John 10:25-26

“ Jesus answered them, I told you and you do not believe; the works which I do in my Father's name, these works bear witness of me. 26. But, as for you, you do not believe; for you are not of my sheep, as I said to you. ”

The position of Jesus with relation to the Jews had never been so critical. To answer yes, is not possible for Him; for the meaning which they give to the term Christ has, so to speak, nothing in common with that which He Himself attaches to it. To say no. is still less possible; for He is indeed the Christ promised of God, and, in this sense, the one whom they expect. His reply is admirable for its wisdom. He refers, as in John 8:25, to His testimonies in which He had applied to Himself the Messianic symbols of the old covenant and in some sort spelt out His title of Christ, so that if they were willing to believe, they had only to pronounce it themselves. Thus is His reply explained. The verb: I said to you, has no object; it is easy to supply the ellipsis: that which you ask me. To His own testimony, if it does not appear to them sufficient, there is added, moreover, that of the Father. His miracles were all works of the Father; for they were wrought with the invocation of His name; if Jesus were an impostor, would God have answered him thus? If these testimonies failed with them, it is the result of their unbelief (John 10:26). He is not the Messiah whom their heart demands: this is the reason why they affect not to understand what is so clear. The subject ὑμεῖς, you, placed at the beginning, signifies: It is not I, it is you, who are responsible for this result. And the following declaration: You are not of my sheep, shows them that the moral disposition is what is wanting to them that they may recognize in Him the divine Shepherd. The formula of quotation: as I said to you, is omitted by the Alexandrian MSS. But perhaps this omission arises from the fact that these words were not found textually in the preceding discourses. The authority of 12 Mjj., supported by that of the most ancient Vss., appears to us to guarantee their authenticity. In our first edition, we made them the preamble of John 10:27, especially because of the relation between the contents of this verse and that of John 10:3-5. The pronoun ὑμῖν, you, however (“as I said to you ”), favors rather the connection of this formula of quotation with John 10:26. For Jesus has never applied to the unbelieving Jews the promises of John 10:27; while He has frequently addressed to them charges equivalent to that of John 10:26. The charge of not being His sheep really formed the basis of the parables, John 10:1-5 and John 10:7-10, in which Jesus had distinguished clearly from His sheep the mass of the people and their rulers, His interlocutors in general. Reuss: “Jesus had nowhere said this.” Then again: “The allegory of the sheep,” he says, “had been presented to an entirely different public.” Finally, he maliciously adds: “It is only the readers of the Gospel who have not left the scene.” We have shown that Jesus had said this, and it is not difficult to show that He had said it to the same hearers. For the discourse in John 10:1-18 had not been addressed, as Reuss asserts, to pilgrim strangers who had come to the feast of Tabernacles and afterwards had departed, but to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, in response to some of the Pharisees (John 9:40) who had asked: “ And are we also blind? ” No doubt, we cannot hold that it was identically the same individuals who were found there again after two months; but it was the same population all whose members were alike in their dependence on the rulers and their general hostility to Jesus. The essential aim of the following words, in which Jesus describes the privileges of His sheep, is certainly that of making His hearers feel what an abyss separates them from such a condition.

Nevertheless this description naturally becomes an invitation to come to Him, addressed to those who are the least ill-disposed.