Commentary on the Gospel of John

                                  Chapter Ten

                                                                                                                                              Verses 6-11

Those who heard Jesus speak this parable about the sheep did not understand it. But in Matthew 13:10-16, Jesus explained to His disciples exactly why He often used parables when He preached. God knows all of His works from the foundation of the world. Acts 15:18. Jesus knows every human who will become saved by His grace, and every human who will not. Jesus often spoke in parables to those who would not believe to be saved by grace precisely because they would not understand. Jesus had the future in mind when He spoke in parables. Jesus commended His disciples for seeing and hearing His parables although He knew that they too did not understand much about them. But Jesus' disciples did at least understand that Jesus put some spiritual meaning into His parables. Jesus' disciples opened their hearts to God. Matthew 13:16. Those who rejected or ignored Jesus' parables would never be able to complain because they were given an equal opportunity to believe, but they closed their hearts to God. Jesus knew that His disciples would be faithful to write His parables in His Word so that in the future His Church would be able, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to at least partly understand them, and in the end of the world, the whole human race will come to understand at least as much as humans are capable of understanding. The greatest blessings of the parables come to believers when they pray and strive to understand them, not when they believe they have understood them.

Jesus again asserted that He is the very "door" of the sheepfold. He is the only way into the sheepfold and the only way out. When Jesus spoke of Himself as being the shepherd of the sheep, He called His own sheep out of the sheepfold to spiritual pastures and waters. But when Jesus spoke of Himself as being the "door" of the sheepfold, He spoke of Himself as being the shepherd of the entire human race. Jesus is the "door" of the sheepfold because He is the creator of the entire human race. Jesus has given life to every human which He can never lose. Ecclesiastes 3:14; Luke 20:38; I Corinthians 15:22.

When Jesus spoke of "thieves and robbers," He meant all of the demonic forces that are trying to completely ruin humanity to beyond any hope of redemption. The spiritual death that the Devil has injected into the inner beings of all humans causes all humans to sin and some of them to practice evil, but those who become saved by grace will hear only the voice of Jesus, and in the end of the world, the rest of humanity confined to the regions of death will see and hear only Jesus when He reveals Himself to them in a great worship service. Jesus will cause them all to repent and believe of their own free will, and He will resurrect them to a lesser form of salvation than that of grace. John 5:24; Revelation 5:11-14; Revelation 20:5.