John 10:14-42
10:14 “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me –
10:15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father – and I lay down my life for the sheep.
10:16 I have other sheep that do not come from this sheepfold. I must bring them too, and they will listen to my voice, so that there will be one flock and one shepherd.
10:17 This is why the Father loves me – because I lay down my life, so that I may take it back again.
10:18 No one takes it away from me, but I lay it down of my own free will. I have the authority to lay it down, and I have the authority to take it back again. This commandment I received from my Father.”
10:19 Another sharp division took place among the Jewish people because of these words.
10:20 Many of them were saying, “He is possessed by a demon and has lost his mind! Why do you listen to him?”
10:21 Others said, “These are not the words of someone possessed by a demon. A demon cannot cause the blind to see, can it?”
Jesus at the Feast of Dedication
10:22 Then came the feast of the Dedication in Jerusalem.
10:23 It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple area in Solomon’s Portico.
10:24 The Jewish leaders surrounded him and asked, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”
10:25 Jesus replied, “I told you and you do not believe. The deeds I do in my Father’s name testify about me.
10:26 But you refuse to believe because you are not my sheep.
10:27 My sheep listen to my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.
10:28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish; no one will snatch them from my hand.
10:29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can snatch them from my Father’s hand.
10:30 The Father and I are one.”
10:31 The Jewish leaders picked up rocks again to stone him to death.
10:32 Jesus said to them, “I have shown you many good deeds from the Father. For which one of them are you going to stone me?”
10:33 The Jewish leaders replied, “We are not going to stone you for a good deed but for blasphemy, because you, a man, are claiming to be God.”
10:34 Jesus answered, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods’?
10:35 If those people to whom the word of God came were called ‘gods’ (and the scripture cannot be broken),
10:36 do you say about the one whom the Father set apart and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?
10:37 If I do not perform the deeds of my Father, do not believe me.
10:38 But if I do them, even if you do not believe me, believe the deeds, so that you may come to know and understand that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.”
10:39 Then they attempted again to seize him, but he escaped their clutches.
10:40 Jesus went back across the Jordan River again to the place where John had been baptizing at an earlier time, and he stayed there.
10:41 Many came to him and began to say, “John performed no miraculous sign, but everything John said about this man was true!”
10:42 And many believed in Jesus there.