Ep. 266. John 10 | The Good Shepherd

EPISODE 266

THE GOOD SHEPHERD: JOHN 10

My entire life, I thought that the "thief" of John 10 was the Devil. I had no reason not to. It is the only way it was ever presented to me. It made sense to me that the Devil was evil, so it wasn't a leap at all for me to realize he would also want to "steal, kill, and destroy." The problem is I didn't know the Scripture at all in my early years, and by the time I was reading the Bible regularly in my early twenties, I already "knew" that the "thief" was the Devil, so I never thought to ask a question about it at all. It would take me more than 25 years of reading the Bible to connect the language of "Good Shepherd" to the promised good Shepherd in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. It would take me those 25 years to really notice that "thief" had already been used twice in the text, and I never did myself the honest service of ever asking how those usages fit in with the filter and framework I already held of the text.

Of course, I also grew up reading John 10 as though Jesus was speaking directly to me rather than realizing he was a Jew who came to the Jews to show himself the fulfillment of the OT prophecies. There was a framework by which the Jews in the audience would have understood these words of Jesus that was completely different than the framework I had formed about the text. I wish I had started examining the Scripture more honestly in my youth, but I am thankful today for the perspective that the Bible is a single narrative of redemption and that Jesus very likely had an intent in everything he said and did.

Some will argue, "But aren't false teachers being controlled by the devil, and therefore, the thief is still sort of the devil?" I feel that, at that point in the argument, we are just trying to justify a position we've held for a long time so we don't have to "be wrong." I get it. Being wrong isn't pleasant, but let us always attempt to go where the Bible goes and stop where the Bible stops.

ADDITIONAL READING: John 14:6; Jeremiah 23; Ezekiel 34; Matthew 9:36; John 5:36; Psalm 82:6