THE THIEF COMES TO STEAL, KILL & DESTROY (PART II)

“When Best Neighbors Become Worst Adversaries”

By Akin Ojumu

All Scripture is given by the inspiration of God. Anything less than an accurate interpretation of the original meaning of a Bible text usurps the authority of God. Whatever a passage of Scripture meant to the original author is what it means now.

2 Peter 1:19-21

“And we have the prophetic Word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

Cognition leads to conviction. What you know becomes what you believe, and what you believe becomes a conviction. Life imitates theology. People live within the framework of their convictions. We go from cognition to conviction and then to affection. The ship of our lives is piloted by our beliefs.

A sound cognition of Scriptures produces a healthy conviction. A healthy conviction yields a wholesome affection. Without an accurate interpretation and sound understanding of the Bible, our faith in God shrivels and our love for God becomes lukewarm.

This commentary series is a study of John 10:10, which is one of the most commonly misinterpreted Bible texts among church folks. 

John 10:10

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

As Robert H. Stein rightly noted in his 1975 essay on wine drinking in the New Testament, “if we do not seek first to understand what the text meant when it was written, it will be very difficult to interpret intelligently what it means and demands of us today.” 

The aim of this commentary is to understand what John 10:10 actually means by applying the principles of hermeneutics and exegesis as described last time. We’ll go back in time, to first century Palestine, when the text was originally spoken and written to elucidate its meaning. 

Should I ask any of you reading this commentary who it was the Lord Jesus was describing as a thief who comes to steal, kill, and destroy in John 10:10, I know what your response is going to be. The reason I know this is because I’ve been where you are now biblically and theologically. You and I used to share a similar understanding of Scriptures. All our lives, we’ve been told that the stealing, killing, and destroying thief mentioned in John 10:10 is Satan. Thanks be to God I now know better.

Before I came to a proper understanding of John 10:10, however, the interpretation of this text by the various preachers whom I heard preached on it was that the thief who comes to steal, kill, and destroy was the Devil. So, we were told that this thief, i.e., the Devil, wants to steal our wealth, kill our health, and destroy our success.

In order to stop the thief from carrying out his evil mission, these preachers told us we must bind and cast him out. They taught us to develop a mountain-moving our faith. Our highly revered General Overseers and daddies in the Lord directed us to decree health and declare wealth over our lives. To defeat the thief, the heavily anointed apostles in their apostolic authority charged us to command favor and confess success that we desire.

Unfortunately, such an understanding of John 10:10 is based on a gross misinterpretation of the text. It wasn’t the Devil that the Lord Jesus was referring to when He spoke of the thief who steals, kills, and destroys. The reason we know it isn’t Satan who is the thief in this text is because of the context in which the remarks were made.

To correctly understand the meaning of John 10:10, we’d have to go back to the previous chapter. The statement about the stealing, killing, and destroying thief is actually a continuation of a larger discourse which began with the healing of the man who was born blind at the Pool of Siloam and the events that unfold subsequently thereafter as recorded in John chapter 9.

After the miraculous opening of the eyes of the man who had been blind from birth, his neighbors and all those who had known him to be a blind beggar all his life couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw him walking around with his eyesight restored. In their astonishment and incredulity, a controversy ensued. While some questioned whether it was even him at all, others thought it might be him. 

Consequently, they subjected the man to inquisition. They interrogated him at length wanting to know exactly how he was able to see and who it was who healed him. “If you are who you claim you are,” they inquired, “then, how is it that you are no longer blind and begging for arms?”

John 9:8-10

“The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar were saying, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some said, “It is he.” Others said, “No, but he is like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” So they said to him, “Then how were your eyes opened?”

Despite the blind man’s honest and accurate response, his neighbors were still not satisfied. So, they decided to drag him before the Pharisees, hoping the religious leaders would help resolve the dispute. 

But that’s not the only reason they brought the healed blind man before the Pharisees. Because the healing took place on a Sabbath day, the people understood very well that the Pharisees did not take kindly to anyone who violated their invented rules and regulations for the observance of the Sabbath day. Perhaps, seeing an opportunity to curry favor with the religious leaders or even get a reward for reporting a Sabbath violator, the people tattletaled on the man healed from blindness and the Man who healed him.

John 9:13

 “They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes.”

Here’s what you need to know about this period of time in ancient history. To be afflicted with a severe physical deformity is to be sentenced to a life of hopelessness and meaninglessness. Being born blind meant being condemned to a life of beggary. And such was the situation of the blind man until the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Light of the world, restored his sight.

Ordinarily, you’d expect the man’s neighbors and everyone who knew him in his previous condition to rejoice with him and be glad that he has now been made whole and given a new lease on life. The humane thing to do was to join the man in shouting, “Glory be to God in the highest! Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

Matthew 10:36

“A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.”

Unfortunately, that was not the case. Rather than being glad, they were pretty mad. Instead of joy, they embarked upon a ploy. The man’s neighbors went and sold him out to the religious leaders for getting healed on a Sabbath day.

By snitching on him to the Pharisees, the man’s neighbors showed they were more interested in exploring the situation to their own advantage. All they saw was an opportunity to profit off the blind man’s divine intervention. Not so much did they care about the restored eyesight. They cared more about the angle they could exploit for selfish gain.

Here was one of God’s sheep snatched from the jaws of blindness and a lifetime of perpetual darkness, yet, instead of his neighbors being kind and neighborly, they turned cold and treated him mischievously. Rather than throwing their arms of brotherly love around him, they threw him out to the wolves to be devoured. By their actions they showed they’d rather he remained in his blind and beggarly state. Such was the attitude of the blind man’s neighbors towards his miraculous healing. 

Next time, we’ll examine how the religious leaders, the undershepherds of God’s sheep, responded to this miraculous restoration of sight to this sheep of God who had been blind from birth.