Sayings of Jesus: John 10:10
My apologies for creating a post title that requires the reader to know what John 10:10 says. It’s just that a title which runs to twenty-one words is not likely to attract an audience (assuming it even fits on the screen of your device). Without further ado, here’s the text, which is a statement by Jesus:
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”
In the Bible, there are certain verses—and certain concepts—that I suggest are paradigmatic. By which I mean, they serve as windows through which we are invited to look at other things (both other things in the Bible and more generally, in the Christian faith itself).
An example of a paradigmatic concept is “covenant.” This theme runs throughout the Bible, beginning in Genesis and continuing through Revelation. Sometimes it's explicit in the foreground, but it’s always there in the background. The “new covenant” in Jesus (Luke 22:20; cf. Jeremiah 31:31) sits in unbroken continuity with the Old Testament covenants.
An example of a paradigmatic verse (technically it’s five verses, but who’s counting?) would be the “Great Commandment” to love God and love people (Matthew 22:36-40). Jesus explicitly identifies it as paradigmatic when he says, “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two,” aka, “depend on” these two. In other words, every other commandment—even, we might say, the whole scriptural story itself—is an outworking of these two and should never be interpreted in a way that would place it in contradiction to them. I wish this was more often recognised within authoritarian parts of conservative evangelicalism that are inclined to (no doubt at times unwittingly) place certain other doctrines before it; perhaps because it’s felt that “love” sounds a bit too touchy-feely or wishy-washy.
In the New Testament, we see metaphorical “thief” language used positively to speak of Jesus’ return—the “day of the Lord” (Matthew 24:43-44; 1 Thessalonians 5:2; 2 Peter 3:10)—but generally it’s used negatively, as one would expect. There is nothing unusual in the Greek here—we can take the English translation, on which all the leading versions agree, at its plain meaning.
In John 10:10, there’s a simple and direct contrast in the first and second sentences: what “the thief” comes for—his agenda against humanity—and what Jesus came for—his agenda for humanity. In other words, the thief’s agenda for people is directly opposing Jesus’ agenda for people; and vice versa. What Jesus wants for people is the exact opposite of what the thief wants for people.
In the verses that precede John 10:10, Jesus is speaking of sheep-stealing thieves who sneak into the sheepfold other than through the gate. This imagery continues in verses 11 through 16. Jesus is metaphorically both the gate for the sheep and the good shepherd of the sheep. Versions such as The Message and J. B. Phillips blend verse 10 into the sheep/sheepfold narrative, but I think we can legitimately look at it stand-alone (verses 1 through 16 contain several thoughts that lend themselves to being looked at stand-alone).
Let’s come at it in reverse order. I don’t think we’re in danger of lapsing into “health and wealth” “prosperity gospel” heresy by taking Jesus’ words at face value. He desires that all people everywhere should enjoy life! That they should experience life in abundance: life in all its fullness (Good News); in the fullest possible way (NIRV). Jesus is not affirming an ascetism or neo-Platonic dualism that denies human pleasure and denigrates the physical realm over the “spiritual” realm. Quite the opposite. There’s a “real-ness” and “down-to-earth-ness” here. Of course, all human life needs to be sanctified and made wholesome—lived in line with a godly perspective concerning what’s right. But that said, what continues to be good about a creation that God was pleased to call “very good” when he first completed it (Genesis 1:31)—and the humanity that was its pinnacle—is to be enjoyed and celebrated. The story of salvation is one of rescuing and restoring a once-good creation, rather than destroying it and starting again as a disembodied heavenly bliss in some other-worldly spiritual realm. The salvation story starts from “original goodness,”* rather than “original sin.” It rejects Calvinism’s pessimistic and destructive notion of a “totally depraved” humanity. The Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds (or, Tares), in Matthew 13:24-29, is about precisely that: the day when God will remove every bad thing that his enemies have sown into his originally very-good creation.
The thief, in contrast, wants the very opposite for people. Dare I say, he would be singing in tune with Calvinism. The object of his stealing, destroying, and killing, is the lives people are living. His agenda is stealing life, destroying life, and killing life—both metaphorically and literally. Where Jesus wants us to experience enjoyment of life, the thief wants to see suffering in life. Where Jesus wants abundance, the thief wants deprivation.
Who or what is “the thief”? It’s easy to assume it’s synonymous with Satan, or the devil (“Satan” comes from the Hebrew word śāṭān, meaning adversary, and “the devil” from the Greek, diabolos; “Lucifer” is from Latin). Though we may believe in a personified spiritual enemy, I think that’s too narrow a construction on its own. It’s too easy to “spiritualize” it such that its real-world impact fails to be properly recognized. Moreover, John could have used diabolos if he wanted to limit “the thief” in that way. Other enemies of human life and human thriving steal life, damage lives, and destroy lives as well. If we are to align ourselves with Jesus’ John 10:10 agenda, we must join with him in opposing all these enemies. They include poverty, oppression, deprivation, addiction, loneliness, injustices, and much more. It’s true that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12) but that doesn’t mean that all we do is so-called “spiritual” warfare. Why? Because the negative impact of these powers and forces is in the physical realm—they are part of the axis of evil (the “thief”) that is stealing life from people, destroying lives, and killing lives. The enemy—the thief—also includes human sin, of course, which manifests in the bad that people do to people, with the same outcome: stealing life, destroying life, and at times, even killing life. We must set our face against all these elements of the thief’s agenda—all of the ways in which these enemies of the life of the kingdom in people go about what they do in opposition to Jesus’ abundant life agenda.
* "Original goodness” (taking priority over "original sin” in the biblical story of redemption) is, of course, a paradigmatic concept in itself.