At first sight it seems strange that our Lord says, " I am the Door of the sheep," and not simply " the Door." But I think it is meant to teach that the Door is for the benefit of the sheep more than the shepherd, and that He Himself is given more particularly for all His people than for His ministers. Minis- ters are only servants. The flock might possibly do without them, but they could not do without the flock.
Bullinger calls attention to the many beautiful figures under which our Lord represented Himself and His office to the Jews, in St. John's writings. The Bread, the Living Water, the Light of the World, the Door, the Shepherd, are all in five chapters of this Gospel.
Musculus observes that the simple view of Christ being " the Door," is that He is the Mediator between God and man.
Webster observes : " It is worthy of remark that in the Ser- mon on the Mount, (Matt. vii. 13 — 17,) the description of the strait gait and narrow way immediately precedes the warning against false prophets and ravening wolves." The same also may be seen here.
8.— [All that ever came before me, etc.'] These words, " All, before Me," must evidently be limited or qualified. They cannot be taken in their fullest sense. The prophets and John the Bap- tist were not thieves and robbers. It cannot well be taken to mean, " All who have claimed to be the Messiah." There is no evidence that many claimants did appear before our Lord, if any. Besides, the word "are," in the present tense, seems to exclude those who lived before our Lord's time.
The great knot of the difficulty lies in the words, " came before Me." The Greek word rendered "before " has only four meanings : (1) before in point of time ; (2) before in point of place ; (3) before in point of dignity and honour ; (4) before in the way of substitution. Of these, the two first seem out of the question, and we are shut up to the two last. I can only conjecture that the sentence must be paraphrased in this way : " All who have come into the Church professing to be teachers, claiming honour for themselves instead of Me, or honouring anything in preference to Me, such as you Pharisees, — all such are not true shepherds, but thieves and robbers." I can see no better solution, and I admit that the sentence is a difficulty.
Some, as Chrysostom and Theophylact, think " thieves and robbers " mean Theudas, Judas of Galilee, (Acts v. 36, 37,) and others like them.
Euthymius remarks that " all" here must not be taken liter- ally, but is a Hebraism meaning, " Any one who does not come by Me is a thief," etc.
Theophylact observes that the Manichean heretics wrested this text into a proof of their fanatical view, that the Old Testament prophets were not sent by God!