This is part of my Exegetical Commentary series which I’m slllooowwwwly posting up here.
Note: I’m mostly done with this entry, but I plan to keep expanding contexts back earlier into GosJohn 10.
This incident is part of Calv (and soft Arm) testimony for the assurance that Christ will certainly succeed in saving the people in His flock. But sometimes it is cited against the assurance of evangelical scope (by Calvs), or against the assurance of evangelical victory (by Arms), due to Christ’s statement to certain Jews (by prior referential context, certain Pharisees who had originally been supporting Him until He warned them not to be spiritually proud), that they do not believe Him because they are not His flock: and if they are not His flock, then how could they be saved even by God? To which Calvs will add that He never intended for them to be among His flock, and so thus never even intended, much less acted, for them to come to honor and glorify and loyally serve Him, but rather intended for them to ultimately blaspheme and dishonor Him instead. (Calvs will rarely spell this out in detail, with the Father and the Son and the Spirit giving each other ultimate dishonor and blasphemy by intentionally creating and sustaining such creatures and giving such dishonoring creatures to each other, whether as a gift forever or as a gift to be annihilated! – but the logic of their position ends up like this.)
The first thing to note is that the term here, as practically everywhere else, is {probaton} and so refers to any small flock animal, not to sheep exclusively; which is only important when commentators and exegetes try to force a distinction between “sheep” and “goats” here. The distinction Jesus talks about, is whether someone is in His flock or not, not whether they are (baby!) goats compared to the rest of the flock.
Second, there is no testimony here about Christ choosing for some people to be in or out of His flock, much less choosing for some people to be given eonian life or not. That idea isn’t immediately contradicted by this scene, but at best the idea is being read in by Calvs from testimony somewhere else. They shouldn’t appeal to this scene as primary evidence for the position.
Third, the verb being usually translated in English as “you are not believing” (or something to do with belief), is as usual {pisteuô}, which can refer to mere belief but which in the scriptures has more to do with trust. It’s in present active form, {pisteuete}, so what Christ is saying (by John’s report, probably translated from Aramaic into Greek for his text), is that they are actively not trusting Him at the present time. Why? The conjunction {hoti} can refer to causation of effects, or to logical ground/consequence (just like our “because” either way), or as a demonstrative comparison. So it could mean that the effect of not trusting Him comes as a cause from them not being currently His flock; or it could mean that not trusting Him is demonstrative evidence that they are not currently of His flock. (To be fair, this verbal emphasis on present action, continuing in the indicative mood of the verb, does not necessarily count against Calv ideas that God never chose much less ever acted for them to be in His flock. Their presently acting against being in His flock would be true either way.)
Some texts of GosJohn end the sentence here, but many go on to include a harmonizational note referring back to a prior incident, “just as I have told you” – in other words Jesus has already told them they are not of His flock. This has some important contextual bearing, so we’ll get back to it later. For now, those texts with the harmonization ending tend to include (but not always, as the Textus Receptus compilation doesn’t include it) another {hoti} as an explanatory conjunction leading into the following idea (v.27), “because” His flock are constantly hearing and following His voice, in other words obeying Him. Christ {ginôskô}, presently, actively, and continually knows them in an intimate experience (which is a conjugal marriage analogy), and they are following Him in the same way. This leads into the connection that Christ is continually giving them eonian life so that by no means will they be lost or destroyed nor can they be seized by force out of His hand. This is because His Father, Who has given them to Him, is greater than all, and so no one is able to seize them out from His Father’s hand. These are not only highly important gospel assurances, which Calvs (and soft Arminians) ardently defend, which I agree they should, but the statements also have highly important contextual references to other things Christ has already said or will say later in GosJohn.
