John 10:22-42 He SAID It!

About two and a half months passed between verse 21 and verse 22, my commentary said.  It was now December and the Feast of Hanukkah was underway.  The Jewish leaders surrounded Jesus in the Temple, demanding that He clearly tell them whether or not He was the Christ.  He said, “I told you already, but you did not believe.”  The reason?  “You are not My sheep.”  Jesus knew that the men surrounding Him had not been chosen by God to be saved!

My commentary discussed this mystery:  “ …why they did not understand His words or grasp the significance of His works:  they were not His sheep.  From the human standpoint, we become His sheep by believing, but from the divine standpoint, we believe because we are His sheep.  There is a mystery here that we cannot fathom or explain … God has His sheep and He knows who they are.  They will hear His voice and respond.  The lost sinner who hears God’s Word knows nothing about divine election.  He hears only that he may receive the gift of eternal life by trusting the Savior.  When he trusts the Savior, he becomes a member of God’s family and a sheep in the flock.  Then he learns that he was ‘chosen in Him [Christ] before the foundation of the world’ … In the Bible, divine election and human responsibility are perfectly balanced, and what God has joined together, we must not put asunder.”

It went on to show us our security as God’s sheep – “We have eternal life, and that cannot be conditional and still be eternal.  Second, this life is a gift, not something that we earn or merit.  If we were not saved by our good works, but by His grace, then we cannot be lost by our bad works.” 

So did He give them the plain answer they were seeking?  In verse 30, He said, “The Father and I are one.”  You can tell that they knew that He was saying that He is God, because they considered such a confession to be blasphemy, and they immediately picked up stones to kill Him.

Why did they not instead immediately believe?  He’d already told them.  “You are NOT My sheep.”  They had not been predestined by God to be saved, so they could not and would not believe.

Father, how that thrills my heart!  You tell us here that we cannot believe unless You preordained it.  And I believe, so that means that before the foundation of the world, You chose me, warts and all, to be Your child.  Thank You for that gift, Father, and thank You for making it possible through Your Son.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford