John 10:16

16. other sheep I have] Not the Jews in heathen lands, but Gentiles, for even among them He had sheep. The Jews had asked in derision, ‘Will He go and teach the Gentiles?’ (Joh_7:35). He declares here that among the despised heathen He has sheep. He was going to lay down His life, ‘not for that nation only’ (Joh_11:52), but that He might ‘draw all men unto Him’ (Joh_12:32). Of that most heathen of heathen cities, Corinth, He declared to S. Paul in a vision, ‘I have much people in this city’ (Act_18:10).

not of this fold] Emphasis on ‘fold,’ not on ‘this;’ the Gentiles were in no fold at all, but ‘scattered abroad’ (Joh_11:52).

them also I must bring] Better, them also I must lead. No need for them to be removed; Christ can lead them in their own lands. ‘Neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem’ (Joh_4:21) is the appointed place. Note the ‘must;’ it is the Messiah’s bounden duty, decreed for Him by the Father: comp. Joh_3:14, Joh_9:4, Joh_12:34, Joh_20:9.

there shall be one fold, and one shepherd] Rather, they shall become one flock, one shepherd. The distinction between ‘be’ and ‘become’ is worth preserving (see on Joh_9:27; Joh_9:39), and that between ‘flock’ and ‘fold’ still more so. ‘There shall become one fold’ would imply that at present there are more than one: but nothing is said of any other fold. In both these instances our translators have rejected their better predecessors: Tyndale and Coverdale have ‘flock,’ not ‘fold;’ the Geneva Version has ‘be made,’ not ‘be.’ One point in the Greek cannot be preserved in English. The words for ‘flock’ and ‘shepherd’ are cognate and very similar, poimnê and poimen: ‘one herd, one herdsman’ would be the nearest approach we could make, and to change ‘flock’ for ‘herd’ would be more loss than gain. The change from ‘flock’ to ‘fold’ has been all loss, leading to calamitous misunderstanding.

“The universalism of Joh_10:16, which is so often quoted against the Gospel, seems rather to be exactly of the kind of which we have abundant evidence in the Synoptists: e.g. in Mat_8:11; Mat_13:24-30; Mat_28:19; Luk_13:29. A certain precedence is assigned to Israel, but the inclusion of the Gentiles is distinctly contemplated.” And if S. Matthew could appreciate this side of his Master’s teaching, how much more S. John, who had lived to see the success of missions to the heathen and the destruction of Jerusalem. “On the other hand, the nature of S. John’s universalism must not be mistaken. It implies a privileged position on the part of the Jews.” S. pp. 172, 173. Moreover, even O.T. prophets seem to have had a presentiment that other nations would share in the blessings of the Messiah. Mic_4:2; Isa_52:15.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Joh 10:16-18. And other sheep have I — Whom I foreknow as repenting and believing in me; which are not of this fold — Not of the Jewish Church or nation, but Gentiles. Some, indeed, understand by these the Jews living out of the land of Canaan; but certainly they could not with propriety be said not to belong to the fold of Israel. The incorporating the believing Gentiles into one church with the Jews was a grand event, worthy of such particular notice. Them also I must bring — Namely, into my church, the general assembly of those whose names are written in heaven. And they shall hear my voice — The voice of my gospel, calling them to repentance, and inviting them to believe in me as their Redeemer and Saviour. And there shall be one fold — Greek, μια ποιμνη, one flock, though in different folds, no corrupt or divided flocks remaining; and one shepherd — Who laid down his life for the sheep, and will leave no hireling among them. This unity, both of the flock and the Shepherd, shall be completed in its season. The shepherds shall bring all into one flock, and the whole flock shall hear the one Shepherd. Therefore doth my Father love me — He loves me more especially on this account, approving it as an act of eminent duty and love to him; because I lay down my life — That I am come into the world with this design, to give my life for the redemption of my sheep, which are dear to him, as well as to me; that I might take it again — And possess it for ever, to be employed for his glory and for the happiness of my people. In other words, I cheerfully die to expiate the sins of mankind, to the end I may rise again for their justification. No man taketh it from me — “This,” says Dr. Campbell, “can hardly be said with propriety, since he suffered by the hands of others. The English verb take, does not express the full import of the Greek, αιρεω, [here used.] In this place it is evidently our Lord’s intention to inform his hearers, that his enemies could not by violence take his life, if he did not voluntarily put himself in their power.” Hence he translates the clause, No one forceth it from me, but I give it up of myself — By my own free act and deed; I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again — I have an original power and right of myself, both to lay it down as a ransom, and to take it again after full satisfaction is made for the sins of the whole world. I am able to raise myself from the dead! nay, I can do it as easily as I can die! Nevertheless, I do not lay down my life, nor rise from the dead, without the appointment of my Father. In both I act wisely, and agreeably to the divine will. This commandment — Or, this commission, as the word εντολη may be rendered; have I received of my Father — Which I readily execute. Our Lord’s receiving this commission as a Mediator, is not to be considered as the ground of his power to lay down and resume his life, for this he had in himself, as having an original right to dispose thereof antecedent to the Father’s commission. But this commission was the reason why he thus used his power in laying down his life: he did it in obedience to his Father.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John

‘OTHER SHEEP’ 1

Joh 10:16.

There were many strange and bitter lessons in this discourse for the false shepherds, the Pharisees, to whom it was first spoken. But there was not one which would jar more upon their minds, and as they fancied, on their sacredest convictions, than this, that God’s flock was wider than God’s fold. Our Lord distinctly recognises Judaism with its middle wall of partition as a divine institution, and then as distinctly carries His gaze beyond it. To His hearers ‘this fold,’ their own national polity, held all the flock. Without were dogs, a doleful land, where ‘the wild beasts of the desert met with the wild beasts of the islands.’ And now this new Teacher, not content with declaring them hirelings, and Himself the only true Shepherd of Israel, breaks down the hedges and speaks of Himself as the Shepherd of men. No wonder that they said, ‘He hath a devil and is mad.’

During His earthly life our Lord, as we know, confined His own personal ministry for the most part to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Not exclusively so, for He made at least one journey into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, teaching and healing; a Syro-Phoenician woman held His feet, and received her request; and one of His miracles, of feeding the multitude, was wrought for hungry Gentiles. But while His work was in Israel, it was for mankind; and while ‘this fold,’ generally speaking, circumscribed His toils, it did not confine His love nor His thoughts. More than once world-wide declarations and promises broke from His lips, even before the final universal commission, ‘Preach the Gospel to every creature.’ ‘I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.’ ‘I am the Light of the world.’ These and other similar sayings give us His lofty consciousness that He has received ‘the heathen for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession.’ Parallel with them in substance are the words before us, which, for our present purpose, we may regard as containing lessons from our Lord Himself of how He looked and would have us look on the heathen world, on His work and ours, and on the certain issues of both.

I. We have here Christ teaching us how to think of the heathen world.

Observe that His words are not a declaration that all mankind are His sheep. The previous verses have distinctly defined a class of men as possessing the name, and the succeeding ones reiterate the definition, and with equal distinctness exclude another class. ‘Ye believe not, because ye are not My sheep as I said unto you.’ His sheep are they who know Him and are known of Him. Between Him and them there is a communion of love, a union of life, and a consequent reciprocal knowledge, which transcends the closest intimacies of earthly life, and finds its only analogue in that deep and mysterious oneness which subsists between the Father, who alone knoweth the Son, and the only begotten Son, who being ever in the bosom of the Father, alone knoweth Him and revealeth Him to us. ‘I know My sheep and am known of Mine; as the Father knoweth Me and I know the Father. They hear My voice and follow Me, and I give unto them eternal life.’ Such are the characteristics of that relation between Christ and men by which they become His sheep. It is such souls as these whom our Lord beholds in the wasteful wilderness. He is speaking not of a relation which all men bear to Him by virtue of their creation, but of one which they bear to Him who believe in His name.

Now this interpretation of the words does by no means contradict, but rather presupposes and rests upon the truth that all mankind come within the love of the divine heart, that He died for all, that all may be the subjects of His mediatorial kingdom, recipients of the offered mercy of God in Christ, and committed to the stewardship of the missionary Church. Resting upon these truths, the words of our text advance a step further and contemplate those who ‘shall hereafter believe on Me.’ Whether they be few or many is not the matter in hand. Whether at any future time they shall include all the dwellers upon earth is not the matter in hand. That every soul of man is included in the adaptation and intention and offer of the Gospel is not the matter in hand. But this is the matter in hand, that Jesus Christ in that moment of lofty elevation when He looked onwards to giving His life for the sheep, looked outwards also, far afield, and saw in every nation and people souls that He knew were His, and would one day know Him, and be led by Him ‘in green pastures and beside still waters.’

But where or what were they when He spoke? He does not mean that already they had heard His voice and were following His steps, and knew His love, and had received eternal life at His hand. This He cannot mean, for the plain reason that He goes on to speak of His ‘bringing’ them and of their ‘hearing,’ a work yet to be done. It can only be, then, that He speaks of them thus in the fullness of that divine knowledge which ‘calls things that are not as though they were.’ It is then a prophetic word which He speaks here.

We have only to think of the condition of the civilised heathendom of Christ’s own day in order to feel the force of our text in its primary application. While the work of salvation was being prepared for the world in the life and death of our Lord, the world was being prepared for the tidings of salvation. Everywhere men were losing their faith in their idols, and longing for some deliverer. Some had become weary of the hollowness of philosophical speculation, and, like Pilate, were asking ‘What is truth?’ whilst, unlike Him, they waited for an answer, and will believe it when it comes from the lips of the Incarnate wisdom. Such were the Magi who were led by their starry science to His cradle, and went back to the depths of the Eastern lands with a better light than had guided them thither. Such were not a few of the early Christian converts, who had long been seeking hopelessly for goodly pearls, and had so been learning to know the worth of the One when it was offered to them. There were men who had been long sickening with despair amidst the rottenness of decaying mythologies and corrupting morals, and longing for some breath from heaven to blow health to themselves and to the world, and had so been learning to welcome ‘the rushing mighty wind’ when it came in power. There were simple souls, without as well as within the chosen people, waiting for the Consolation, though they knew not whence it was to come. There were many who had already learned to believe that ‘salvation is of the Jews,’ though they had still to learn that salvation is in Jesus. Such were that Aethiopian statesman who was poring over Isaiah when Philip joined him, the Roman centurion at Caesarea whose prayers and alms came up with acceptance before God, these Greeks of the West who came to His cross as the Eastern sages to His cradle, and were in Christ’s eyes the advance guard and first scattered harbingers of the flocks who should come flying for refuge to Him lifted on the Cross, ‘like doves to their windows.’ The whole world showed that the fullness of time had come; and the history of the early years of the Church reveals in how many souls the process of preparation had been silently going on. It was like the flush of early spring, when all the buds that had been maturing and swelling in the cold, burst, and the tender flowers that had been reaching upwards to the surface in all the hard winter laugh out in beauty, and a green veil covers all the hedges at the first flash of the April sun.

Not only these were in our Lord’s thoughts when He saw His sheep in heathen lands. There were many who had no such previous preparation, but were plunged in all the darkness, nor knew that it was dark. Not only those wearied of idolatry, and dissatisfied with creeds outworn, but the barbarous people of Illyricum, the profligates of Corinth, hard rude men like the jailer at Philippi, and many more were before His penetrating eye. He who sees beneath the surface, and beyond the present, beholds His sheep where men can only see wolves. He sees an Apostle in the blaspheming Saul, a teacher for all generations in the African Augustine while yet a sensualist and a Manichee, a reformer in the eager monk Luther, a poet-evangelist in the tinker Bunyan. He sees the future saint in the present sinner, the angel’s wings budding on many a shoulder where the world’s burdens lie heavy, and the new name written on many a forehead that as yet bears but the mark of the beast, and the number of His name.

And the sheep whom He sees while He speaks are not only the men of that generation. These mighty words are world-wide and world-lasting. The whole of the ages are in His mind. All nations are gathered before His prophetic vision, even as they shall one day be gathered before His judgment throne, and in all the countless mass His hand touches and His love clasps those who to the very end of time shall come to His call with loving faith, shall follow His steps with glad obedience.

Thus does Christ look out upon the world that lay beyond the fold. I cannot stay to do more than refer in passing to the spirit which the words of our text breathe. There is the lofty consciousness that He is the Leader and Guide, the Friend and Helper of all, that He stands solitary in His power to bless. There is the full confidence that the earth is His to its uttermost border. There is the clear vision of the sorrowful condition of these heathen people, without a shepherd and without a fold, wandering on every high mountain and dying in every thirsty land where there is no water. There are the tenderest pity and yearning love for them in their extremity. There is the clear assurance that they will come and be blessed in Him. I pass by all the other thoughts, which naturally found themselves on these words, in order to urge the one which is most appropriate to our present engagement. Let us, dear brethren, take Christ as our pattern in our contemplations of the heathen world.

