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New Testament in a Year

Read the New Testament from start to finish, from Matthew to Revelation.

Duration: 365 days

John 10:1-23

The Shepherd Who Gives Up His Life^[a]

I Am the Good Shepherd^[b]

Chapter 10

The Good Shepherd

¹“Amen, amen, I say to you,
anyone who does not enter
the sheepfold through the gate
but climbs in some other way
is a thief and a bandit.
²The one who enters through the gate
is the shepherd of the flock.
³The gatekeeper opens for him,
and the sheep hear his voice.
He calls his own sheep by name
and leads them out.
⁴“When he has brought out all his own,
he goes on ahead of them,
and the sheep follow him
because they know his voice.
⁵However, they will never follow a stranger.
Rather, they will run away from him,
because they do not recognize
the voice of strangers.”

⁶Jesus used this parable to instruct them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. ⁷Therefore, Jesus spoke to them again,

“Amen, amen, I say to you,
I am the gate of the sheepfold.
⁸All who came before me
were thieves and bandits,
but the sheep did not listen to them.
⁹“I am the gate.
Anyone who enters through me
will be saved.
He will go in and out
and will find pasture.
¹⁰“A thief comes only
to steal and kill and destroy.
I have come
that they may have life,
and have it in abundance.
¹¹“I am the good shepherd.
The good shepherd
lays down his life for the sheep.
¹²The hired hand,
who is not the shepherd
nor the owner of the sheep,
sees the wolf approaching,
and he leaves the sheep and runs away,
while the wolf catches and scatters them.
¹³He runs away
because he is only a hired hand
and he has no concern for the sheep.
¹⁴“I am the good shepherd.
I know my own,
and my own know me,
¹⁵just as the Father knows me
and I know the Father.
And I lay down my life for the sheep.
¹⁶“I have other sheep too
that do not belong to this fold.
I must lead them as well,
and they will hear my voice.
Thus, there will only be one flock,
one shepherd.
¹⁷“This is why the Father loves me,
because I lay down my life
in order to take it up again.
¹⁸No one takes it away from me.
I lay it down of my own free will.
And as I have the power to lay it down,
I have the power to take it up again.
This command I have received from my Father.”

¹⁹Once again, these words provoked a division among the Jews. ²⁰Many of them were saying, “He is possessed and out of his mind. Why should we listen to him?” ²¹But others said, “No one possessed by a demon could speak like this. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?”^[c]

I and the Father Are One

²²Feast of the Dedication.^[d] At that time, the feast of the Dedication was taking place in Jerusalem. It was winter, ²³and Jesus was walking in the temple along the Portico of Solomon.^[e]

Footnotes

John 10:1 The parable of the good shepherd, the feast of the Dedication, and the raising of Lazarus are three passages that describe who Christ is and what he wants to be for us. The ideas of life and unity dominate in these pages. The desire of Jesus is that we have access to the full reality of life. He gives life to the point of giving up his own; he is the life.
Another preoccupation impels him: to gather into one all who believe in him. So the work of God is to overcome the forces of death, destruction, and dispersion, forces that disfigure the world and our existence.
John 10:1 The image of the flock and the shepherd occurs frequently in the Bible to describe the relationship of Israel with God, or simply the relations of the people with their leader (this language came spontaneously to any civilization of antiquity). More than once the Prophets denounced as wicked shepherds those in authority who exploited the people or led them astray: kings, princes, priests, prophets of comfort (see Jer 23; Ezek 34; Zec 11:4-17). In the final analysis (they said), God alone is the shepherd to whom the flock belongs and who can properly lead and feed it. They were longing for a devoted shepherd who would act solely in God’s name.
Jesus now dares to describe himself as this Messiah-shepherd, who comes to deliver human beings from those who enslave them for their own profit or to impose upon them their own convictions. There are no other ways of reaching life and the knowledge of God: Jesus is the “gate”; he is the Shepherd who knows and gathers believers into a single flock. The word “know” signifies a mutual exchange, a reciprocal and radical belonging. This is the main assertion of the passage.
John 10:21 This is a reference to the incident of the man born blind (in the preceding chapter).
John 10:22 In the fourth Gospel, the trial of Jesus takes place throughout the book, and on each occasion the Lord asserts his oneness with the Father in unequivocal terms. Here we have a new disagreement, connected with the feast of the Dedication of the temple, which was celebrated toward the end of December. It commemorated the historical fact that in 165 B.C. Judas Maccabeus wrested the temple from the pagan king who had profaned it by installing an idol in it. It was thus a celebration of the liberation, purification, and restoration of the holy place and of its worship (see 1 Mac 4:36-39; 2 Mac 1:9-18; 10:1-8).
John 10:23 Portico of Solomon: located on the east side of the temple, and thus sheltered against the winds from the wilderness.

New Catholic Bible (NCB)