“The thief doesn’t come unless it’s to steal —and kill, and destroy. I came so the sheep can have life—and have more.” —Jesus,
Christians are really fond of this verse because of the way it’s often translated: The King James Version has
More what? More of what we need.
The context.
This verse is found in the middle of Jesus’s analogy of the good shepherd. Jesus brought this subject up after he’d cured a man born blind, whom Jesus’s opponents had thrown out of their synagogue for daring to believe Jesus came from God. In response, Jesus said the following.
Jesus said,
“I entered this world in judgment so those who can’t see, might see, and those who see, may become blind.” The Pharisees with him heard
this , and told him, “We’re not blind too.” Jesus told them,
“If you were blind, you’d have no sin. Now you say, ‘We see!’ Your sin stays. Amen amen! I promise you: The person who won’t enter the sheep pen through the gate, but gets in some other way: This guy’s a thief, a raider. The person who enters through the door is the sheep’s pastor. The gatekeeper opens up for him. The sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name. He leads them out. When he gathers his own flock ,he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him: They know his voice. They never follow a stranger: They’ll run from a stranger ,since they don’t know the stranger’s voice.” Jesus told them this analogy. They didn’t understand what he was telling them, so Jesus again said,
“Amen amen! I promise you: I’m the sheep gate. Everyone who came before me are thieves and raiders, but the sheep didn’t hear them. I’m the gate: When anyone came in through me, they’ll be saved. They’ll come and go. They’ll find pasture. The thief doesn’t come unless it’s to steal —and kill, and destroy. I came so the sheep can have life—and have more.” —Jesus,
Those who read chapter 10 to understand the verse, tend to skip chapter 9, and don’t always realize whom Jesus was speaking to, and why.
The good shepherd and the thief.
So the context is Jesus’s description of himself as the good shepherd. He first called himself the gate for his sheep, and a little bit later, the shepherd, the pastor, of his sheep. He spoke about giving his sheep access to what they needed: Pasture, meaning food. Since Jesus is speaking in analogy, pasture can represent just about anything we Christ-followers need, or might thrive upon. Don’t narrowly assume it’s only one thing, like material needs (i.e. food, shelter, clothing, money) or spiritual food (i.e. bible study, good theology, gifts of the Spirit, prophecy and revelation). Jesus wasn’t specific. So let’s not be specific either. Whatever we need, the good shepherd provides us with more.
Christians are fond of misinterpreting “the thief” to be the devil. After all, the devil is a thief, a murderer, and a destroyer. But Jesus spoke of “everyone who came before me” as a thief—and there were apparently multiple thieves. Now, I can’t believe Jesus was speaking of every leader who came before him, whether messiah or prophet or teacher, like David or Moses or Ezra. There are heretic Christians who will actually go there, and claim the Old Testament needs to be thrown out or dismissed because it doesn’t teach God like Jesus does. But remember the people Jesus is speaking to: The Pharisees who followed him. At the time, they were following Jesus. But in their lives, who had come before Jesus to lead them? Right: Thieves and raiders.
Before we came to Jesus, who had led us? The very same type of person: Thieves and raiders. People who weren’t out to give us life, and give us more: They were only out for themselves. They wanted to be big, important people, and take power from their followers. The only thing they could give back to their followers, was either fraud, or what they’d stolen from their other followers in a great big spiritual Ponzi scheme. They had no true spiritual resources to draw from. Jesus, in contrast, has infinite spiritual resources to draw from.
The Pharisee leaders couldn’t offer more—of anything. They were spiritually blind: They ignored the ridiculously clear evidence in front of them that Jesus came from God, because they’d already made up their minds he hadn’t. As Jesus later said in this chapter, his works speak for themselves, and if you really do know God, you’d have no trouble figuring out who Jesus actually was. But because these Pharisees couldn’t, it proved they weren’t his sheep.
These false teachers may not think they’re out to steal, kill, and wreck. We humans are notorious for justifying even the most devilish of our behaviors, and claim we do everything only with the best of intentions. But anyone who doesn’t proclaim Jesus as Lord is unwittingly leading people to their ruin. Jesus offers us so much more. So let’s offer people Jesus.