He has set us the example of an outgoing look directed far beyond the limits of the existing churches, far beyond the point of present achievement. We are but too apt to circumscribe our operative thoughts and our warm sympathies within the circle of our sight, or of our own personal associations. Our selfishness and our indolence affect the objects of our contemplations quite as much as they do the character of our work. They vitiate both, by making ourselves the great object of both, and by weakening the force of both in a ratio that increases rapidly with the increasing distance from that favourite centre. It is but a subtle form of the same disease which keeps our thoughts penned within the bounds of any fold, or limited by the progress already achieved. For us the whole world is the possession of our Lord, who has died to redeem us. By us the whole ought to be contemplated with that same spirit of prophetic confidence which filled Him when He said, ‘Other sheep I have which are not of this fold.’ To press onwards, ‘forgetting the things that are behind, and reaching forth to those which are before,’ is the only fitting attitude for Christian men, either in regard to the gradual purifying of their own characters, or in regard to the gradual winning of the world for Christ. We ought to make all past successes stepping-stones to nobler things. The true use of the present is to reach up from it to a loftier future. The distance beckons; well for us if it do not beckon us in vain. We have yet to learn the first lesson of our Master’s spirit, as expressed in these words, if we have not become familiar with the pitying contemplation of the wastes beyond the fold, nor fixed deep in our minds the faith that the amplitude of its walls will have to be widened with growing years till it fills the world. The cry echoes to us from of old, ‘Lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes, for thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left.’ We take the first step to respond to the summons when we make the ‘regions beyond’ one of the standing subjects of our devout thoughts, and take heed of supposing that the Church as we know it, has the same measurement which the man with the golden rod has measured for the eternal courts of Jerusalem, that shall be the joy of the whole earth. The very genius of the Gospel is aspiring. It is content with nothing short of universality for the sweep, and eternity for the duration, and absolute completeness for the measure, of its bestowments on man. We should be like men on a voyage of discovery, whose task is felt to be incomplete until headland after headland that fades in the dim distance has been rounded and surveyed, and the flag of our country planted upon it. After each has been passed another arises from the water, onwards we must go. There is no pause for our thoughts, none for our sympathy, none for our work, till our keels have visited, and the ‘shout of a King’ has been heard on every shore that fills ‘the breadth of Thy land, O Emmanuel!’ The limits of the visible community of Christ’s Church to-day are far within the borders to which it must one day stretch. It is for us, taught by His words, to understand that we are yet as it were but encamped by Jericho, and at the beginning of the campaign. Ai and Bethhoron, and many a fight more are before us yet. The camp of the invaders, when they lay around the city of palm-trees, with the mountains in front and the Jordan behind, was not more unlike the settled order of the nation when it filled the land, than the ranks of Christ’s army to-day are to the mighty multitudes that shall one day name His name, and follow His banner. Let us live in the future, and lay strongly hold on the distant; for both are our Lord’s, and by so doing we shall the better do our Master’s work in the present, and at hand.

He has set us the example of a penetrating gaze into heathenism, which reveals beneath its monotonous miseries, the souls that are His. We ought to look on every field of Christian effort with the assurance that in it there are some who will hear His voice. As it was when He came, so it is ever and everywhere. The world is being prepared for the Gospel. In some broad regions, faith in idolatry is dying out, and the moral condition of the people is undergoing a slow elevation. Individuals are being weaned from their gods, they know not how, and they will not know why till they hear of Christ. He sees in every land where the Gospel is being taken ‘a people prepared for the Lord.’ He sees the gold gleaming in the crevices of the caves, the gems, rough and unpolished, lying in the matrix. He looks not merely on the great mass of idolaters, but He sees the single souls who shall hear. It is for us to look on the same mass with confidence caught from His. Neither apathetic indifference nor faint-hearted doubt should be permitted to weaken our hands. The prospect may seem very dark, the power of the enemy very great, our resources very inadequate; but let us look with Christ’s eye, we shall know that everywhere we may hope to find a response to our message. Who they may be, we know not. How many they may be, we know not. How they may be guided by Him, they know not. But He knows all. We may know that they are there. And as we cannot tell who they are but only that they are, we are bound to cherish hopes for all-the most degraded and outcast of our race. We have no right to give up any field or any man as hopeless. Christ’s sheep will be found coming out of the midst of wolves and goats. Darkness may cover the earth, and gross darkness the people; but if we look upon it as Christ did, and as He would have us to look, we shall see lights flickering here and there in the obscurity, which shall burst out into a blaze. The prophetic eye, the boundlessly hopeful heart, the strong confidence that in every land where He is preached there will be those who shall hear-these are what He gives us when He says, ‘Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold.’

There is one other thought connected with these words which may be briefly referred to. It is that even now, in all lands where the Gospel has been preached, there are those whom Christ has received, although they have no connection with His visible Church.

There are many goats within the fold. There are many sheep without it. Even in lands where the Gospel has long been preached, we do not venture to identify profession by Church fellowship with living union with Christ. Much more is this true of our missionary efforts, and the apparent converts whom they make. The results that appear are no measure of the results that have actually been accomplished. We often hear of men who had caught up some stray word in a Bengali market-place, or received a tract by the roadside from some passing missionary, and who, having carried away the seed in their hearts, had long been living as Christians remote from all churches and unknown by any. We can easily conceive that timidity in some cases, and distance in others, swell the ranks of these secret disciples. Though they follow not the footsteps of the flock, the Shepherd will lead them in their solitude. There will be many more names in the Lamb’s book of life, depend upon it, than ever are written on the roll-calls of our churches, or in missionary statistics. The shooting-stars that yearly fill our sky are visible to us for a moment, when their orbit passes into the lighted heavens, and then they disappear in the shadow of the earth. But astronomers tell us that they are always there though to us they seem to blaze but for a moment. We cannot see them, but they move on their darkling path and have a sun round which they circle. So be sure that in many heathen lands there are believing souls, seen by us but for an instant and then lost, who yet fill their unseen place, and move obedient round the Sun of Righteousness. Their names on earth are dark, but when the manifestation of the sons of God shall come, they shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and as the stars for ever and ever. Our work has results beyond our knowledge now. When the Church, the Lamb’s wife, shall lift up her eyes at the end of the days, prophecy tells us that she shall wonder to see her thronging children, whom she had never known till then, and will say, ‘Who hath begotten me these? Behold I was left alone. These, where had they been?’ These were God’s hidden ones, nourished and brought up beyond the pale of the outward Church, but brought at last to share her triumph, and to abide at her side. ‘Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold.’

What confidence then, what tender pity, what hope should fill our minds when we look on the heathen world! We must never be contented with present achievements. We are committed to a task which cannot end till all the world hears the joyful sound and is blessed by walking in the light of His countenance. When the great Roman Catholic missionary, the Apostle of the East, was lying on his dying bed among the barbarous people whom he loved, his passing spirit was busy about his work, and, even in the article of death, while the glazing eye saw no more clearly and the ashen lips had begun to stiffen into eternal silence, visions of further conquests flashed before him, and his last word was ‘Amplius’-Onward! It ought to be the motto of the missionary work of us, who boast a purer faith, to carry to the heathen and to fire our own souls. If ever we are tempted to repose, to despondency, to rest and be thankful when we number up our work and our converts, let us listen to His voice as it speaks in that supreme hour when He beheld the vision of the Cross, and beyond it that of a gathered world: ‘Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold.’

We have here-

II. Christ teaching us how to think of His work and ours.

‘Them also I must bring.’ A necessity is laid upon Him, which springs at once from that divine work which is the law of His life, and from His own love and pity. The means for accomplishing this necessary work are implied in the context, as in other parallel Scriptural sayings, to be His propitiatory death. The instrumentality employed is not only His own personal agency on earth, nor only His throned rule on the right hand of God with power over the Spirit of holiness, but also the work of His Church, and His work through them. Of that He is mainly speaking when He says, ‘Them also I must bring.’ Here, then, are some truths which ought to underlie and shape as well as animate our efforts for heathenism.

And first, remember that the same sovereign necessity which was laid on Him presses on us.

The ‘Spirit of life’ which was in Christ had its ‘law,’ which was the will of God. That shaped all His being, and He set us the example of perfectly clear recognition of, and perfect obedience to it, from the first moment when He said, ‘I must be about My Father’s business,’ to the last, when He sighed forth, ‘Father, into Thy hands I commit My spirit.’ Hence the frequent sayings setting forth His work as determined by an imperative ‘must,’ which, whether it be alleged in reference to some apparently small or to some manifestly great thing in His life, is always equally imperative, and whether it seem to be based on the need for the fulfilment of some prophetic word, or on the proprieties and congruities of sonship, reposes at last on the will of God. His final words on the Passover night, before he went out to Gethsemane in the moonlight, contain the influence which moulded His whole earthly life, ‘As the Father gave Me commandment, even so I do.’

And this divine will constitutes for Him the deepest ground of the necessity in the case before us. The eternal counsels of God had willed that ‘all the ends of the earth should see the salvation of the Lord’; therefore, whatever the toils and the pains, the loss and the death, He, whose meat and drink was to do the will of Him that sent Him, must give Himself to the task, nor rest till, one by one, the weary wanderers are brought back on His shoulders and folded in His love.

In all which, let us remember, Jesus Christ is our pattern, not in His work for the salvation of men, but in the spirit in which He did His work. The solemn law of duty before which He bowed His head is a law for us also. The authoritative imperative which He obeyed has power over us. If we would have our lives holy and strong, wise and good, we must have ‘the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, making us free from the law of sin and death,’ for the obedience to the higher law enfranchises from slavery to the lower, and all other authority ceases over us when we are Christ’s men. We are bound to service directed to the same end as His-even the salvation of the world. The same voice which says to Him, ‘I will give Thee for a light to the Gentiles,’ says to us, ‘Ye are My witnesses, and My servant whom I have chosen.’ The same Will which hath constituted Him the anointed Prophet, says of us, ‘Touch not Mine anointed and do My prophets no harm.’ We are redeemed that we may show forth God’s praises. Not for ourselves alone, nor for purposes terminating in our own personal acceptance with God, or the perfecting of our own characters, priceless as these are, but for ends which affect the world has God had mercy on us. We are bought with a price that we may be the servants of God. We have received that we may give forth,

‘God doth with us, as we with torches do,

Not light them for themselves.’

‘Arise, shine, for thy light is come.’

This missionary work of ours, then, is not one that can be taken up and laid down at our own pleasure. It is no excrescence, or accidental outgrowth of the Church’s life. We are all too apt to think of it as an extra, a kind of work of supererogation, which those may engage in who have a liking that way, and which those who do not care about it may leave alone, and no harm done. When shall we come to feel deeply, constantly, practically, that it must be done, and that we are sinning when we neglect it? Dear brethren, have we laid on our hearts and consciences the solemn weight of that necessity which moulded His life? Have we felt the awful power of God’s plainly spoken will, driving us to this task? Do we know anything of that spirit which hears ever-pealing in our ears that awful commandment, ‘Go, go to all the world, preach, preach the Gospel to every creature?’ God commands us to take the trumpet, and if we would not soil our souls with gross and palpable sin, we must set it to our lips and sound an alarm, that by His grace shall wake the sleepers, and make the hoary walls of the robber-city that has afflicted the earth for so many weary millenniums, rock to their fall, that the redeemed of the Lord may pass over and set the captives free.

If we felt this as we ought, surely our consecration would be more complete, and our service more worthy. A clear conviction of God’s will pointing the path for us, is, in all things, a wondrous help to vigorous action, to calmness of heart, and thus to success. In this mighty work, it would brace us for larger efforts, and fit us for larger results. It would simplify and deepen our motives, and thus evolve from them nobler deeds and purer sacrifices. To all objections from so-called prudence, to all calculations from sparse results, to all cavils of onlookers who may carp and seek to hinder, we should have one all-sufficient answer. It is not for us to bandy arguments on such points as these. We care nothing for difficulties, for discouragements, for cost. We may think about these till we lose all the manly chivalry of Christian character, like the Apostle who gazed on the white crests of the angry breakers flashing in the pale moonlight, till he forgot who stood on the storm, and began to sink in his great fear. A nobler spirit ought to be ours. The toil is sore, the sacrifices many, and the yield seems small. Be it so! To all such thoughts we have one answer-Oh! that we felt more its solemn power!-such is the will of God. We are doing as we are bid, and we mean to go on. ‘Them also must I bring,’ says the Master. ‘Necessity is laid upon me, yea, woe is me if I preach not the Gospel,’ echoes the Apostle. Let us, in the consecration of resolved hearts, and in trembling obedience to the divine will, add our choral Amen, and in the face of all the paralysing suggestions of our own selfishness, and all the tempting voices of worldly wisdom and unbelieving scornfulness that would stay our enterprise, let us fling back the grand old answer, ‘Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye, for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.’

