Why does Christ call the Chief Priests 'thieves and robbers'?
He would have embraced them—maybe they would have been our priests. But they chose to betray their sacred office, and to try to destroy Him.
He would have embraced them—maybe they would have been our priests. But they chose to betray their sacred office, and to try to destroy Him.
Editor’s Notes
Context for Christ’s Good Shepherd discourse
The Second Sunday after Easter is known as “Good Shepherd Sunday,” based on the reading from the Gospel. Having just celebrated the Resurrection, the Church turns back to this passage because Easter reveals the full meaning of Christ as Shepherd: he lays down his life, rises again, and continues to gather and guide his sheep—now and unto eternity.
It also points towards the Ascension and Pentecost, after which his Apostles will assume their roles as the Pastors of the Church.
Our Lord’s sermon, recounted by St John, takes place in Jerusalem during the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot). According to Coleridge, John 10 recounts two separate events (the second being at the Feast of the Dedication, or Hanukkah).
The sermon explains the escalating conflict between Christ and the Pharisees and the Chief Priests, with Our Lord exposing the contrast between the way they discharge their duties, and how he fulfils his divine mission. He lays the foundation for the Church’s true pastoral office, refutes the claims of illegitimate religious authority, and reveals the divine charity at the heart of his mission.
As well as presenting himself as the Good Shepherd who will unify Jews and Gentiles, he foretells how he will reconcile them to God through his voluntary Passion.
In this first part, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How Christ reveals the true nature of authority through the image of the shepherd.
That God holds pastors accountable not only for their souls, but for the flock entrusted to them.
Why Christ begins this discourse by reproving the Pharisees’ abuse of pastoral office with restrained solemnity.
He shows us that illegitimate authority opposes him by wounding the flock and rejecting his mercy.
The Good Shepherd
The Preaching of the Cross, Part I, Chapter XV
St. John x. 1–21.
Story of the Gospels, § 96
Burns and Oates, London, 1886
Why does Christ call the Chief Priests 'thieves and robbers'?
Why Christ is 'the door' through which every good shepherd must come
Why the Good Shepherd told the wolves they had no power over him
Effect of 'The Good Shepherd' on the different classes of the Jews
Occasion of our Lord’s discourse
The sin of which the priests of Jerusalem had been guilty, and which they had renewed and intensified by their treatment of the man on whom this last miracle had been worked, was not simply a sin of obstinate incredulity, as it might have been in any of the common people who might have refused to accept the evidence of miracles in favour of our Lord.
They were not of the common people. They were men in authority, which had been received from God, and they were responsible to Him, not only for their management of their own souls in matters of private conduct, but for their use of the power which He had connected with their office, a power which put them into relations with the people around them which may best be described by the word pastoral.
They had now misused this power, put into their hands by God, in direct hostility to the work of God, and in this respect their sin had a peculiar darkness and mischievousness of its own.
Reproof of the Pharisees
Our Lord therefore proceeded at once, without any break, as it seems, in His discourse, to speak of this position of theirs and of the use which they had made of it against Himself, and to the great scandal and disadvantage of the people over whom they were in a certain sense set.
He did this in a way less reproachful to them than He might have used, first by speaking generally, and parabolically, and then also by making His discourse a description of His own pastoral office, at the same time that it is a reproof of their neglect of theirs. The discharge of this part of His Mission was a thought which was very dear to His Sacred Heart, as we have already seen, in the manner in which He dwells upon it in His discourse about scandalizing little ones.
It was a part of this love of our Lord for the pastoral office which was committed to Him, that He should yearn with inexpressible desire for all those who were in any way to be made partakers of it with Him, and to have a share at once in its responsibilities and in its dangers and rewards. These men to whom He was now speaking had their part and share in the office, for the image of the shepherd is used of them in the Prophets, and there is much there said about the account which such men have to give if they neglect it.
This thought sheds a light of its own on the dealings of our Lord with these false shepherds of the flock, who were doing so much to ruin His work among the sheep, for whom He was to lay down His life. He had been ready to take them to His Heart if they had corresponded to His grace, and now they had set themselves in the most violent opposition to Him. He begins by solemnly reminding them of the misery of being shepherds and yet not working in the right way for the sheep.
They had made themselves, in fact, enemies instead of friends. They had exercised their pastoral authority to the destruction of the flock, instead of its edification, by their conduct towards our Lord, which had now issued in the excommunication of the man who had been healed. It was fitting that some notice of this act of hostility should be taken by our Lord.
The shepherd and the fold
‘Amen, amen, I say to you, he that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up another way, the same is a thief and a robber.’
He was Himself, as He explains presently, the door to the fold. But He goes on first to give a picture of the shepherd who enters by the door.
‘But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the porter openeth, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out, and when he leadeth out his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him, because they know his voice, but a stranger they follow not, but flee from him, because they know not the voice of strangers.’
We are told by some commentators that it is probable that on this occasion also, as on so many others, our Lord had before His eyes something which suggested the picture which is drawn by Him in these beautiful words about the shepherd. It is true that these words must have been said either in the Temple or in some place in Jerusalem. But there may have been folds for flocks in the immediate neighbourhood of the pool of Siloe, near which was the sheepgate, as it was called, and the description itself rather suggests a home for more flocks than one, such as might be found, as elsewhere in the Holy Land, so especially close to the city, to which the shepherds might bring their flocks for the purpose of greater security from the neighbouring mountains.
Even at the present day, travellers in those countries still tell us of the folds surrounded by walls, with a door which is guarded by a special porter, into which the sheep of different shepherds are collected. When the shepherd wishes to take his own flock to pasture, he is admitted by the porter. He calls his own sheep, who know his voice, he leads them out, and they follow him as he calls them on from time to time. Thus there is no feature in this description which might not have been present to our Lord and those to whom He was speaking at the moment.
Both in this description, and in the explanation of it which follows, our Lord dwells mainly on the points which characterize the shepherd whose the sheep are. But He mixes up also points which distinguish the unlawful aggressor on the fold, or the shepherd who is not truly such. Thus the picture which is here drawn puts before them the true shepherd first, and in the second place the circumstances which belong to the false teacher or pastor. He has evidently in His mind the charge which they have made against Himself by their excommunication of the poor man whom He had healed.
The false shepherd is he who does not enter by the door, but climbs over the wall some other way, because he knows that the porter will not admit him. He comes in again incidentally in the passage where it is said that the sheep do not know the voice of strangers, and therefore will not follow him. These are the points in the parable in which the contrast is drawn out between the true shepherd and the thief and robber.
In the next part, Fr Coleridge explains how the Pharisees misunderstood the parable, and how this prompts further explanation from Our Lord.
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The Good Shepherd
Why does Christ call the Chief Priests 'thieves and robbers'?
Why Christ is 'the door' through which every good shepherd must come
Why the Good Shepherd told the wolves they had no power over him
Effect of 'The Good Shepherd' on the different classes of the Jews
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