27-30. My sheep hear My voice, and I know
them, and they follow ME: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall
never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand. My Father, Who
gave them Me, is greater than all; no man is able to pluck them out of my
Father’s hand. I am the Father are one. Previously Christ had told
the Jews, Ye are not of My sheep. Yet now He encourages them to become
HIs sheep: My sheep hear My voice . . . and they follow Me. After
this, He describes that reward His followers will receive: I give unto them
eternal life; and they shall never perish. The Lord wants to awaken in the
Jews desire and zeal to follow the giver of these gifts. By saying, They shall
never perish, He means, “no man is able to pluck them out of My Hand,
for My Father, Who gave them Me, is greater than all”; and also, that “no
man is able to pluck them out of My Father’s hand. My hand and My Father’s
hand are one and the same, for I and my Father are one” in authority and
in power, of which the hand is a symbol. And so, “I and the Father are one in
nature, in essence, and in power.” When the Jews understood from this that Christ
considered Himself to be the Son of God and one in essence with God, they prepared
to stone Him. One might ask, “How can the Lord say, No man is able to pluck
them out of My Father’s hand, when we see that many have perished?” We
answer that no one can pluck a believer from the hand of the Father, but there
are many who can [use evil influence to] deceive. No one can snatch a believer
away from God by brute force, yet every day we are tripped up by deception. And
again, how can the Lord say that My sheep . . . follow Me . . . and shall
never perish, when we know that Judas perished? He perished because he
chose not to follow the Lord and remain His sheep until the end. When the Lord
says, They shall never perish, HE is speaking of those who are intent on
following Him as His sheep. But if a sheep wanders off from the flock and does
not follow the shepherd, it is lost at once and will indeed perish. The example
of Judas may be used to refute the Manichees. Judas at first was holy, and one
of God’s sheep. He fell away by his own choice This shows that good and evil do
not exist as permanent conditions of our nature, but are manifested when we
exercise free will. (Theophylact, The Explanation of the Holy Gospel
According to John [Blessed Theophylact’s Explanation of the New Testament
4; trans. Christopher Stade; House Springs, Miss.: Chrysostom Press, 2007], 171-72)
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