We must not forget, however, that it was no abhorrent toil to which Christ reluctantly consented. But in this case, as always with Him, the words of prophecy were true, ‘I delight to do Thy will.’ The schism between law and choice had no existence for Him; and when He says that He must bring the wandering sheep into the fold, He means not more because of God’s will than because of His own yearning desire to pour out the treasures of His mercy.

So it ought to be with us. Our missionary work should not be degraded beneath the level of duty indeed, but neither should it be left on that level. We ought not only to be led to it by a power without, but impelled by an energy within. If we would be like our Master, we must know the necessity arising from our own heart’s promptings, which leads us to work for Him. He has very imperfectly caught the spirit of the Gospel who has never felt the word as a fire in his bones, making him weary of forbearing. If we only take to this work because we are bid, and without sympathy for men, and longing desire to bring them all to Him who has blessed us, we may almost as well leave it alone. We shall do very little good to anybody, to ourselves little, to the world less. That our own hearts may teach us this necessity, we must live near our Master, and know His grace for ourselves. In proportion as we do, we shall be eager to proclaim it, and not stand idling in a corner of the market-place, till some unmistakable order sends us into the vineyard, but go for the relief of our own feelings. ‘This is a day of good tidings, and we cannot hold our peace,’ said the poor lepers in the camp to one another. The same feeling that we must tell the good news just because we know it, and it will make our brethren glad, is part of the Christian character. A blessed necessity, then, is laid upon us. A blessed work is given us, which brings with it at once the joy of obedience to our Father’s will, and the joy of gratifying a deep instinct of our nature. ‘Them also must I bring,’ said the Saviour, because He loved men. ‘To me who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches,’ echoes the Apostle. Let us live in the light of our Lord’s eye, and drink deep of His spirit, till the talk becomes a grace and privilege, not a burden, and till silence and idleness in His cause shall be felt to be impossible, because it would be violence to our own feelings, and the loss of a great joy as well as sin against our Father’s will.

Consider again, by what means the sheep are to be brought to Christ? The context distinctly answers the question. There His propitiatory death is emphatically set forth as the power by which it is to be accomplished. The verse before our text says, ‘I lay down My life for the sheep’; that after our text says, ‘Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down My life.’ It is the same connection of means and end as appears in the wonderful words with which He received the Greeks who came up to the feast, and heard the great truth, for want of which their philosophy and art came to nothing. ‘Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die it abideth alone’-’I, if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all men unto Me.’

Yes, brethren! the Cross of Christ, and it alone, gathers men into a unity; for it alone draws men to Christ. His death, as our propitiation, effects such a change in the aspects of the divine government, and in the incidence of the divine justice, that ‘we who were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.’ His death, as the constraining motive of life in the hearts which receive it, draws them away from their own ways by the cords of love, and binds them to Him. His death is His purchase of the gifts of that divine Spirit for the rebellious, who now convinces the world and endows the Church, ‘till we all come unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.’ The First Begotten from the dead is therefore the prince of all the kings of the earth, and He so rides among the nations as to bring the world to Himself. The philosophy of history lies in the words, ‘Other sheep I have, them also I must bring.’

Christian missions abundantly prove that the Cross and the proclamation of the Cross have this power, and that nothing else has. It is not the ethics of Christianity, nor the abstract truths which may be deduced from its story, but it is the story of the suffering Redeemer that gives it its power over human hearts, in all conditions, and climates, and stages of culture. The magnetism of the Cross alone is mighty enough to overcome the gravitation of the soul to sin and the world. We hear much nowadays about a new reformation which is to be effected on Christianity, by purifying it of its historical facts and of its repulsive sacrificial aspect. When this is done, and the pure spiritual ideas are disengaged from their fleshly garb, then, we are told, will be the apotheosis and glorification of Christ. This will be the real lifting up from the earth; this will draw all men. Aye, and when this is done what will be left? Christianity will be purified back again into a vague Deism, which one would have thought had proved itself toothless and impotent, centuries ago. Spiritualising will turn out to be very like evaporating, the residuum will be a miserably unsatisfactory something, near akin to nothing, and certainly incapable either of firing its disciples with a desire to spread their faith, if we may call it so by courtesy, or of drawing men to itself. A Christianity without a Sacrifice on the altar will be a Christianity without worshippers in the Temple. The King of Kings who rides forth conquering is clothed in a vesture dipped in blood. The Christian Emperor saw in the heavens the Cross, with the legend: ‘In this sign thou shalt conquer!’ It is an emblem true for all time. The Cross is the power unto salvation. The races scattered on the earth have often sought to make for themselves a rallying-point, and their attempts at union have become Babels, centres of repulsion and confusion. God has given us the Centre, the Tree of life in the midst. The crucified Saviour is the Root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign for the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek, and resting beneath the shadow of the Cross be at peace. ‘I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.’

Once more our Lord teaches us here to identify the work of the Church with His own. What His servants do for Him He does, for from Him they derive the power to do it, and from Him comes the blessing which makes it effectual. He works in us, He works with us, He works for us. He works in us. We have the grace of His Spirit to touch our hearts and sanctify us for service. He puts it into the wills and desires of His Church to consecrate themselves to the task. He teaches them sympathy and self-devotion. He breathes world-wide aspirations into them. He raises up men to go forth. He works with us, helping our weakness, enlightening our ignorance, directing our steps, giving power to the student at his dry task of grammar and dictionary, being mouth and wisdom to them that speak in His name, touching the hearts of them that hear. In our basket He puts the seed-corn; the furrows of the field He makes soft with showers, and when it is sown He blesses the springing thereof. He works for us, opening doors among the nations, ordering the courses of providence, and holding His hand around His servants, so that they are immortal till their work is done; and can ever lift up thankful voices to Him who leads them joyful captives at His own triumphal car, as it rolls on its stately march, scattering the sweet odours of His name wherever the long procession sweeps through the world. We neither go a warfare at our own charges, nor in our own might. He will fight with us, and He will pay us liberally at the last. When we count up our own resources, do not we often leave Christ out of the reckoning? Do we not measure our strength against the enemies’, and forget that one weak man, plus Christ, is always in the majority? ‘It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of My Father which speaketh in you.’ ‘I laboured, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.’ So helped, so inspired, we are wrong to despond; we are wrong not to expect great things and attempt great things; we are wrong not to dare, we are wrong to do the work of the Lord negligently. Let us feel that Christ’s work is ours, and we shall be bowed beneath the solemnity of the thought, shall accept joyfully the necessity. Let us feel that our work is Christ’s, and we shall rejoice in infirmity that His power may rest upon us, shall bid adieu to faint-hearted fears, and be sure that then it must prosper. ‘Arise, O Lord! plead Thine own cause.’ Not unto us, O Lord! not unto us, but to Thy name give glory.

‘The Lord ascended into Heaven and sat on the right hand of God, and they went everywhere preaching the word.’ It seems a strange contrast between the rest of the Lord, sitting in sublime expectancy of conscious power til His enemies become His footstool, and the toils of His scattered disciples. It is like that moment which the genius of the great painter has caught in an immortal work, when Jesus in rapt communion with the mighty dead, and crowned with the accepting word from Heaven, floated transfigured above the Holy Mount, while below His disciples wrestled impotently with the demon that would not be cast out. But it is not really contrast. He has not so parted the toils as that His are over ere ours begin. He has not left His Church militant to bear the brunt of the battle while the Captain of the Lord’s host only watches the current of the heady fight-like Moses from the safe mountain. The Evangelist goes on to tell us that the Lord also was working with them and sharing their toils, lightening their burdens, preparing for them successes on earth, and a rest like His when He shall gird Himself and serve them. Thus, the first time that the heavens opened again to mortal eyes after they closed on His ascending form, was to show Him to the martyr in the council chamber, not sitting careless or restful, but standing at the right hand of God, to intercede for, to strengthen, to receive and glorify His dying servant. He goes with us where we go, and through our works and gifts and prayers, through our proclamation of the Cross, He worketh His will, and shall finally accomplish that great necessity laid upon Him by the Father’s counsels, and upon us by His commandment, and to be effected by His death, that He should die, not for that nation only, but also that He should gather together in one the children of God who are scattered abroad.

We have here-

III. Our Lord teaching us how to think of the certain issues of His work and ours.

‘They shall hear My voice, and there shall be one fold and one Shepherd.’ We may regard these words as embracing two things; a nearer issue, namely, the response that will always attend His call; and a more remote, namely, the completion of His work. There is, of course, a very blessed sense in which the latter words are true now, and have been ever since Paul could say to those who had been aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, ‘He hath made both one. Now, therefore, ye are no more foreigners but fellow-citizens with the saints.’ But the fold which now exists, limited in numbers, with its members but partially conscious of their unity, and surrounded by those who follow hireling shepherds, does not exhaust these great words. They shall not be accomplished till that far-off future have come.

But for the present we have the predictions of the former clause, ‘They shall hear My voice.’ What manner of expectations does it teach us to cherish? It seems to speak not of universal reception of Christ’s message, but of some as hearing and some as forbearing. It teaches us to look for divers results attending our missionary work. There will always be a Dionysius the Areopagite, the woman Lydia, the kindly barbarians, the conscience-stricken jailer. There will always be the scoffers, who mock when they hear of ‘Jesus and the resurrection’; the hesitating who compound with conscience by promising to hear again of this matter, the fierce opponents who invoke constituted authorities or mob violence to crush the message.

Again, the words seem to contemplate a long task. There is nothing about the rate at which His Kingdom shall spread, not a syllable to answer inquiries as to when the end shall come. The whole tone of the language suggests the idea that bringing back the sheep is to take a long time, and to cost many a tedious journey into the wilderness. Not a sudden outburst, but a slow kindling of the flame, is what our Lord teaches us here to expect.

But while thus calm in tone and moderate in expectation, the words breathe a hope as confident as it is calm, as clear as it is moderate. There will always be a response. His voice shall never be lifted up in the snow-storm or lonely hillsides only to be blown back into His own ears, unheard and unheeded. Be they few or many, they shall hear. Be the toil longer or shorter, more or less severe, it shall not be in vain.

And to these expectations we shall do wisely if we attune ours. Omit from your hopes what your Lord has omitted from His promises; do not ask what He has not told. Do not wonder if you encounter what He met, for the disciple is not greater than his Master, and only if they have kept My saying will they keep yours also. But, on the other hand, expect as much as He has prophesied; accept it when it comes as the fruit of His work, not of yours, and build a firm faith that your labour shall not be in vain on these calm and prescient words.

So much for the course of the kingdom. And what of the end? One by one the sheep have been brought, at last they are all gathered in, not a hoof left behind. The stars steal singly into their places in the heavens as the darkness deepens, and He ‘bringeth them forth by number,’ until at the noon of night the sky is crowded with their lights, and ‘for that He is great in power, not one faileth.’ What expectations are we here taught to cherish then of the final issue?

Mark, to begin with, that there is implied the ultimate universality of His dominion and sole supremacy of His throne. There is to be but one Shepherd, and over all the earth a great unity of obedience to Him. Here is the knell of all authority that does not own Him, and the subordination of all that does. The hirelings, the blind guides, that have misled and afflicted humanity for so many weary ages, shall be all sunk in oblivion. The false gods shall be discrowned, and lie shattered on their temple-sill, and there shall be no worshippers to care for or to try to repair their discomfiture. Bow your heads before Him, thinkers who have led men on devious paths and spoken but a partial truth and a wisdom all confused with foolishness! Lower your swords before Him, warriors who have builded your cities on blood and led men like sheep to the slaughter! He is more glorious and excellent than the mountains of prey. Cast your crowns before Him, princes and all judges of the earth, for He is King by right of the crown of thorns! This is the Lord of all-Teacher, Leader, Ruler of all men. All other names shall be forgotten but His shall abide. If they have been shepherds who would not come in by the door, a ransomed world shall rejoice over their fall with the ancient hymn, ‘Other gods beside Thee have had dominion over us; they are dead, they shall not live, Thou hast destroyed them, and made all their memory to perish.’ If they have been subject to the chief Shepherd and ensamples to the flock, they will rejoice to decrease before His increase, and having helped to bring the Bride to the Bridegroom, will gladly stand aside and be forgotten in the perfect love that enters into full fruition at the last. Then when none contest nor intercept the reverential obedience that the whole world brings to Him, shall be fulfilled the firm promise which declared long ago: ‘I will set up one Shepherd over them, and He will feed them and be their Shepherd.’

