John 10:1-10 turns on one claim, and Jesus makes it twice: he is the gate for the sheep. He is never called the good shepherd inside these ten verses. That line lands in verse 11, one verse past the end of the reading. If you are preparing to teach or preach John 10:1-10, that single fact changes what the passage is about and what you can honestly tell a group it says.
The correction that changes how you teach it
The reading is widely labelled a Good Shepherd text. The Revised Common Lectionary index at Vanderbilt Divinity Library heads it “Christ the shepherd.” The label points one verse past where the reading stops.
Karoline Lewis, who holds the Marbury E. Anderson Chair of Biblical Preaching at Luther Seminary, states it plainly in her Working Preacher commentary on the passage: “Not until 10:11 will Jesus declare, ‘I AM the good shepherd’ because 10:1-10 is all about Jesus as the gate.”
Here is the verse the label is reaching for, John 10:11.
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.
Verse 11 opens the Gospel reading for the same Sunday in Year B. Teach it here and you are teaching the next cycle’s text.
What the passage actually says, in three movements
- Verses 1 to 5, a picture with nobody named. Jesus describes a sheepfold, a gate, a gatekeeper, a shepherd, a thief and a stranger. He does not say which one he is.
- Verse 6, the hinge. The hearers do not understand him.
- Verses 7 to 10, the identification. Jesus names himself, and the name he takes is the gate.
John 10:1-3 sets the scene.
“Truly, truly, I tell you, whoever does not enter the sheepfold by the gate, but climbs in some other way, is a thief and a robber. But the one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen for his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
John 10:4-5 finishes the picture with the sheep following a voice they know.
When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will flee from him because they do not recognize his voice.”
Then John 10:6, which is the hinge.
Jesus spoke to them using this illustration, but they did not understand what He was telling them.
John 10:7-8 is where Jesus steps into his own illustration.
So He said to them again, “Truly, truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before Me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.
And John 10:9-10 repeats the claim and sets the thief against it.
I am the gate. If anyone enters through Me, he will be saved. He will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life, and have it in all its fullness.
Read the halves side by side and the shift is easy to miss out loud. Verses 1 to 5 keep the shepherd in the third person, as an example. Verses 7 and 9 switch to the first person, and the word Jesus applies to himself is gate.
Why the hearers did not understand
Verse 6 is not a transition. It is a report on how the teaching landed, and it is worth saying out loud before you explain anything. The first audience heard this from Jesus in person and did not follow it.
The word behind “illustration” in verse 6 is paroimia. Strong’s 3942 lists it in only four places in the New Testament: John 10:6, John 16:25 (twice), John 16:29 and 2 Peter 2:22. It is defined there as “a pithy, pointed saying that conveys truth by comparison, riddle, or veiled illustration.” A riddle is allowed to be hard.
Jesus is the shepherd and the gate, and the two do not merge
In verse 2 the shepherd enters by the gate. In verse 7 Jesus is the gate. The Greek noun is the same in both places, thura, Strong’s 2374. The picture does not resolve. The one who walks through the door is also the door.
Laura Holmes, Professor of New Testament at Wesley Theological Seminary, declines to tidy it up in her Working Preacher commentary: “If we try to read this straightforwardly, it seems almost humorous: How is Jesus both gate and shepherd?”
Name the tension rather than smooth it. A group that has already noticed the problem will trust the rest of your teaching more once you say the problem is in the text.
Ezekiel 34 is the background, and it is a charge sheet
Shepherd language was not a soft image to the people listening. Ezekiel 34 is addressed to the shepherds of Israel, meaning its leaders. It opens as an accusation, in Ezekiel 34:2.
“Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. Prophesy and tell them that this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘Woe to the shepherds of Israel, who only feed themselves! Should not the shepherds feed their flock?
The chapter then takes the flock off them, in Ezekiel 34:11.
For this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘Behold, I Myself will search for My flock and seek them out.
