The imagery of the covenant people of Israel as a flock of sheep, and of YHWH as their shepherd, is ubiquitous in the Hebrew Bible, extending all the way back to Jacob's Blessing in Genesis 49:24. It was as Israel's shepherd that God brought the people out of Egypt in the Exodus (Psalm 78:52-55), and his tender care for his sheep extended even to people at an individual level (Genesis 48:15 [Joseph]; Psalm 23 [David]). While the people of Israel and Judah languished in exile, God the shepherd promised to rescue them from their captivity, make a (new) covenant of peace with them, and raise up another shepherd, a king in the line of David, to tend them in the land he had promised them (Ezekiel 34:22-31). Indeed, it was this last text that served as the implicit background to Jesus' claim, in John 10, to be the "Good Shepherd" who rescued his sheep precisely by laying his life down for them.
In Jesus' paroimia in John 10:1-5, one distinguishing characteristic of the true shepherd is that his sheep follow him out to pasture once he opens the gate because they recognize his voice. By contrast, the sheep will not follow the voice of a stranger (allotrios), alien as such an imposter would be. If indeed Jesus was the Good Shepherd promised in Ezekiel, one would presumably have expected the Jewish people of Palestine, ostensibly the sheep of God's pasture, to follow him when he called. But, of course, that is not what we see here in John 10. Indeed, during the later festival of Hanukkah, the "Jews" ('Ioudaioi) who were gathered around him in the Temple, having apparently discerned the implication of his earlier (at Sukkoth) claim to be the promised shepherd of Ezekiel, implored him to lift the suspense and tell them openly (parrēsiai) whether or not he was the Messiah (John 10:24). Jesus' response clearly implies that this seemingly honest question was, in fact, not asked in good faith, but rather in unbelief. And it is staggering in its theological implications:
Jesus answered them, "I did tell you, yet you do not believe. The works I am doing in my Father's name testify for me, but you do not believe because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." (John 10:25-27, trans. JRM)
Let this sink in for a minute. Remember that, in his "interpretation" of the paroimia of verses 1-5, Jesus strangely identifies himself both as the "gate" for the sheep to enter the fold (10:7) and as the genuine shepherd himself, who leads the flock out to pasture to provide nourishment―indeed, "life" itself―by giving his life for them (10:11). Those of us raised in evangelical Protestant circles are conditioned to emphasize Jesus' role as the gate/the "way" of entrance into the fold, and to stress "faith"* as the only means of entry. Indeed, as the Johannine Jesus later tells his disciples in the Upper Room, he is the only "way" or "path" (hodos) by which people can "come" (erchomai) to the Father because, as the "Word" (logos) and, hence, the very "exegesis" of the invisible God (John 1:18), he is the (sole) embodiment of the "truth" and "life" that come from the Father (John 14:6).** Hence the call for faith as the instrument through which to receive eternal life is entirely appropriate. But note that this is emphatically not the point Jesus makes here in John 10. Indeed, what he does say―not to mention the apparently outrageous claim he makes for himself in the immediately following verses, which will necessitate a post of its own―so enrages his listeners in Solomon's Colonnade that they reach for stones to hurl at him.
In particular, note that Jesus does not say in John 10:26 what we have been conditioned to expect. He does not say, "You are not my sheep because you do not believe in me." Rather, what he does say is staggering, and well nigh unimaginable to Western ears: You do not believe because you are not my sheep. Jesus here affirms that he has been sent by the Father to be the Davidic Shepherd promised in Ezekiel, and thus by implication is the "Messiah" the people were expecting to come. His interlocutors, however, though they are "Jews" (10:24) who hoped for a coming "Messiah" and, as such, to all appearances are the flock to whom the promises of Ezekiel were made, are not in fact those sheep. And the implications of the words Jesus says here are enormous: Belonging to Jesus'/God's flock, and thus being the beneficiaries of God's prophetic promises, is antecedent to a positive response to him, not the other way around.*** Needless to say, for Jesus' original audience, this would have been deeply offensive to their sensibilities, eagerly awaiting, as the Palestinian Jews of the time were, the promised deliverance from centuries of Gentile overlordship. Hence their rage at what he says is not surprising. At a deeper, theological level, however, what Jesus says is deeply mysterious and, as such, it would certainly be unwise precipitantly to deduce causally deterministic inferences from such a text.**** Nevertheless, what the Johannine Jesus says here ought not be explained away, let alone ignored, as all too many commentators are wont to do. Indeed, Jesus' hard words here are but one manifestation of an important theological thread that finds many iterations in John's Gospel. It is to explore this thread that the next installment will be concerned.
*The verb pisteuō ("I believe") occurs 98 times in John's Gospel, and another 9 times in the Johannine epistles, compared to only 34 times in the Synoptic Gospels. Interestingly, the cognate noun pistis ("belief, faith, trust") never occurs in the Gospel. Although the term clearly is used with reference to Christological content (e.g., belief that Jesus is the Messiah and Son of God [John 20:31]; cf. 10:38; 11:27; 11:27, 48; 13:19; 14:10-11; 17:11), John's famous use of the expression pisteuō eis ("I believe in(to)"; 36 times in John, 3 times in 1 John, and only 8 times elsewhere in the New Testament) points to a relational aspect to the verb (cf. Craig Koester, The Word of Life: A Theology of John's Gospel [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008] 162). The fact that John characteristically uses the verb in the present tense and points to inadequate, shallow "belief" capable of falling away from following Jesus (e.g., John 2:22-23; 6:66; 8:31-47) also indicates that true "belief" is continuing and persevering. What matters is not that one has believed at some point in the past; what matters is that one believes, now and always. Raymond E. Brown provides a nice summary: "Thus, pisteuein eis may be defined in terms of an active commitment to a person and, in particular, to Jesus. It involves much more than trust in Jesus or confidence in him; it is an acceptance of Jesus and of what he claims to be and a dedication of one's life to him. The commitment is not emotional but involves a willingness to respond to God's demands as they are presented in and by Jesus" (The Gospel according to John I-XII [AB 29A; Garden City, NY; Doubleday, 1966] 513).
**Cf. Marianne Meye Thompson, John: A Commentary (NTL; Louisville, Kentucky: WestminsterJohnKnox, 2015) 308-9.
***Cf. Brown who, as a Roman Catholic scholar, certainly had no axe to grind: "There is in John an element of predestination as to who shall belong to the flock, but in this, John does not seem to vary from common NT teaching" (John I-XII, 407).
****I.e., one should hardly deduce from this a denial of human psychological freedom and posit that unbelief is caused by lack of membership among the "sheep." The matter is both exceedingly complex as well as mysterious.
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