Mark again the blessed nature of the relation between Christ and all men which is here foretold. From of old, the shepherd has been in all nations the emblem of kingly power, of leadership of every sort. How often the fact has contradicted the symbol let history tell. But with Jesus the reality does not only contradict, but even transcends, the tender old comparison. He rules with a gentle sway. His sceptre is no rod of iron, but the shepherd’s crook, and the inmost meaning of its use is that it may ‘comfort’ us, as David learned to feel. There gather round the metaphor all thoughts of merciful guidance, of tender care, of a helping arm when we are weak, of a loving bosom where we are carried when we are weary. It speaks of a seeking love that roams over every high hill till it finds, and of a strong shoulder that bears us back when He has found. It tells of sweet hours of rest in the hot noontide by still waters, of ample provision for all the soul’s longings in green pastures. It speaks of footsteps that go before, in which men may follow and find them ways of pleasantness. It speaks of gentle callings by name which draw the heart. It speaks of defence when lion and bear come ravening down, and of safe couching by night when the silent stars behold the sleeping sheep and the wakeful shepherd. He Himself gives its highest significance to the emblem, in the words of this great discourse, when He fixes on His knowledge, His calling of His sheep, His going before them, His giving His life for them. Such are the gracious blessings which here He teaches us to think of as possessed in the happy days that shall be, by all the world.

And, on the other hand, the symbol speaks of confiding love in the hearts of men, of a great peacefulness of meek obedience stilling and gladdening their wills, of the consciousness of His perfect love, and the knowledge of all His gracious character, of sweet answering communion with Him, of safety from all enemies, of freedom, of familiar passage in and out to God. Thus knit together shall be the one fold and the one Shepherd. ‘They shall feed in the ways, and their pastures shall be in all high places. They shall not hunger nor thirst, neither shall the heat nor sun smite them, for He that hath mercy on them shall feed them, even by the springs of water shall He guide them.’

Mark again what a vision is here given of the relations of men with one another.

They are to be all gathered into a peaceful unity. They are to be one because they all hearken to one voice. It is to be observed that our Lord does not say, as our English Bible makes Him say, that there is to be one fold. He drops that word of set purpose in the latter clause of our text, and substitutes for it another, which may perhaps be best rendered flock. Why this change in the expression? Because, as it would seem, he would have us learn that the unity of that blessed future time is not to be like the unity of the Jewish Church, a formal and external one. That ancient polity was a fold. It held its members together by outward bonds of uniformity. But the universal Church of the future is to be a flock. It is to be really and visibly one. But it is to be so, not because it is hemmed in by one enclosure, but because it is to be gathered round one Shepherd. The more closely they are drawn to Him, the more near will they be to each other. The centre in which all the radii meet keeps them all in their places. ‘We being many are one bread, for we are all partakers of that one bread.’ In the ritual of the Old Covenant, the great golden candlestick with its seven branches stood in the court of the Temple, emblem of the formal oneness of the people, which was meant to be the light of the Lord to a dark world. In the vision of the New Covenant, the seer in Patmos beheld not the one lamp with its branches, but the seven golden candlesticks, which were made into a holier and a freer unity because the Son of Man walked in their midst-emblem of the oneness in diversity of the peoples, who were sometimes darkness, but shall one day be light in the Lord. There may continue to be national distinctions. There may or there may not be any external unity. But at all events our Lord turns away our thoughts from the outward to the inward, and bids us be sure that though the folds be many the flock shall be one, because they shall all hear and follow Him.

The words, however, suggest for us the blessed thought of the peaceful relations that shall then subsist among men. The tribes of the earth shall couch beside each other like the quiet sheep in the fold, and having learned of His great meekness, they shall no more bite nor devour one another. Alas! alas! the words seem too good to be true. They seem long, long of coming to pass. Ever since they were spoken the old bloody work has been going on, and the old lusts of the human heart have been busy sowing the dragon’s teeth that shall spring up in wars and fightings. In savage lands warfare rages on, ceaseless, ignoble, unrecorded, and seemingly purposeless as that of animalcules in a drop of water. On civilised soil, men, who love the same Christ and worship Him in the same tongue, are fronting each other at this hour. The war of actual swords, and the war of conflicting creeds, and the jostling of human selfishness in the rough road of life, are all around us, and their seeds are within ourselves. The race of men do not live like folded sheep, rather like a flock of wolves, who first run over and then devour their weaker fellows.

But here is a fairer hope, and it will be fulfilled when all evil thoughts, and all selfish desires, and all jealous grudgings shall vanish from men’s hearts, as unclean spirits at cockcrow, and shall leave them, self-forgetful, yielding of their own prerogatives, desirous of no other man’s, abhorrent of inflicting, and patient of receiving wrong. There will be no fuel then to blow into sulphurous flame, though all the blasts from hell were to fan the embers. But peace and concord shall be in all men, for Christ shall be in all. National distinctions may abide, but national enmities-the oldest and deepest, shall disappear. There shall still be Assyria, and Egypt, and Israel, but their former relation will be replaced by a bond of amity in their common possession of Him who is our peace. ‘In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt, and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land, whom the Lord shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance.’ God be thanked! that though we see, and our fathers have seen, so much that seems to contradict our hopes of a peaceful world, and though to-day the hell-hounds of war are baying over the earth, and though nowhere can we see signs even of the approach of the halcyon time, yet we can wait for the vision, knowing that it will come at the appointed time, when

‘No war or battle’s sound

Is heard the world around,

The idle spear and shield are high uphung;

The trumpet speaks not to the armed throng,

And Kings sit still, with awful eye,

As if they surely knew their Sovereign Lord was by.’

Such are the thoughts which our Lord would teach us as to the present and as to the future of our missionary work. For the one, moderate expectations of success, not unchequered by disappointment, and a brave patience in long toil. For the other, hopes which cannot be too glowing, and a faith which cannot be too obstinate. The one is being fulfilled in our own and our brethren’s experience even now; we may be therefore all the more sure that the other will be so in due time. If we look with Christ’s eyes, we shall not be depressed by the apparent unbroken surface of heathenism but see, as He did, everywhere souls that belong to Him, who may and must be won; we shall joyfully embrace the work which He has given us to do; we shall arm ourselves against the discouragements of the present, by living much in the past at the foot of the Cross, till we catch the true image of the Saviour’s love, and much in the future in the midst of the ransomed flock, till we too behold the roses blossoming in the wilderness, the bright waters covering all the dry places in the desert, and the families of men sitting, clothed and in their right mind, at the feet of Jesus.

Our missionary work is the pure and inevitable result of a belief in these words of my text. Can a man believe that Christ has other sheep for whom He died because He must bring them in, whom He will bring in because He died, and not work according to his power in the line of the divine purposes? The missionary spirit is but the Christian spirit working in one particular direction. Missionary societies are but one of the authentic outcomes of Christian principles, as natural as holiness of life, or the act of prayer.

To secure, then, a more vigorous energy in such work, we need chiefly what we need for all Christian growth-namely, more and deeper communion with Christ, a more vivid realisation of His grace and love for ourselves. And then we need that, under the double stimulus of His love and of His commandment-which at bottom are one-our minds should be more frequently occupied with this subject of Christian missions. Most of us know too little about the matter to feel very much. And then we need that we should more seriously reflect upon the facts in relation to our own personal responsibility and duty. You complain of the triteness of such appeals as this sermon. Brethren, have you ever tried that recipe for freshening up well-worn truths, namely, thinking about them in connection with the simplest, most important of all questions-what, then, ought I to do in view of these truths? Am I exaggerating when I say, that not one-half of the professing Christians of our day give an hour in the year to pondering that question, with reference to missionary work? Oh! dear friends, see to it that you live in Christ for yourselves, and then see to it that you think His thoughts about the heathen world, till your pity is stirred and your mind braced to the firm resolve that you too will work the works of Christ and bring in the wanderers.

We have had as large results as Christ has led us to expect, and far larger than we deserved. Christian missions are yet in their infancy-alas! that it should be so. But in these seventy years since they may be said to have begun, what wonderful successes have been achieved. We are often told that we have done nothing. Is it so? The plant has been got together, methods of working have been systematised, mistakes in some measure corrected. We have spent much of our time in learning how to work, and that process is by no means over yet. But with all these deductions, which ought fairly to be made, how much has been accomplished? The Bible has been put into the languages of seven hundred millions of men. The beginnings of a Christian literature have been supplied for five-sixths of the world. Half a million of professed converts have been gathered in, or as many as there were at the end of the first century, after about the same number of years of labour, and with apostles for missionaries and miracles for proof. And if these still bear on their ankles the marks of the fetters, and limp as they walk, or cannot see very clearly at first, it is no more than might be expected from their long darkness in the prison-house, and it is no more than Paul had to contend with at Ephesus and Corinth.

Every church that has engaged in the toil has shared in the blessing, and has its own instances of special prosperity. We have had Jamaica; the London Missionary Society, Madagascar, and the South Seas; the Wesleyans, Fiji; the Episcopal Societies, Tinnevelly; the American brethren, Burmah, and the Karens. Some of the ruder mythologies have been so utterly extirpated that the children of idolaters have seen the gods whom their fathers worshipped for the first time in the British Museum. While over those more compact and scientific systems which lie like an incubus on mighty peoples, there has crept a sickening consciousness of a coming doom, and they already half own their conqueror in the Stronger One than they.

‘They feel from Judah’s land

The dreaded Infant’s hand.’

‘Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, the idols are upon the beasts.’ Surely God has granted us success enough for our thankful confidence, more than enough for our deserts. I repeat it, it is as much as He promised, as much as we had any right to expect, and it is a vast deal more than any other system of belief or of no belief, any of your spiritualised Christianities, or still more intangible creeds has ever managed, or ever thought of trying. To those who taunt us with no success, and who perhaps would not dislike Christian missions so much if they disliked Christian truth a little less, we may very fairly and calmly answer-This rod has budded at all events; do you the same with your enchantments.

But the past is no measure of the future. From the very nature of the undertaking the ratio of progress increases at a rapid rate. The first ten years of labour in India showed twenty-seven converts, the seventh ten showed more than twenty-seven thousand. The preparation may be as slow as the solemn gathering of the thunder-clouds, as they noiselessly steal into their places, and slowly upheave their grey billowing crests; the final success may be as swift as the lightning which flashes in an instant from one side of the heavens to the other. It takes long years to hew the tunnel, to ‘make the crooked straight, and the rough places plain,’ and then smooth and fleet the great power rushes along the rails. To us the cry comes, ‘Prepare ye in the desert an highway for our God.’ The toil is sore and long, but ‘the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.’ The Alpine summits lie white and ghastly in the spring sunshine, and it seems to pour ineffectual beams on their piled cold; but by slow degrees it is silently loosening the bands of the snow, and after a while a goat’s step, as it passes along a rocky ledge, or a breath of wind will move a tiny particle, and in an instant its motion spreads over a mile of mountain side, and the avalanche is rushing swifter and mightier at every foot down to the valley below, where it will all turn into sweet water, and ripple glancing in the sunshine. Such is our work. It may seem very hopeless, and be mostly unobservable in surface results, but it is very real for all that. The conquering impulse, for which our task may have been to prepare the way, will be given, and then we shall wonder to see how surely the kingdom was coming, even when we observed it not.

Ye have need of patience, and to feed your patience, ye have need of fellowship with Christ, of faith in His promises, of sympathy with His mind. God has given us, dear brethren, special reason for renewed consecration to this service in the blessings which have during the year terminated our anxieties and crowned our work for our own Society. But let us not dwell upon what has been done. These successes are brooks by the way at which we may drink-nothing more. We ought to be like shepherds in the lonely mountain glens, who see in the fast-falling snow and the bitter blast a summons to the hillside, and there all the night long wherever the drift lies deepest and the wind bites the most sharply, search the most eagerly for the poor half-dead creatures, and as they find each, bear it back to the safe shelter, nor stay behind to count the rescued, nor to rest their weariness, for all the bright light in the cottage and the blackness without, but forth again on the same quest, till all the Master’s sheep have been rescued from the white death that lay treacherous around, and are sleeping at peace in His folds. A mighty Voice ought ever to be sounding in our ears, ‘Other sheep I have,’ and the answer of our hearts and of our lives should be, ‘Them also, O Lord! will I try to bring.’ Not till the far-off issue is accomplished shall we have a right to rest, and then we, with all those He has helped us to gather to His side, shall be among that flock, whom He who is at once Lamb and Shepherd, our Brother and our Lord, our Sacrifice and King, ‘shall feed and lead by living fountains of waters,’ in the sweet pastures of the upper world, where there are no ravening wolves, nor false guides to terrify and bewilder His flock any more at all for ever.

