John 10:3

John 10:3. To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. This verse gives other marks which indicate a true shepherd. The keeper of the gate recognises him and gives him entrance. The sheep in the enclosure show at once that they are familiar with his voice. The sheep of his own particular flock he knows by name, and he calls them one by one. He has come in for their benefit and not his own, to lead them forth to pasturage. To none of these indications does he answer who is an intruder and no shepherd. What travellers tell us of the relation of an Eastern shepherd to his flock shows how true to nature was the language of these verses. It is by his voice that the shepherd is recognised: he calls and the sheep come round him. In every flock there are some to whom he has given particular names, and who are wont to keep near him; every one of these knows his own name and comes to the shepherd when that name is called. In this last feature the language of the parable may go beyond common experience. Such a shepherd as our Lord describes knows and calls every one of his sheep by name. It is sometimes, indeed, maintained that no distinction ought to be made between ‘the sheep' of the first clause and ‘His own sheep' in the clause that follows. But this is surely a mistake, resulting from the premature application of these words to Him who is ‘the Good Shepherd.' He no doubt knows by name every sheep of every flock: as yet, however, we have before us not the Shepherd but every one who is a shepherd of the sheep. There is some difficulty in determining who is meant by the ‘porter' of this verse. Many explanations have been given, but there are only two that seem really to agree with the conditions of the context. The keeper of the door recognises any rightful shepherd, and especially the True Shepherd (John 10:11), but closes the way to self-seekers, and this during all that time of waiting of which we have yet to speak. He cannot, therefore, be either Moses or John the Baptist; the thought of Divine care is necessary. We must thus think either of Christ Himself or of the Father or of the Holy Spirit. To refer the term, however, to the first of these would be to confuse the parable: it must belong to one of the two latter, the Father, or the Holy Spirit who gave and watched over the promises, who called and qualified the prophets of Israel. Perhaps John 10:15, in which Jesus speaks of the Father's recognition of Himself, makes the first of these two the more probable. The tenor of chap. 6 also, in which there is repeated mention of the Father's work in relation to the work of Jesus, confirms this view; and a further confirmation may be found in the parable of chap. 15, in which Jesus represents Himself as the vine and His Father as the husbandman.