This leads into Christ declaring that He and the Father are one, which His opponents rightly interpret to mean He is claiming ultimate deity with the Father – which was one reason they stopped supporting Him earlier in GosJohn, when He criticized their spiritual pride, about being sons of Abraham, as being in league with Satan, and declared that He Himself had seen Abraham because when Abraham was, “I AM!” (Thus Jesus declared the self-existent declarative Name of the one and only ground of all existence.) That earlier scene has other contextual importance, too, which we’ll be getting back to later; but the point here is that when they take up stones against Him for blasphemy, He treats them like incompetent rabbinical students, by quoting a scripture in His defense which sounds at first like He isn’t claiming ultimate deity: if they don’t recall the context, then that only proves they are poor students; but if they do recall the contexts to recognize the rebuke, then at least they have that competency in their favor. The context however involves the highest possible Judge, God Himself, called plural Elohim, coming to His temple to be judged against, by servants He set up in authority who are now rebelling against Him, and declaring their coming punishment: “I [the one and only singular Elohim] have said that you (plural) are elohim [a plurality of lesser gods]! – but you-all shall die like mortal men!” Thus (in the Greek translation) Jesus says (GosJohn 10:35), “If He called them gods, the ones to whom the Word of God came…” This is a reference to the pious habit of Aramaic translation/commentaries, popular in and before (and after) Jesus’ ministry, to avoid risking naming a name of God by substituting “the Memra of God” (which in Greek would be “the Logos of God”), or in English “the Word of God”, as an indirect reference to God Himself – and more specifically to the visible YHWH. So Jesus is declaring contextually that He Himself is the Memra/Logos of God, the visible singular Elohim (in the Psalm), coming to them in the Temple; and that they are the rebel authorities whom He Himself had appointed as judges for His people, whom He normally would expect to be serving Him faithfully! Jesus doesn’t add the judgmental context, nor directly states the highest-deity context; but the Pharisees are competent enough to remember the context and seek to seize Him anyway! (Whereupon He eludes them somehow, perhaps by supernatural power.)
Much of the point here is that the contexts agreed on by trinitarian theists for high Christology evidence, points to these Jews as not only members of the flock but as the highest ranking members of the flock! Psalm 82, which Jesus is citing, goes even farther in this affirmation: “I on My part said you are elohim, and all of you are the sons of the Most High!” But they are rebelling: and so, being highly appointed (and created) authorities in rebellion, they are like Satan.
The whole Psalm is worth considering along this line, and is short enough to quote fully (based in the NASB translation).
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Elohim takes His stand in the congregation of Elohim; He judges in the midst of the elohim. [There is a double-meaning here of the congregation being made of gods, and the congregation belonging to God(s) Himself.]
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"How long [says the one plural Elohim, or possibly the psalmist Asaph] will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?! (Selah, a pause for contemplation)
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"Vindicate the weak and fatherless! Do justice to the afflicted and destitute!
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"Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them out of the hand of the wicked!
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"They [the wicked and/or the weak and needy] do not know nor do they understand; they walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
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"I [Elohim, the Memra/Logos/Word of God, per Jesus] said you are elohim, and all of you are sons of the Most High!
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“Nevertheless you will die like men, and fall like any one of the princes.”
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Arise, O Elohim [says the psalmist], judge the earth! For it is You Who does possess all the nations!
This all leads into further context for understanding what is and isn’t meant by Christ, but first:
Fourth, the Greek in GosJohn 10:26 doesn’t necessarily mean they are not members of His flock! The text is stable here, too, aside from very late texts (represented in the Textus Receptus) sometimes using the post-positive {gar} (as an explanatory “for”) instead of {hoti} (but meaning the same thing, as an explanatory reason): {ouk este ek tôn probatôn tôn emôn}, “you are not out-from of-the-flock, the-one-of-Me.” Sometimes {ek} will be translated in interlinears as though it means “of”, but it doesn’t: there is no Biblical Greek word for “of”, the meaning being signaled instead by genitive suffixes as here (the {-ôn} endings). This isn’t a conspiracy by translators; they’re only trying to simplify what would sound like screwy grammar in English. But I think it does accidentally obscure the point: the problem with these Jews isn’t that they are not actually of Jesus’ flock, but that they refuse to act as part of the flock! They aren’t going out from the flock to do things.
Why would anyone in Jesus’ flock go out from the flock to do something? For evangelism: they’re supposed to be bringing everyone who has been given to the Son by the Father, to the Son. They’re supposed to be cooperating with the Good Shepherd in His salvational work. In terms of Psalm 82, they are supposed to be bringing the destitute and needy, the weak and afflicted, out of the darkness and leading them to be just, bringing stability to the Earth. But they aren’t. We’ve seen this type of critique before from Jesus, even to His own disciples and apostles who are following Him more overtly, even being granted miraculous power from Him to work in His name – and yet they are somehow still doers of injustice, who are refusing to do what He says!