1 Preached before the Baptist Missionary Society.

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

10:16 other sheep: Believers outside Judaism would one day join Jesus’ sheepfold (see 11:52). In Jesus’ vision for his people, Jewish and Gentile believers from diverse cultures would become one flock with one shepherd (17:20-23).

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Joh 10:16. Ἄλλα πρόβατα, other sheep) Which are already called sheep, inasmuch as being foreseen. Comp. ch. Joh 11:52, “That He should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad,” where He calls them children of God on a similar principle. He says other sheep, not another sheep-fold. For they were scattered in the world.—ἔχω, I have) This verb has great power.—ταύτης, of this) the Jewish fold.—δεῖ, I must) on account of the commandment of the Father.—ἀγαγεῖν, bring) by My death. He does not say, lead out, as at Joh 10:3; nor, introduce into this fold; but simply, bring [lead]. They have no need to change their locality.—ἀκούσωσι) To the verb I must, this subjunctive answers in the correlative [275][276][277][278] Vulg. read ἀκούσουσιν. [279][280][281][282] read ἀκούσωσιν].—μία ποίμνη, εἷς ποιμήν) One flock [not, as Engl. Vers., “one fold”], so that there may remain over and above no flocks false and divided; one Shepherd, so that there may remain no hireling, false, bad shepherds, or Pseudo-Peter, etc. Comp. Eze 34:23, “I will set up one Shepherd over them, and He shall feed them, even My servant David; He shall feed them, and He shall be their Shepherd;” Zec 14:9, “The Lord shall be King over all the earth; in that day shall there be one Lord, and His name one.” This oneness of the flock, as also oneness of the Shepherd, began after that the good Shepherd laid down His life: ch. Joh 11:52, “That Jesus should die—not for that nation only, but that also He should gather together in one the children of God—scattered abroad;” and in His own time, when He hath taken out of the way every hindrance, it shall be consummated. In point of right, Jesus always is the one and only Shepherd: therefore, in point of right and also of fact, He will then become the one. Most sweetly there is put first the one flock, then the one Shepherd. The words bring, and one flock, mutually refer to one another; as also, they shall hear, and one Shepherd. The Shepherd shall bring all into one flock: the whole flock shall hear the one Shepherd.

[275] the Vatican MS., 1209: in Vat. Iibr., Rome: fourth cent.: O. and N. Test. def.

[276] Bezæ, or Cantabrig.: Univ. libr., Cambridge: fifth cent.: publ. by Kipling, 1793: Gospels, Acts, and some Epp. def.

[277] Veronensis, do.

[278] Colbertinus, do.

[279] the Alexandrine MS.: in Brit. Museum: fifth century: publ. by Woide, 1786–1819: O. and N. Test. defective.

[280] Vercellensis of the old ‘Itala,’ or Latin Version before Jerome’s, probably made in Africa, in the second century: the Gospels.

[281] Cod. Monacensis, fragments of the Gospels.

[282] Claromontanus of Paul’s Epp.: Roy. libr., Paris: eighth cent.: marked D by Tischend.: Δ by Lachm.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Joh_10:16. The repeated mention of His sacrificial death, by which the union of Jews and heathen into one community of believers was to be effected (see on Eph_2:14), raises His look to the future when He (as the good shepherd lifted up on high, compare Heb_13:20; 1Pe_2:25) shall be the guide also of the heathen, who have become believers, and whom he now prophetically terms His sheep. Compare Joh_11:52, Joh_12:32,[64] and prophetic utterances, such as Mic_4:2; Isa_49:1 ff; Isa_52:13 ff; Isa_53:10 ff. But the thought that He does not need the faith of the Jews (Hengstenberg after Ruperti) is arbitrarily imported into the passage as an intervening link of logical connection. The Jews outside Palestine (Paulus) are not intended, as they form part of the fold of the Jewish theocracy, to which the words ἐκ τῆς αὐλῆς ταύτης refer, and within which Jesus Himself lived and spake; hence also the demonstrative ΤΑΎΤΗς.

ἜΧΩ] He is their owner. Comp. Act_18:10. Hoc verbum habet magnam potestatem, Bengel.

ἃ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐκ τῆς αὐλῆς ταύτης] which are not out of this fold, which are not derived from it. This expression, however, does not imply that Jesus conceived the heathen as also in an αὐλή (in answer to De Wette); for the emphasis rests not on ΤΑΎΤΗς, but on Τῆς ΑὐΛῆς, and the characteristic feature of the heathen is the ΔΙΑΣΠΟΡΆ (Joh_7:35, Joh_11:52);[65] whilst the thought of a divine leading of the heathen (Act_14:17; Act_17:27) does not correspond at all to the figure of an αὐλή, of which the conception of theocratic fellowship constitutes an essential feature. Compare the figure of the olive tree in Rom_11:17; Eph_2:12; Mat_8:11.

ΔΕῖ] according to the divine decree.

ἈΓΑΓΕῖΝ] neither adducere, fetch (Vulgate, Luther, Beza, and many others; also Tholuck, Luthardt, Hengstenberg, Godet); nor συναγαγεῖν, Joh_11:52 (Nonnus, Euth. Zigabenus, Theophylact, Casaubon); but lead, as shepherd, who goes before the sheep, and whom they follow, Joh_10:4. Bengels remark is appropriate: Non opus est illis solum mutare; for the shepherd who leads also the heathen is the exalted Christ, πάντων κύριος, Act_10:36.

ΚΑῚ ΓΕΝΉΣΕΤΑΙ, etc.] and will become, inasmuch as I lead, besides my sheep out of the Jewish αὐλή, those other sheep of mine, also, one flock (consisting of the two parts, ἀμφοτέρωθεν, Nonnus), one shepherd. This is the happy issue; by the asyndetic collocation, all the conception of unity (μία, εἷς) is made to appear with more marked prominence. Compare 1Co_10:17; Eph_4:5. On ΕἿς ΠΟΙΜΉΝ, observe in reference to ΓΕΝΉΣΕΤΑΙ: de jure Jesus semper unicus est pastor; de jure et facto igitur unus fict, Bengel. The fulfilment of His declaration, which began with the conversion of the heathen by the apostles, is still advancing, and will be first completed with the realization of what is spoken of in Rom_11:25 f. The Stoic dream of the union of all men ὥσπερ ἀγέλης συννόμα νόμῳ κοινῷ συντρεφομένης (Plut. de fort. Alex. 6) has been dispelled; the idea, however, considered in itself, goes on realizing itself in Christ till the judgment day.

[64] The relation of ver. 16 to what precedes corresponds entirely to the New Testament idea, that salvation proceeds from the Jews to the heathen (comp. Joh_4:22, Joh_11:52). This advantage of the Jews is also to be recognised as acknowledged by John, to whom we are not to ascribe the idea of a perfect equality of the two (Lücke, B. Crusius; comp. also Messner, Lehre der Ap. p. 355). The heathen who are to be gained are, however, even before they are recipients of salvation, τέκνα τ. θεοῦ, and Christ has them as His sheep, according to the ideal view of the future, as an actuality so far as it is certainly fixed in the counsel of God (comp. Rom_11:28). It is therefore incorrect to explain the mode of expression from the fellowship with God realized through conscience (Luthardt); because, to be a child of God and an adherent of Christ presupposes regeneration. For this, however, they are destined by the divine election of grace, and fitted and prepared by the prevenient divine drawing.

[65] Correctly Bengel: alias oves dicit, non aliud ovile; erant enim dispersae in mundo.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Joh 10:16 . But the mention of His death suggests to Him the wide extent of its consequences. ἄλλα πρόβατα ἔχω , “other sheep I have”; not that they are already believers in Him, but “His” by the Father’s design and gift. Cf. Joh 17:7 and Act 18:10 . They are only negatively described: ἃ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐκ τῆς αὐλῆς ταύτης ; “this fold” is evidently that which contained the Jews who already had received Him as their Shepherd; and the other sheep which are not “of” ( ἐκ , as frequently in John, “belonging to”; not as Meyer renders) this fold are the Gentiles. κἀκεῖνα … ποιμήν “those also I must bring and they shall listen to my voice, and they, shall so amalgamate with the Jewish disciples that there shall be one flock, one shepherd”. The listening to Christ’s voice brings the sheep to Him, and this being what constitutes the flock, the flock must be one as He is one. But nothing is said of unity of organisation. There may be various folds, though one flock. μία ποίμνη , εἷς ποιμήν , the alliteration cannot be quite reproduced in English. For the emphasis gained by omitting καί cf. Eurip., Orestes , 1244, τρισσοῖς φίλοις γὰρ εἷς ἀγὼν , δίκη μία . The A.V [74] wrongly translated “one fold,” following the Vulgate, which renders both αὐλή and ποίμνη by “ovile” [“qua voce non grex ipse sed ovium stabulum declaratur; quod unum vix unquam fuit, et non modo falso, sed etiam stulte impudenter Romae collocatur”. Beza]. This is corrected in R.V [75] The old Latin versions had “unus grex”; see Wordsworth’s and White’s Vul [76] .

[74] Authorised Version.

[75] Revised Version.

[76] ulg Vulgate (Jerome’s revision of old Latin version).

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

16. ἄλλα πρόβατα ἔχω κτλ. These “other sheep” were the Gentiles, who “were not of this fold,” i.e. not of the Jewish Church.1 They were not, indeed, in any fold as yet, being “scattered abroad” (11:52). Jesus claims them as already His: “Other sheep I have, ” for such is the Divine purpose, which, being certain of fulfilment, may be spoken of as already fulfilled.

κἀκεῖνα δεῖ με ἀγαγεῖν, “them also I must lead,” δεῖ expressing that inevitableness which belongs to what is foreordained by God (see on 3:14). Not only had it been prophesied of Messiah that He was to be a “Light to the Gentiles” (Isa 42:6, Isa 49:6), but there was the explicit promise, “The Lord God which gathereth the outcasts of Israel saith, Yet will I gather others to Him, beside His own that are gathered” (Isa 56:8).

All this is intelligible from the standpoint of a Christian living at the end of the first century, when it had long been conceded that the gospel was for the Gentile as well as for the Jew. But it is not so easy to be sure how far Jesus taught this explicitly. Had His teaching been clear on so important a point, it is difficult to believe that the apostles could have misunderstood it. Yet Acts and the Pauline Epistles show that acute controversy arose in the apostolic circle about the position of the Gentiles. All were ready to admit that, as Jewish proselytes, they might pass into the Christian Church; but could they be admitted to Christian baptism without passing through the portal of Judaism? For this Paul contended successfully, but his struggle was severe. Had he been able to quote specific words of Christ determining the matter, his task would have been easier; but this, seemingly, he was unable to do. Did Jesus, then, teach plainly that Gentile and Jew were equally heirs of the Gospel promises?

In Mk. (excluding the Appendix), the mission of Jesus to those who professed the Jewish religion is the exclusive topic of the narrative, and there is no saying of Jesus recorded which would suggest that He had a mission also to the Gentiles. Indeed, when He crossed the border into the country “of Tyre and Sidon,” He did not wish His presence to be known (Mar 7:24); and when the Syrophœnician woman asked Him to cure her daughter He is reported to have said to her, “Let the children first be filled,” adding that children’s bread should not be given to “dogs.” This may have been a proverbial saying (which would mitigate its seeming harshness); but at any rate Mk. gives no hint that Jesus regarded non-Jews as having any claim on His ministry. In Mt. (15:24) Jesus actually says to the woman, “I was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel”; as He had said to the apostles in an earlier passage (10:5, 6), “Go not into any way of the Gentiles, and enter not into any city of the Samaritans; but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

But these are only seemingly instances of Jewish particularism. They do not explicitly convey more than that Jesus regarded His mission as directed in the first instance to the Jews; and, in fact, there are many indications that both Mt. and Lk. believed the Gentiles to be included within the redeeming purpose of Christ. The prophecies about Messiah being a light to the Gentiles are quoted (Mat 4:16, Mat 4:12:21; cf. Luk 2:32). The Roman centurion was commended for his faith (Mat 8:10); so was the Samaritan leper (Luk 17:19); and the example of the Good Samaritan is held up for imitation (Luk 10:37). The saying, “Many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob,” is in Mt. (8:11), and, in a different context, also in Lk. (13:28). The command to preach to all nations is in the Marcan Appendix (Mar 16:15) as well as in Mat 28:19; and, even if it be supposed that we have not in the latter passage the ipsissima verba of Christ, there can be no doubt that it represents one aspect of His teaching (cf. Mat 24:14, Luk 24:47).