And it closes on a single replacement, in Ezekiel 34:23.
I will appoint over them one shepherd, My servant David, and he will feed them. He will feed them and be their shepherd.
Laura Holmes points at the same background: “The prophets describe good shepherds and bad shepherds,” and she names Ezekiel 34:11-16 as the place where God is the shepherd.
Set that beside John 10:1. A thief and a robber is not a vague bad influence. Jesus is speaking to religious leaders, in the vocabulary a prophet used against religious leaders.
Why John 9 runs straight into this
Nothing separates the healing of the man born blind from the shepherd discourse except a chapter number. The man is questioned by the Pharisees and removed, in John 9:34.
They replied, “You were born in utter sin, and you are instructing us?” And they threw him out.
Jesus finds him, and the Pharisees standing there ask a question of their own, in John 9:40-41.
Some of the Pharisees who were with Him heard this, and they asked Him, “Are we blind too?” “If you were blind,” Jesus replied, “you would not be guilty of sin. But since you claim you can see, your guilt remains.”
John 10:1 is the next thing Jesus says. Karoline Lewis reads the two chapters as one block: “Jesus does not stop talking at 9:41 even though the lectionary’s textual delineations are in service to the chapter and verse markings of our modern bibles.”
That is why “thieves and robbers” has a target in the room. Leaders who had just thrown a healed man out were standing in front of him.
The hardest verse to teach is verse 8
“All who came before Me were thieves and robbers” is the sentence a group will stop you on. Read alone it seems to sweep up Moses and the prophets.
The verse carries its own limit in the second half: the sheep did not listen to them. Whoever is meant, they are people the faithful did not follow.
Two standard commentaries close it off, both collected on this page of commentaries on John 10:8. Barnes’ Notes on the Bible: “This does not refer to the prophets, but to those who came pretending to be the pastors or guides of the people.” Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers: “The Old Testament teachers cannot be meant, because they witnessed to the true door.”
Where this reading falls in the church year
John 10:1-10 is the Gospel for the Fourth Sunday of Easter in Year A of the Revised Common Lectionary. The same Sunday carries a different slice of John 10 in each year of the cycle, which is the simplest explanation for why the good shepherd line feels like it belongs here.
| Year | Gospel on the Fourth Sunday of Easter | What Jesus calls himself | Most recent or next date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year A | John 10:1-10 | the gate for the sheep | April 26, 2026 |
| Year B | John 10:11-18 | the good shepherd | April 18, 2027 |
| Year C | John 10:22-30 | no I am saying; the claim is “I and the Father are one” | May 11, 2025 |
All three rows come from the Revised Common Lectionary texts at Vanderbilt Divinity Library: Year A, Year B and Year C.
Psalm 23 is the psalm in all three years. The other Year A readings are Acts 2:42-47 and 1 Peter 2:19-25, and the epistle ends on shepherd language too, in 1 Peter 2:25.
For “you were like sheep going astray,” but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
Worth saying if you are teaching the whole set: three of the four readings hand you a shepherd, and the gospel among them calls Jesus a door.
One illustration worth leaving out
A popular retelling has the shepherd lying down across the entrance of the fold at night so that his own body becomes the gate. It is a vivid picture and these verses do not describe it. Verse 3 gives the fold a gatekeeper, a person distinct from the shepherd, who opens the gate for him. If you use the sleeping shepherd image anyway, tell the group you are adding it, because the passage does not supply it.
If you have five minutes to prepare
- Say first that Jesus calls himself the gate, and that the good shepherd line is verse 11.
- Read verses 1 to 5 as a picture with nobody named yet, then verse 6, then verses 7 to 10.
- Put Ezekiel 34:2 beside John 10:1 so the group hears who thief and robber is aimed at.
- Answer verse 8 before anyone asks. The sheep did not listen to them, so the prophets are not in view.
- Leave the gate and shepherd tension standing. Verse 6 says the first hearers did not resolve it either.
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