Again, these aren’t just random people passing by, or even random Jews (although as Jews they would be expected, by God, and through God’s grace, to have advantages in working with God in His work). This is where the prior context will come in handy, which we’ll be getting to soon. But relatedly:
Fifth, the scene starts with these Jews coming up to Jesus as He is walking in the Temple, on the porch of Solomon, and asking Him, {heôs pote tên psuchên hêmôn aireis}? “Until when will you be lifting up the soul of us?” That’s almost certainly not what you’ll find in your own English translation! – but that’s because it sounds weird and doesn’t seem to fit the context, so there are reasonable guesses that it means something like, “How long will you keep us in suspense?” For they want Him to openly declare Himself the Messiah.
This isn’t irony on their part. They’re declaring themselves on His side, as part of His flock in other words. This connects directly to the idea that they are rebels of His flock, refusing to obey Him or even to trust Him! Jesus replies that He has already told them, but they aren’t accepting this because they aren’t trusting Him.
Their request (and the reply of their Messiah) also connects directly to prior narrative contexts, including here in (what came to be later grouped as) GosJohn 10, and back in GosJohn 8. Once that is understood, the literal Greek becomes much clearer: they expect Him to lift up their souls (or their lives) by openly declaring Himself publicly and clearly to be the Messiah (or in Greek the Christ). But what would that mean, to them? – what are they expecting?
By prior story contexts, Jesus has already had to deal with proto-zealots (the Zealot party itself wouldn’t be established until later), and their rabbinic and Pharisaic supporters, who wanted to crown Jesus king by force! – and during a Passover Festival no less! (This is reported back in GosJohn 6, as part of John’s larger contexts of the Feeding of the Five Thousand.) Part of Jesus’ critique to them at that time, was that they had no interest in anyone other than Jews following Jesus: they only wanted their enemies to be destroyed, not to be saved from their sins.
By reference to a more recent incident, however (in GosJohn 8), where His supporters among the Pharisees were turning around to strongly oppose Him after defending Him to their peers, these people have a similar problem: they have a competitive spiritual superiority by claiming to be sons of Abraham, but this spiritual pride only makes them sons of Satan instead.
They don’t think they need to repent of any sins, because they are appealing to the Abrahamic covenant, which brings up the whole topic of what that covenant was about: the promise that God would bring all of Abraham’s descendants to righteousness, even as many as the stars in the sky. What the Jews tended to focus on, however, was the far more obvious promise about inheriting a certain portion of Levantine land, which doesn’t seem (on the face of it) to have anything to do with being righteous at all. But if the Creator of all creatures comes Himself as Abraham’s descendant, to fulfill the covenant made between the visible and the invisible Jehovah (because Abraham was put to sleep rather than actually participating in the covenant), then all rational creatures are included in the covenant between YHWH the Father and YHWH the Son. There can be no spiritual pride, because there is no spiritual exclusivity: the elect, such as the nation of Israel, are chosen for the sake of blessing the non-elect, not for their own sakes, nor as the only people whom God has chosen to be saved from their sins into righteousness!
But those who insist on having spiritual pride – and so who from that position insist that only some people (like themselves) are being saved, while others have never been chosen by God to be brought to righteousness – must reject the blessings and eventual inclusion of the non-elect in order to keep their spiritual pride. They want to have only their own souls lifted up – not other people’s souls! They have no interest in going out from the flock to bring more people into being followers of the Good Shepherd. They want the flock to be as small and exclusive as possible, in order to promote their own self-importance – even if that would necessarily require that God shall be ultimately blasphemed, and that Justice Himself should either fail or never even intend to lead some doers of injustice to do justice at last in full and loving agreement with Justice Himself.
The whole underlying referential context actually runs against the insistence that some people shall never be servants of God. Of course, what’s being morally judged here isn’t the mere idea that some people shall never be servants of God, which is only a question of fact – a mere mistake about that fact isn’t a sin, even though the mistake should and shall be corrected some day. But insisting that some people must always be sinners, for the sake of one’s own spiritual pride? That is definitely a sin, and in its own way it is the sin of Satan.
The Pharisaic Jews here want to be assured of their own salvation: they don’t want an ultimate scope of salvation, nor an ultimate assurance of other people’s salvation, to be true. As often happens in the Gospel accounts, Jesus judges against them with the assurance that other people will be saved, not at the moment talking about the assurance that they also will be saved from their sins – including being saved from the sin of insisting that God cannot or will not save other people from their sins! But if we, coming along afterward, insist that God cannot or will not save these Pharisees from their sins, too, then we are revealing ourselves to be like them, and under the same judgment, insofar as we do so from our own spiritual pride.
And, regarding the mere question of fact about whether or not they will also be saved from their sins, this can be demonstrated from the verbal contextual connections of this half of GosJohn, to other portions of John’s account.
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