In Jn.’s narrative the Gentiles come without argument or apology within the scope of the Gospel. Jesus stays two days with the Samaritan villagers, to teach them (4:40); He does not admit that descent from Abraham is a sufficient ground for spiritual self-satisfaction (8:39); He is approached by a party of Greeks (12:20f.); He declares that He is the Light of the world (8:12), which implies that the Gentiles as well as the Jews are the objects of His enlightening grace. And in the present passage (10:16) Jesus, in like manner, declares that He has “other sheep” besides the Jews, while it is not to be overlooked that He puts them in the second place: “Them also I must lead.” They are not His first charge: that was to shepherd “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” He “came to His own” (1:11) in the first instance.

Jn., then, is in agreement with Mt. and Lk. in his representation of the teaching of Jesus about the Gentiles; and this teaching is accurately represented in the saying of Paul that the gospel was “to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Rom 1:16). Mk. is the only evangelist who says nothing about the inclusion of the Gentiles. The significance of what Jesus had said about this was perhaps not appreciated by Mk., any more than it was by those with whom Paul had his great controversy. See further on 11:52, 12:21.

καὶ τῆς φωνῆς μου ἀκούσουσιν. So He says again, v. 27 (cf. 18:37). So Paul said of the Gentiles, when the Jews at Rome had declined to accept his message: τοῖς ἔθνεσιν ἀπεστάλη τοῦτο τὸ σωτήριον τοῦ θεοῦ· αὐτοὶ καὶ ἀκούσονται, “they will hear it” (Act 28:28). Note that ἀκούειν here takes the gen., as it does when it connotes hearing with understanding and obedience. See on 3:8.

μία ποίμνη, εἷς ποιμήν, “one flock, one shepherd”: the alliteration cannot be reproduced in another language.

A rendering of the Latin Vulgate in this verse has led to so much controversy, that the textual facts must be briefly stated. All Greek MSS. have ἐκ τῆς αὐλῆς ταύτης … μία ποίμνη, εἷς ποιμήν. The O.L. vss.1 correctly preserve the distinction between αὐλή and ποίμνη, by rendering them respectively ouile (fold) and grex (flock). But Jerome’s Vulgate has ouile in both places. This might be taken for a mere slip, were it not that in his Comm. on Ezekiel (46) he distinctly implies that the Greek word αὐλή is repeated, saying that he is dissatisfied with the old rendering ouile for αὐλή and suggesting atrium. Wordsworth and White (in loc.) regard this as establishing Jerome’s reliance here on some Greek authority which had αὐλή in the last clause instead of ποίμνη. Into this question we need not enter, further than to note that no such Greek authority is now extant. However Jerome’s eccentric rendering unum ouile et unus pastor arose, the weight of authority is overwhelmingly against it, although it has caused misunderstanding and perplexity for many centuries.

Jesus did not say there would be one fold (αὐλή): He said one flock, which is different. In one flock there may be many folds, all useful and each with advantages of its own, but the Flock is One, for there is only One Shepherd. The unity of the Hebrew people is indicated similarly in Ezekiel by the assurance that one shepherd will be set over them, as ruling over an undivided kingdom, Judah and Israel having come together again: “I will set up one shepherd over them, even my servant David: he shall feed them” (Eze 34:23; cf. 37:24). The phrase “one shepherd” is also found in Ecc 12:11, where it refers to God as the one source of wisdom.

Jn., in the next chapter, expresses the thought that the Death of Jesus had for its purpose the gathering into one of the scattered children of God: ἵνα τὰ τέκνα τοῦ θεοῦ τὰ διεσκορπισμένα συναγάγῃ εἰς ἕν (11:52). In 10:16 Jesus is to “lead” (ἀγαγεῖν) the Gentile members of His flock: in 11:52 He is to bring them together (συναγαγεῖν).

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The certain mark of the Catholic Church throughout all the world, which hath one head, that is Christ, the only keeper and only shepherd of it.

The calling of the Gentiles.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

other sheep I have . . . not of this fold: them also I must bring--He means the perishing Gentiles, already His "sheep" in the love of His heart and the purpose of His grace to "bring them" in due time.

they shall hear my voice--This is not the language of mere foresight that they would believe, but the expression of a purpose to draw them to Himself by an inward and efficacious call, which would infallibly issue in their spontaneous accession to Him.

and there shall be one fold--rather "one flock" (for the word for "fold," as in the foregoing verses, is quite different).

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 16. Other sheep I have] The Gentiles and Samaritans. As if our Lord had said, Do not imagine that I shall lay down my life for the Jews, exclusively of all other people; no: I shall die also for the Gentiles; for by the grace, the merciful design and loving purpose of God, I am to taste death for every man, Heb 2:9; and, though they are not of this fold now, those among them that believe shall be united with the believing Jews, and made one fold under one shepherd, Eph 2:13-17.

The original word, αυλη, which is here translated fold, dignifies properly a court. It is probable that our blessed Lord was now standing in what was termed the inner court, or court of the people, in the temple, see Joh 10:23; and that he referred to the outer court, or court of the Gentiles, because the Gentiles who were proselytes of the gate were permitted to worship in that place; but only those who were circumcised were permitted to come into the inner court, over the entrance of which were written, in large characters of gold, these words, Let no uncircumcised person enter here! Our Lord therefore might at this time have pointed out to the worshippers in that court, when he spoke these words, and the people would at once perceive that he meant the Gentiles.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

16. And I have other sheep. Though some refer this indiscriminately to all, both Jews and Gentiles, who were not yet disciples of Christ, yet I have no doubt that he had in his eye the calling of the Gentiles. For he gives the appellation fold to the assemblage of the ancient people, by which they were separated from the other nations of the world, and united into one body as the heritage of God. The Jews had been adopted by God in such a manner, that he surrounded them with certain enclosures, which consisted of rites and ceremonies, that they might not be confounded with unbelievers, though the door of the fold was the gracious covenant of eternal life confirmed in Christ. For this reason he calls those sheep which had not the same mark, but belonged to a different class, other sheep In short, the meaning is, that the pastoral office of Christ is not confined within the limits of Judea, but is far more extensive.

Augustine’s observation on this passage is undoubtedly true, that, as there are many wolves within the Church, so there are many sheep without But this is not applicable, in every respect, to the present passage, which relates to the outward aspect of the Church, because the Gentiles, who had been strangers for a time, were afterwards invited into the kingdom of God, along with the Jews. Yet I acknowledge that Augustine’s statement applies in this respect, that Christ gives the name of sheep to unbelievers, who in themselves were the farthest possible from being entitled to be called sheep And not only does he point out, by this term, what they will be, but rather refers this to the secret election of God, because we are already God’s sheep, before we are aware that He is our shepherd. In like manner, it is elsewhere said that we were enemies, when he loved us, (Romans 5:10;) and for this reason Paul also says that we were known by God, before we knew him, (Galatians 4:9.)

Them also I must bring. He means that the election of God will be secure, so that nothing of all that he wishes to be saved shall perish. For the secret purpose of God, by which men were ordained to life, is at length manifested in his own time by the calling, — the effectual calling, when he regenerates by his Spirit, to be his sons, those who formerly were begotten of flesh and blood.

But it may be asked, How were the Gentiles brought to be associated with the Jews? For the Jews were not under the necessity of rejecting the covenant which God made with their fathers, in order to become Christ’s disciples; and the Gentiles, on the other hand, were not under the necessity of submitting to the yoke of the Law, that, being ingrafted in Christ, they might be associated with the Jews. Here we must attend to the distinction between the substance of the covenant and the outward appendages. For the Gentiles could not assent to the faith of Christ in any other way than by embracing that everlasting covenant on which the salvation of the world was founded. In this manner were fulfilled the predictions,

Strangers shall speak the language of Canaan, (Isaiah 19:18.)

Again,

Ten men of the Gentiles shall take hold of the cloak of one Jew, and say, We will go with you, (Zechariah 8:23.)

Again,

Many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, (Isaiah 2:4; Micah 4:2.)

Abraham was also called

a father of many nations, (Genesis 17:5; Romans 4:17,) because they shall come from the East and from the West, who shall sit down with him in the kingdom of God, (Matthew 8:11.)

As to ceremonies, they are the middle wall of partition, which, Paul informs us, hath been thrown down, (Ephesians 2:14.) Thus, we have been associated with the Jews in the unity of the faith, as to the substance; and the ceremonies were abolished, that there might be nothing to prevent the Jews from stretching out their hand to us.

And there shall be one fold and one shepherd That is, that all the children of God may be gathered and united into one body; as we acknowledge that there is one holy universal Church, and there must be one body with one head.

There is one God, says Paul, one faith, one baptism. Therefore we ought to be one, as we are called into one hope, (Ephesians 4:4, 5.)

Now though this flock appears to be divided into different folds, yet they are kept within enclosures which are common to all believers who are scattered throughout the whole world; because the same word is preached to all, they use the same sacraments, they have the same order of prayer, and every thing that belongs to the profession of faith.

And they shall hear my voice. We must observe the way in which the flock of God is gathered. It is, when all have one shepherd, and when his voice alone is heard These words mean that, when the Church submits to Christ alone, and obeys his commands, and hears his voice and his doctrine, then only is it in a state of good order. If Papists can show us that there is any thing of this sort among them, let them enjoy the title of The Church, of which they vaunt so much. But if Christ is silent there, if his majesty is trodden under foot, if his sacred ordinances are held up to scorn, what else is their unity but a diabolical conspiracy, which is worse and far more to be abhorred than any dispersion? Let us therefore remember that we ought always to begin with the Head. Hence also the Prophets, when they describe the restoration of the Church, always join David the king with God; as if they said, that there is no Church where Christ does not reign, and that there is no kingdom of God, but where the honor of shepherd is granted to Christ.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(16) And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold.—The words recall to the mind a question which the Jews had asked at this very feast, “Will He go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles, and teach the Gentiles?” (Joh_7:35). They asked it in the bitterness of scorn. He asserts that among the Gentiles—who are not of the Jewish fold—He already possesses sheep; just as He says to Paul concerning Corinth, “I have much people in this city” (Act_18:10). The Old Testament prophets had foretold this coming of the Gentiles, as e.g. Isa_52:13 et seq.; Isa_53:10 et seq.; Mic_4:2; and it is present to our Lord’s mind here as the result of His laying down His life for the sheep. (Comp. Notes on Joh_11:52; Joh_12:32.)

Them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice.—The bringing in of the Gentiles was in the Divine counsel part of the Messianic work which He must therefore needs do. It would result from His being lifted up that all men should be drawn unto Him, and would be accomplished in the mission-work of the Church. These scattered sheep shall hear His voice, for the conscience which knows the voice of God is the heritage of all men; they shall hear it, as the words seem to imply, while the sheep now in the fold refuse to follow it. (Comp. Notes on Mat_8:11 and Rom_11:17.)

And there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.—Better, There shall become one flock, and one shepherd. The word here rendered “fold,” is quite distinct from that which occurs in Joh_10:1, and in the earlier clause of this verse. It should be, beyond all doubt, rendered “flock”; but the reader may prove this for himself by comparing the only other passages where it is found in the New Testament—Mat_26:31; Luk_2:8; 1Co_9:7 (twice). In each of these passages we have “flock”; but here our version has followed the Vulgate and the Great Bible in giving “fold,” whereas both Tyndale and Coverdale had rightly given “flock.” But even “flock” and “shepherd” fail to catch the expressiveness of the Greek, where the words are closely allied, and of nearly the same sound, “There shall be one poimne and one poimèn.” Luther’s German can exactly render the verse. “Und Ich habe noch andere Schafe, die sind nicht aus diesem Stalle. Und dieselben muss Ich herführen, und sie werden meine Stimme hören, und wird eine Herde und ein Hirte werden.”

