As the Father knows me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep.
All Commentaries on John 10:15 Go To John 10
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
As the Father knoweth Me, &c. By this comparison Christ points out both the origin and also the greatness of the love which He bestows on His sheep. The boundless knowledge and love which exists between the Father and Myself, is the source of the love which exists between Myself and My faithful ones. Both because divine and uncreated love is the source of all human and created love; and also because it is the Father"s will that I should love My faithful ones with great and special love, as He loves Me, and I love Him with boundless affection; for He wishes to adopt My faithful ones through Me who am His Son by nature, and He therefore loves them supremely as His children. And I do the same, because I submit in all things to the love and will of the Father; nay more, My love is the same as the Father"s, as our will, our nature, and our Godhead is the same.
But here note the word "as" signifies similarity, not equality. For the Father loves the Song of Solomon , and the Son loves the Father with uncreated, and therefore infinite love. But the Song of Solomon , as Prayer of Manasseh , loves His own with a created and finite love, and is loved with a like love by them in return. But there will be here also a kind of equality, if with Maldonatus you explain it thus: "When Christ says, I know My sheep, He speaks as God; but when He says, The Father knoweth Me, and I know My Father, He speaks of Himself as man. For just as Christ (as God) knows His sheep, and His sheep as men know Him in return; so the Father, as God, knows the Son as Prayer of Manasseh , and the Song of Solomon , as Prayer of Manasseh , acknowledges His Father, and calls Him Father, as we do ourselves. "I ascend to My Father, and your Father"" ( John 20:17).
And I lay down My life for My sheep. This refers back to verse14. "I know My sheep," I love them, i.e, most ardently, and therefore I lay down, i.e, I will shortly lay down, My life for them. He put in the words, "as the Father knoweth Me," to represent the source and the intensity of His love for His people, by His love for the Father, for it was this love which urged Him to lay down His life for His sheep. But the words "I lay down" signify that the death of Christ was not compulsory, but voluntary, self-chosen, and even loved for their salvation. So Leontius. And Christ thus expresses Himself below (ver18). "No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself." And the words also signify, "I lay it down for a time, in order to take it again." The death of Christ therefore was not so much a death as the placing His soul for three days in Limbus.
