Scripture Daily

Context No. 425 of 4322 · John

Context · Reflection

John 10:1-6: in context

1“Most certainly, I tell you, one who doesn’t enter by the door into the sheep fold, but climbs up some other way, is a thief and a robber. 2But one who enters in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. 3The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4Whenever he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. 5They will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him; for they don’t know the voice of strangers.” 6Jesus spoke this parable to them, but they didn’t understand what he was telling them.

Jesus tells a small parable about a sheepfold, and the whole thing turns on a sound: the shepherd's voice. He describes the shepherd coming to the pen in the morning. The gatekeeper opens for him, and the sheep hear his voice, and here is the tender detail, he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. Not a mass, not a flock in general, but each one by name. And when he leads them out and walks ahead of them, they follow, and Jesus gives the reason plainly: because they know his voice.

Then he draws the contrast that is the point. A stranger they will not follow, he says; they will flee from him, because they do not know the stranger's voice. The sheep are not kept safe by being clever or by carefully analyzing each voice that calls them. They are kept safe by one thing: they know their own shepherd's voice so intimately, from long familiarity, that any other voice sounds foreign to them, and they instinctively pull away from it. Recognition is their whole protection. Because they know his voice deeply, they can tell, without having to reason it out, what is not his voice, and they flee it. In a world full of voices calling the sheep in every direction, the one safeguard is knowing the true shepherd's voice well enough that the strangers' voices simply do not ring true.

That reframes how I stay from being led astray. I tend to think I will protect myself from wrong voices, wrong influences, wrong leaders, by being smart enough to analyze and evaluate them. Jesus points somewhere else: the sheep are safe because they know the shepherd's voice, not because they are good at critiquing strangers. Do I know Christ's voice that well, from enough time spent close to him and steeped in his word, that other voices sound foreign to me, or have I spent so little time with the shepherd that I could not reliably tell his voice from a stranger's calling me the other way?

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