It is not uniformity which is promised, but unity. The distinction is not merely one of words, but upon it depends a wide and important truth. It is not unity of fold which is regarded as the future of the Church, but unity of flock. There will be many folds, in many nations, in many ages, in many climes. But for all Christians there will be one true Shepherd who layeth down His life for the sheep, and all these differing folds shall, through living unity with Him, make one vast flock.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And other sheep I have,.... Not distinct from those for whom he laid down his life, but from those who were under the Old Testament dispensation, and who heard not the thieves and robbers that were before Christ, Joh 10:8; others besides the lost sheep of the house of Israel, or the elect among the Jews, to whom Christ was sent; and by whom are meant the chosen of God among the Gentiles, who were sheep, though not called and folded, for the reasons given: See Gill on Joh 10:3. These, though uncalled, belonged to Christ; he had an interest in them, they were given him by his Father; he had them in his hands, and upon his heart; his eye was upon them, and they were under his notice, inspection, and care:

which are not of this fold, of the Jewish nation and church, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise; were as sheep going astray, and were scattered about in the several parts of the world; and were to be redeemed out of every kindred, tongue, people, and nation:

them also I must bring; out of the wilderness of the world, from among the men of it, their former sinful compassions, from the folds of sin and Satan, and the pastures of their own righteousness; to himself, and into his Father's presence, to his house and ordinances, to a good fold and green pastures, and at last to his heavenly kingdom and glory: and there was a necessity of doing all this, partly on account of his Father's will and pleasure, his purposes and decrees, who had resolved upon it; and partly on account of his own engagements, who had obliged himself to do it; as well as because of the case and condition of these sheep, who otherwise must have eternally perished:

and they shall hear my voice; in the Gospel, not only externally, but internally; which is owing to his powerful and efficacious grace, who quickens them, and causes them to hear and live; unstops their deaf ears, and gives them ears to hear; and opens their hearts, to attend to his word, and gives them an understanding of it. The Arabic version reads this in connection with the preceding clause, thus, "and I must bring them also to hear my voice"; as well as the rest of the sheep among the Jews, and therefore the Gospel was sent among them:

and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd; one church state, consisting both of Jews and Gentiles; the middle wall of partition being broke down, these two coalesce in one, become one new man, and members of one and the same body; for though there may be several visible Gospel churches, yet there is but one kind of church state, and one general assembly and church of the firstborn, one family to which they all belong; for what reasons a church is comparable to a fold; see Gill on Joh 10:1. And over this fold, or flock, there is but one shepherd, Jesus Christ; who is the rightful proprietor, and whose own the sheep are; and who knows how to feed them, and does take care of them; though there are many under shepherds, whom he employs in feeding them; in the original text the copulative "and" is wanting, and the words stand thus, "one fold, one shepherd"; which not only expresses a peculiar elegance, but answers the proverb delivered in the same form; and to which agree the Arabic and Ethiopic versions, which render them, "and there", or "they shall be one fold of one shepherd"; or one flock which belongs to one shepherd only; see Eze 34:23.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

16 And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.

Ver. 16. And other sheep I have] viz. The elect Gentiles, whose conversion to Christ was, among other types, not obscurely foreshadowed, Lev 19:23-25, as some divines think. The first three years in Canaan the Israelites were to cast away the fruits of the trees, as uncircumcised. So our Saviour planted the gospel in that land for the first three years of his public ministry. But the uncircumcisions are cast away; that is, to the uncircumcised Gentiles the doctrine of Christ is not declared by general and public preaching. The fruit of the fourth year was consecrated to God: that is, Christ in the fourth year from his baptism laid down his life for his sheep, rose again, ascended, and sent his Holy Spirit; whereby his apostles and others were consecrated as the firstfruits of the promised land. But in the fifth year, the fruit of the gospel planted by Christ began to be common, when the same doctrine was not shut up in the strait bounds of Judaea, or walls of the temple, but was made known (and shall be more and more) to all nations, for the obedience of faith, Rom 16:26.

There shall be one fold] Of Jews and Gentiles. The full and final restoration of the Jews will happen in the year 1650, as some have calculated out of Dan 12:11. I wait and wish it.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Other sheep - There are others who shall be members of my redeemed church.

I have - This does not imply that they were then his friends, but that they would be. There were others whom it was his purpose and intention to call to the blessings of the gospel and salvation. The purpose was so sure, and the fact that they would believe on him so certain, that he could use the present tense as if they were already his own. This purpose was in accordance with the promise Isa 53:11, “He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied.” An instance of a parallel expression occurs in Act 18:10, “I have much people in this city” (Corinth). That is, it was the purpose of God to bless the preaching of Paul, and give him many souls as the seals of his ministry. It was so certain that they would believe in the Saviour, that it could be spoken of as if it were already done. This certainty could have existed only in consequence of the intention of God that it should be so. It did not consist in any disposition to embrace the gospel which was foreseen, for they were the most corrupt and licentious people of antiquity, and it must have been because God meant that it should be so. Declarations like these are full proof that God has a plan in regard to the salvation of men, and that the number is known and determined by him. Learn:

1.That it is not a question of chance or uncertainty whether men shall be saved.

2.That there is encouragement for preaching the gospel. There are those whom God means to save, and if he intends to do it it will be done.

Not of this fold - Not Jews. This is a distinct intimation that the gospel was to be preached to the Gentiles a doctrine extremely offensive to the Jews. This prediction of the Saviour has been strikingly confirmed in the conversion of millions of the Gentiles to the gospel.

Them also I must bring - Bring into the church and kingdom of heaven. This was to be done, not by his personal ministry, but by the labor of his apostles and other ministers.

One fold - One church; there shall be no distinction, no special national privileges. The partition between the Jews and the Gentiles shall be broken down, and there shall be no pre-eminence of rank or honor, Eph 2:14; “Christ hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us;” Rom 10:12; “There is no difference between the Jew and the Greek.”

One shepherd - That is, the Lord Jesus - the common Saviour, deliverer, and friend of all true believers, in whatever land they were born and whatever tongue they may speak. This shows that Christians of all denominations and countries should feel that they are one redeemed by the same blood, and going to the same eternal home. Compare 1Co 12:13; Gal 3:28; Col 3:11; Act 17:26.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

One fold. In the Greek one flock. The signification is the same that is, there shall be one church of Jews and Gentiles converted. (Witham)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; our Saviour meaneth the Gentiles, who belonged not to the Jewish state and church, so were not under the same laws and government; for, 1Jo 2:2, he was not only a propitiation for the sins of the Jews, but for the sins of the whole world: he calleth those sheep, because the Lord knew who were his from eternity; and they were sheep in the counsels of God, and they were suddenly to be made his sheep by calling, the gospel being soon to be preached to all nations.

Then also (saith he) I must bring in; it is so written in God’s book, the promises and prophecies to that purpose must be fulfilled. They shall not only hear the voice and sound of my gospel, though going out of Zion, yet not terminated in Zion; but they shall embrace, receive, and believe that joyful sound.

And there shall be one fold, and one shepherd; and there shall be but one church; as I am one Shepherd, so there shall be but one flock of sheep; one body, one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, as there is one God and Father of all, as the apostle speaketh, Eph 4:4-6.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

16. Other sheep I have—Though the apostles after Christ died could scarce be induced to consent to gather Gentiles into the Christian Church, nevertheless the Spirit brought to their remembrance occasions in which he announced the call of the Gentiles. They might also remember that the prophets of the Old Testament, narrow as their dispensation sometimes is considered, proclaimed in exalted terms the mission of Messiah to the Gentile world.

This fold—Christ has a Church invisible even in heathendom. (See this subject discussed in our work on the Will, pp. 343-360.) The blending of the Jew and Gentile in one Church, without superiority of privilege to either, was the commencing fulfilment of this promise to bring the other sheep. But the complete manifestation of the one fold is yet to be when the fullness of the Gentiles comes in and all Israel is saved. One fold… one shepherd—The and should have been omitted; and then the words beautifully describe the day when of all races there shall be one fold, one shepherd! Here the last trace of figure, in the term sheep, disappears, and our Lord unfolds in terms of severe simplicity the mystery of his voluntary death for mankind.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Vers. 16-18. (a) The continuity of the Shepherd-activity, notwithstanding the laying down of his life.

And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice. "The other sheep," not of this fold, not sheltered by the theocracy, not needing the pasturage of such privileges Gentiles they may be, earnest souls of many a name, denomination, and profession, are, while he speaks, and went before the formation of his Church, " his own." "Other sheep I have." Though they have never as yet heard his voice, they are his. His relation with them is personal and direct and spiritual, not dictated or conditioned by "the fold." They will hear his voice. We in vain ask the question, "When?" He alone can answer it. Many a Cornelius in every nation is accepted by him. (cf. Act_10:35 Act_14:17 Act_17:27 Act_28:28) But the passage contemplates a wider application: "Them also I must bring, or lead, among my own." They are scattered abroad now, but eternal Love, by assuming Shepherd-wise relations with them, determines not to bring them to one place or enclosure to express such a thought we should have had, not agagein , but sunagagein (Joh_11:52) or prosagagein (Westcott) but to bring them into personal relations with himself. They shall become one flock, one Shepherd. The false English translation of poimnh , viz. "fold," should be specially noticed. If our Lord had meant to convey the idea of the rigid enclosure into which all the scattered sheep should be gathered, he would have used the word aulh . The word poimnh is, however, studiously chosen. The error has done grievous injury. There is no variation of the Greek text, or in the earliest versions. It came through the Vulgate ovile into Wickliffe"s Version, and into many other European versions. The Old Latin Versions were correct, but Jerome led the way into the inaccurate translation. Tyndale perceived its true meaning, and Luther beautifully preserved the play upon the words. Coverdale, in his own Bible (1535), followed Tyndale; but in 1539, "the Great Bible" followed the Vulgate (Westcott). When naturalized, it sustained the false and growing pretension that outside the one "fold" of the visible Church the good Shepherd was not ready with his care and love (see for the only adequate translation of poimnh , Mat_26:31 Luk_2:8 1Co_9:7, where the Authorized Version has correctly rendered it "flock"). Christ, on other occasions, carefully warned his disciples against such narrowness, and here he declares that the sheep, independently of the fold or folds, may yet form one great flock, under one Shepherd. When he described himself as the Door, he was, as we have seen, careful to speak of himself as "Door of the sheep," and not as the Door into the fold. He laid down his life in order to break down the partition between Jew and Gentile, (Eph_2:13) between God and man, and between man and man. "In Christ Jesus there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, bond nor free." There may be many folds. Different nations, ages, times, and seasons may cause variations in these; but there is but one flock under the watchful guardianship of one Shepherd.

The sheep of the other fold.

The purposes which animated our Savior"s heart, in undertaking labors so severe, and in enduring sufferings so keen, were no doubt always clearly before his own mental vision. But, to judge by the records, it was only occasionally that an intimation of some of these purposes was afforded by his language. St. John records some saying of our Lord, mostly uttered towards the close of his ministry, from which we learn that he contemplated results as certain to flow from his work on earth, far beyond what even his nearest and most sympathetic friends were at that period able to anticipate. In this discourse Jesus appears to have been conscious of the growing hostility of his powerful enemies at Jerusalem. Did he seek a consolation for the pain thus inflicted upon him by prominent representatives of his own nation, in cherishing expectations of the vast and far-reaching results which he, as the spiritual Shepherd of humanity, should in future ages attain, by his affection for his sheep, and by his self-sacrificing devotion to their welfare?

I THE GLORIOUS AND INSPIRING VIEW WHICH JESUS TOOK OF HIS OWN OFFICE AND WORK AMONGST MEN. He was regarded in Palestine, both by friends and foes, as a Jewish Rabbi. But this was not the view he was accustomed to take of himself. He did his daily work for those amongst whom he lived; but he was aware that there was a vaster sphere of service which was truly his. He was the Shepherd, not of Israel only, but of mankind. The majesty of his position and office did not break in upon him either gradually or suddenly. He brought with him to earth the consciousness of a Divine election and commission. And in such passages as this we have a revelation of his mind; and we feel that no mere human teacher or leader could have assumed such a relation towards the vast multitudes here contemplated, but distant in space, remote in time, and seemingly estranged in sympathies.

II THE LIBERAL, AND COMPREHENSIVE REPRESENTATION WHICH JESUS GAVE OF HUMANITY AS HIS FLOCK. The fold of Israel was very select and very exclusive. The Hebrews were wont to regard the less favored nations with indifference and even contempt. Narrowness was almost the "note" of the Jewish temper. Yet the Old Testament contained no justification for such bigotry. In the Psalms and in the prophets we meet with representations of the purposes of God towards humanity at large, which are startling in their magnificent liberality and comprehensiveness. God"s salvation, we are told, shall extend to the ends of the earth; all nations shall sing the praises of the Lord. Accordingly, when we read our Savior"s language in this passage, and find him claiming as his own other sheep not of the Hebrew fold, we feel that such language is a verification of his claim to fulfill the Jewish prophecies, to supersede the Jewish prophets, to realize the substance of the Jewish types and shadows. The Samaritans had long ago come to the conclusion that Jesus was the Savior of the world! Jesus now openly declared that the Gentiles were, in the counsels of God, members of his spiritual flock and household. And he was about to assert the mysterious power of his cross, by assuring the Jews that he should thence draw all men unto himself.

III THE SUBLIME FORECAST WHICH JESUS COMMUNICATED CONCERNING THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD. Observe the several steps.

1. Gentiles are the possession of the Divine Shepherd, and the purchase of his redeeming love and sacrifice. Far away there are sheep which he has, for which he lays down his life, equally with those nearest to him the objects of his interest, love, and care.

2. The time shall come when the Gentiles shall realize their privileges, shall be led by him, and shall hear his voice. Then the Redeemer shall see of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied.

3. The ultimate purpose of Divine grace shall be fulfilled, when the unity of the ransomed shall be complete, when there shall be "one flock," and when the Savior shall be acknowledged as the Sovereign, when there shall be "one Shepherd. T.

