“Omnes quotquot venerunt, fures sunt, et latrones, et non audierunt eos oves.”
“All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them.”
“All who came before Me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them.”
“All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep didn’t listen to them.”
“All that 3956, 3745 came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them.”
All they who came are thieves, meaning those who came of their own accord, without being sent: not so the prophets, who had their mission from God. (Witham)
III. Christ's explication of this parable, opening the particulars of it fully. Whatever difficulties there may be in the sayings of the Lord Jesus, we shall find him ready to explain himself, if we be but willing to understand him. We shall find one scripture expounding another, and the blessed Spirit interpreter to the blessed Jesus. Christ, in the parable, had distinguished the shepherd from the robber by this, that he enters in by the door. Now, in the explication of the parable, he makes himself to be both the door by which the shepherd enters and the shepherd that enters in by the door. Though it may be a solecism in rhetoric to make the same person to be both the door and the shepherd, it is no solecism in divinity to make Christ to have his authority from himself, as he has life in himself; and himself to enter by his own blood, as the door, into the holy place.
Verses 6-9 Many who hear the word of Christ, do not understand it, because they will not. But we shall find one scripture expounding another, and the blessed Spirit making known the blessed Jesus. Christ is the Door. And what greater security has the church of God than that the Lord Jesus is between it and all its enemies? He is a door open for passage and communication. Here are plain directions how to come into the fold; we must come in by Jesus Christ as the Door. By faith in him as the great Mediator between God and man. Also, we have precious promises to those that observe this direction. Christ has all that care of his church, and every believer, which a good shepherd has of his flock; and he expects the church, and every believer, to wait on him, and to keep in his pasture.