled way, and as though in a riddle, He indicates that, because of their greed, they cannot be firm guides.

Nor can this dignity be secure in those who, by their arrogance, insult God, the giver of this dignity. Rather, He teaches that it must belong only to those whom He Himself calls to guide the people.

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

He calls a thief, a robber, and one who comes from another way, the man who thinks that honor not given to him can be seized 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; Isa 30:1).

In these words He covertly indicates that, although they take pleasure in ruling over the people, only those who have believed and received the divine preaching through Him should seek this authority.

Thus they may possess a power unshaken and firmly established. This was found in the holy Apostles and in the teachers of the holy churches who followed them.

To these “the doorkeeper opens.” This means either the angel appointed to watch over the churches and assist the ministers for the benefit of the peoples, or again the Savior Himself.

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

Quite rightly He commands the flock of sheep to listen to the voice of the shepherd and obey it properly. Conversely, He commands them to turn away with all diligence from “the voice of strangers.”

By taking the saying in its general meaning, you may understand the true state of the matter. For we teach in the churches by setting forth the doctrines of Holy Scripture.

We offer, as a kind of spiritual food, the evangelical and apostolic word. Those who heed such teaching are the believers in Christ, distinguished by an unperverted faith.

They reject the voices of false shepherds and turn away from them as from a destructive evil.

But someone may ask: what, then, is indicated to the Pharisees by this? I shall repeat it 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.

Nor will they have it unless they receive the God-given good. And when He adds that the sheep listen to their shepherds and flee from strangers, He again nobly hints at this.

They will by no means stand at the head of those who are to believe in Him. Rather, the sheep will flee from their teaching and follow the shepherds appointed by Him.

He says "straying," and He calls it a "sheep." It heard the voice of the shepherd, but it went astray because it heard the voice of a stranger. It heard the voice of a thief and robber.

"The Lord knows those who are His" (cf. 2 Tim 2:19). He knows those whom He foreknew, and He knows those whom He predestined (cf. Rom 8:29-33).

They themselves are sheep. Sometimes they do not know themselves, but the shepherd knows them.

Therefore, according to this divine foreknowledge and predestination, how many sheep are outside, and how many wolves are inside. And how many sheep are inside, and how many wolves are outside.

These are not sheep. For we are speaking of the predestined. We are speaking of those whom the Lord knows to be His.

And yet, as long as they reason rightly, they hear the voice of Christ. These hear, while those do not. But according to predestination, not those but these are the sheep.

There still remains a question, which, it now seems to me, can be resolved in this way. There is a certain voice. I say, there is a certain voice of the shepherd, when the sheep do not hear strangers.

What is this voice? "He who endures to the end shall be saved" (Mt 24:13). One who is His does not despise this voice, and a stranger does not hear it.

But someone heard this voice and acted foolishly. He fled, and he heard the voice of a stranger. If he was predestined, he went astray for a time.

He does not perish eternally. He returned in order to hear what he had despised, and to do what he heard.

If he is among those who were predestined, then the Lord foresaw his error and his future conversion. Though he went astray, he returned to hear this voice of the shepherd and to follow Him.

Such a voice leads away from sound faith in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in one Godhead and power.

My sheep have always listened to the proclamation of this faith, and may they always listen to it.

Do not listen to the voice that, by impure and corrupted words, tears away and drags from the true and first Shepherd.

Far from all this, as from an enchanting and deadly herb, may He grant all of us, shepherds and flock alike, both to be nourished and to nourish.

And may He grant that all, now and in eternal rest, may be one in Christ Jesus.

There, enclosures are sometimes arranged for sheep at night, often open from above. Into these enclosures they often drive not one flock, but several.

The shepherd knows the sheep of his own flock very well. Almost every one of them had from him a special name, according to its appearance or disposition.

Likewise the sheep recognized their own shepherd very well by appearance and voice, and willingly followed only him.

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

In Eastern lands, flocks of sheep were driven at night into caves or into folds built for that purpose, to protect them from thieves and wolves.

Often flocks belonging to different owners were driven into a single 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, calling their sheep by name, and went out to the pastures.

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

Thieves and robbers did not dare enter through the guarded doors of the fold, but secretly climbed over the fence.

All this was perfectly well known to the Pharisees. Taking this familiar example, Christ says: Whoever 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 obey 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.

The sheep follow him, because they know his voice. But they do not follow a stranger. They flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers.

He saw that the infinite goodness filling His own heart was everywhere met by the malice of Israel’s false shepherds. This contrast between their despotism and His lawful mission became the occasion for the majestic discourse on the good shepherd.

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

The solitude of pastoral life in these lands brings the man and the animals he tends very close together. It binds them with a feeling of companionship, in which they share both dangers and pleasures.

Thus the eastern shepherd often forgets the distinction between himself and his flock, and becomes the friend of his sheep. This feeling is not confined to his side alone.

The sheep themselves become as accustomed to their shepherd and as friendly with him as he is with them. They become his mute friends, sharing with him the silence and equal majesty of the mountains or the wilderness.

We learn to love that for which we are often exposed to danger. Therefore the various dangers from robbers, wolves, and the like make the flock dear to the shepherd who must live with it.

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

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

Already in the Old Testament, Jehovah spoke through the prophet Ezekiel (Ezek 34:31), promising to deliver His people from the tyranny of evil 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 through it the true shepherd must enter to his sheep. No shepherd can claim the sheep unless he has been chosen, authorized, and sent by the householder, the true 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. Such precisely was 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.

Having no divine mission, as their deeds often proved, they plundered the sheep for the sake of their pride, their prejudices, and their egoism.

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

Even at that very moment, had they not gone so far as to threaten excommunication against the One who alone was the true Shepherd? He was guiding the sheep of His heavenly Father to the true pastures.

Therefore, “he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs in 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.

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, but flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers.”

In the East a sheepfold is in the open air, but enclosed by a low stone wall. A watchman stands at the gate of the fold. He opens and closes the gate for the shepherd and the flock.

A thief can only climb over the wall in order to enter the fold for plunder, and only at night. The shepherd enters freely through the gate, for the watchman knows him.

The sheepfold is the Church of God. So it was depicted by the prophets: Mic 2:12; Ezek 34:14. The sheep are the faithful, Jn 21:17.

Who is the watchman of the fold? If one were to say that this is God the Father, such a service does not appear fitting to His person.

The watchman is the Holy Spirit. He sanctifies 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; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out."

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

There a diligent shepherd accustoms the sheep to himself so well that each one has its own name. When he calls it by name, it leaves its feed and runs to him with signs of affection and delight.

He loves them tenderly and protects them. If one of them falls ill, he cares for it. Thus the sheep do not run away from their shepherd.

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

The meaning of this whole beautiful Eastern picture is this. Whoever presents himself as a teacher outside the order established by Christ the Lord is a dishonorable impostor and destroyer of souls, verse 1.

The true shepherd of the people of God is appointed by the Holy Spirit according to the will of Christ the Lord, verse 2.

He acts freely within his own sphere. With all love he cares for the salvation of each soul, and zealously tends the happiness of all, verse 3.

The members of the Church of God know and love him as their true shepherd. For his love they repay him with love, verse 4.

But the self-appointed teacher is an object of fear and dread to them. His teaching is something foreign to them, and he catches them only by craft and cunning, verse 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.