The unity of the flock.

To bring about unity in thought is the aim of the thinker; to bring about unity in life and action is the aim of the practical man, who is called to be the leader and ruler of his fellow-men. Christ, as the good Shepherd, who has shrunk from no effort, from no sacrifice, to secure the welfare of his sheep, contemplates and designs, in the exercise of his spiritual authority, the consolidation of the grandest unity of which mankind is capable.

I THE SUBJECTS OF THIS UNITY. They are the spiritual sheep, the members of the true flock. All like sheep have gone astray, all have been sought and recovered by the Shepherd and Bishop of souls, all rejoice in and abide under the tendance and care of the Divine Savior.

II THE DIVERSITIES BLENDED IN THIS UNITY. The Lord Christ was the Son of man, and in the aim of his compassion and redemption transcended the distinctions which separate man from man. More especially he designed to bring the Gentiles into the fold; these may have been the "other sheep" whose inclusion he graciously purposed. The wall of partition was very high and very strong; only he could break it down. But no nationality, no education, no previous religious associations, were to be allowed to stand in the way of the unity which he came from God in order that he might effect in this distracted race.

III THE GROUND OF THIS UNITY. Men endeavor to base oneness of action upon community of association or of interest, etc. But in the Christian scheme the basis of the new fellowship and brotherhood is Divine. "The one Shepherd alone can account for the one flock. His Divine nature, his priceless redemption, his spiritual authority, these lie at the foundation of the Church"s unity, and for such an edifice no narrower foundation could suffice.

IV THE NATURE OF THIS UNITY. This has been more misunderstood than almost any part of Christianity. The translators of the Authorized Version went out of their way to render "one fold," for which there is no justification. The unity Christ desires is not a unity of form, but of spirit; not a matter of mechanism, but of vitality. One Church and another may claim the "note" of universality, but the existence of such Churches side by side is a disproof of the claim. And even within separate Churches there are parties, or schools, distinguished by peculiarities more or less important. But in the spiritual, what is called the "invisible" Church, there is a unity of faith in Christ and a subjection to Christ. The temple is harmonious; it has its several parts, yet it is one. The body is symmetrical, and each member has its function; yet it is one. "One Lord, one faith, one baptism.

V THE HINDRANCES TO THE MANIFESTATION OF THIS UNITY. So far as the people of Christ fail to exhibit the one spirit, it is owing mainly to these two causes:

(1) the lack of devotion to the Lord; and

(2) intolerance one towards another.

The closer the flock draw around the Shepherd, the less is there of misunderstanding, and the more of fellowship. Watchfulness and prayer alone can check the spirit of dissension, and hasten the prevalence of peace.

VI THE PERFECTION OF THIS UNITY. That this is assured we gather from the emphatic words of Christ, "They shall become one flock." Deferred this glorious realization of the purposes of the Redeemer may be; yet it is certain. The predicted unity shall be accomplished in the brilliant and hoped-for future, of which we know but dimly the time, the scene, the circumstances. The wandering sheep shall be restored, the divided sheep shall be united. And the one flock shall then witness to the faithfulness and the love of the one Shepherd, whose voice all at last shall recognize, and beneath whose sheltering care all shall at last "lie down in green pastures," and be led "beside the still waters. T.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

I have also other sheep - Which he foreknew; which are not of this fold - Not of the Jewish Church or nation, but Gentiles. I must bring them likewise - Into my Church, the general assembly of those whose names are written in heaven. And there shall be one flock - (Not one fold, a plain false print) no corrupt or divided flocks remaining. And one shepherd - Who laid down his life for the sheep, and will leave no hireling among them. The unity both of the flock and the shepherd shall be completed in its season. The shepherd shall bring all into one flock: and the whole flock shall hear the one shepherd.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

other sheep

i.e. not of the Jewish fold, but Gentiles. Joh 10:4; Isa 56:8; Joh 17:20; Act 15:7-9.

The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Here Christ proves himself to be the true shepherd of his church from another property of a good shepherd, which is to take care for increasing and enlarging of his fold, by bringing in the Gentiles to it; and by breaking down the partition wall, to make one church both of Jews and Gentiles. Christ calls the Gentiles his other sheep, by way of anticipation, because shortly they were to be so, and united together with the believing Jews, into one sheepfold: and whereas he says, he must bring these sheep in, we are to understand it not of a necessity of co-action, but of a necessity of compact; it being a federal agreement betwixt the Father and himself, that both Jew and Gentile should be one flock, inclosed in one fold, and presented to his Father as a glorious church.

Hence learn, How endearing our obligations are to the dearest Jesus, that he should account us Gentiles, who were afar off, his sheep (we being so in respect of his eternal purpose) and make it his care, and esteem it his charge, to call us home, and bring us into his fold, the church, that we might be saved amongst the remnant of the true Israelites. Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold, them also I must bring.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

16. And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold. Not Jews, of whom his followers then were, but Gentiles who would soon be called to him. These would hear his voice, enter through the door, into the same fold as the Jewish Christians, so that there would be “one fold and one shepherd.” There is only one Church and one door into it, and one Shepherd over it.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

16. ἄλλα πρόβατα. Not the Jews in heathen lands, but Gentiles, for even among them He had sheep. The Jews had asked in derision, ‘Will He go and teach the Gentiles?’ (Joh 7:35). He declares here that among the despised heathen He has sheep. He was going to lay down His life, ‘not for that nation only’ (Joh 11:52), but that He might ‘draw all men unto Him’ (Joh 12:32). Of that most heathen of heathen cities, Corinth, He declared to S. Paul in a vision, ‘I have much people in this city’ (Act 18:10; comp. Act 28:28). The Light ‘lightens every man’ (Joh 1:9), and not the Jews only. Ἔχω, not ἕξω, like ἐστί μοι in Act 18:10: they are already His, given to Him (Joh 17:7) by the Father. He is their Owner, but not yet their Shepherd.

ἐκ τ. αὐλῆς τ. Emphasis on αὐλῆς not on ταύτης; the Gentiles were not in any fold at all, but ‘scattered abroad’ (Joh 11:52).

ἐκεῖνα. Not ταῦτα: they are still remote.

δεῖ. Such is the Divine decree; see on Joh 3:14. It is the Father’s will and the Messiah’s bounden duty.

ἀγάγειν. Lead, rather than ‘bring;’ comp. ἐξάγειν (Joh 10:3). Christ can lead them in their own lands. ‘Neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem’ (Joh 4:21) is the appointed place. The spiritual gathering into one (Joh 11:52) is not the idea conveyed here.

γενήσεται μία ποίμνη, εἷς ποιμήν. They shall become one flock, one shepherd. The distinction between ‘be’ and ‘become’ is worth preserving (see on Joh 9:27; Joh 9:39), and that between ‘flock’ and ‘fold’ still more so. ‘There shall become one fold’ would imply that at present there are more than one: but nothing is said of any other fold. In both these instances our translators have rejected their better predecessors: Tyndale and Coverdale have ‘flock,’ not ‘fold;’ the Geneva Version has ‘be made,’ not ‘be.’ The old Latin texts have ovile for αὐλή and grex for ποίμνη; so Cyprian and (sometimes) Augustine. The Vulgate has ovile for both. Hence Wiclif has ‘fold’ for both; and this error was admitted into the Great Bible of 1539 and A.V. of 1611. One point in the Greek cannot be preserved in English, the cognate similarity between ποίμνη and ποιμήν. ‘One herd, one herdsman’ would involve more loss than gain. ‘One flock, one flock-master’ would do, if ‘flock-master’ were in common use. But the rendering of ποίμνη by ovile and ‘fold’ is all loss, and has led to calamitous misunderstanding by strengthening ‘the wall of partition’ (Eph 2:14), which this passage declares shall be broken down. Even O.T. Prophets seem to have had a presentiment that other nations would share in the blessings of the Messiah: Mic 4:2; Isa 52:15. The same thought appears frequently in the Synoptists; e.g. Mat 8:11; Mat 13:24-30; Mat 28:19; Luk 13:29. And if S. Matthew could appreciate this side of his Master’s teaching, how much more S. John, who had lived to see the success of missions to the heathen and the results of the destruction of Jerusalem. It is therefore unreasonable to urge the universalism of the Fourth Gospel as an argument against its authenticity. Here, as elsewhere in N.T., the prior claim of the Jews is admitted, their exclusive claim is denied.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

16.] The ἄλλα πρόβ. are the Gentiles;—not the dispersion of the Jews, who were already in God’s αὐλή. By these wonderful words, as by those in Act 18:10, and by the conclusion of Mat_25. (see notes there), our Lord shews that, dark and miserable as the Gentile world was, He had sheep even there. Observe they are not in other folds, but scattered: see ch. 11:52. Cf. also Eph 2:14 ff.

δεῖ με ἀγ.…] i.e. in the purpose and covenant of the Father. The Lord speaks of His bringing them, and their hearing His voice: meaning that His servants in His name and by His power would accomplish this work. Admirably illustrative of the converse method of speaking which He employs Mat 25:40, Mat 25:45. The μία ποίμνη is remarkable—not μία αὐλή, as characteristically, but erroneously rendered in E. V.:—not one fold, but one flock; no one exclusive enclosure of an outward church,—but one flock, all knowing the one Shepherd and known of Him. On εἷς ποιμήν compare Heb 13:20.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Fold [αυλης] . From aw, to blow, hence, strictly, a place open to the air; an uncovered space enclosed by a wall. So Homer, of the cave of the Cyclops :

"But when we came upon that neighboring coast, We saw upon its verge beside the sea A cave high - vaulted, overbrowed with shrubs Of laurel. There much cattle lay at rest, Both sheep and goats. Around it was a court [αυλη] , A high enclosure of hewn stone." " Odyssey, " 9, 181 - 186.

Thomson says : "The low building on the hill - side which we have just passed, with arches in front, and its enclosure protected by a rubble wall and thorny hedge, is a sheepfold or marah.... The marahs are generally built in a valley, or on the sunny side of a hill, where they are sheltered from the winter winds. In ordinary weather the sheep and goats are gathered at night into the enclosed yard; but when the nights are cold and stormy the flocks are shut up in the marah. The sharp thorn - bushes on the top of the wall that surrounds the yard are a defense which the prowling wolf will rarely attempt to scale. The leopard and panther of this country, however, when pressed with hunger, will sometimes overleap this thorny hedge, and with one bound land amongst the frightened fold" (" Central Palestine and Phoenicia, " p. 591). Compare Homer :

" As a lion who has leaped Into a fold - and he who guards the flock Has wounded but not slain him - feels his rage Waked by the blow; - the affrighted shepherd then Ventures not near, but hides within the stalls.

And the forsaken sheep are put to flight, And huddling, slain in heaps, till o'er the fence The savage bounds into the fields again. "" Iliad," 5, 136 - 142.

Bring [αγαγειν] . Better, lead, as Rev., in margin. Compare ver. 3, leadeth them out. The idea is not bringing them together (as sunagagh, Joh 11:52), or conducting them to one place, but assuming the guidance.

There shall be [γενησεται] . More correctly, shall come to be. Some editors read genhsontai, they shall become.

One fold [μια ποιμνη] . The A. V. entirely ignores the distinction between aujlh, fold, and poimnh, flock. The latter word is found Mt 26:31; Luk 2:8; 1Co 9:7, and always distinctly meaning a flock, as does also the diminutive poimnion, little flock (Luk 12:32; 1Pe 5:2, etc.). Render, as Rev., one flock, one shepherd. So Tyndale's Version of the New Testament. Compare Eze 34:23. We are not, however, to say with Treneh (" A. V. of the New Testament "), that the Jew and the Gentile are the two folds which Christ will gather into a single flock. The heathen are not conceived as a fold, but as a dispersion. See Joh 7:35; Joh 11:52; and, as Meyer observes, "the thought of a divine leading of the heathen does not correspond at all to the figure of fold, of which the conception of theocratic fellowship constitutes an essential feature." So Bengel. "He says, other sheep, not another fold, for they were scattered abroad in the world." When Jesus speaks of the other sheep who are not from this fold, the emphasis is on fold, not on this. Compare Rom 11:17 sqq. Nor, moreover, does Jesus mean that the Gentiles are to be incorporated into the Jewish fold, but that the unity of the two is to consist in their common relation to Himself. "The unity of the Church does not spring out of the extension of the old kingdom, but is the spiritual antitype of that earthly figure. Nothing is said of one fold under the new dispensation" (Westcott). It will readily be seen that the incorrect rendering fostered by the carelessness or the mistake of some of the Western fathers, and by the Vulgate, which renders both words by ovile, fold, has been in the interest of Romish claims.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.