John Chapter 10 verse 17 Holy Bible

ASV John 10:17

Therefore doth the Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again.
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BBE John 10:17

For this reason am I loved by the Father, because I give up my life so that I may take it again.
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DARBY John 10:17

On this account the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it again.
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KJV John 10:17

Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.
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WBT John 10:17


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WEB John 10:17

Therefore the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again.
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YLT John 10:17

`Because of this doth the Father love me, because I lay down my life, that again I may take it;
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Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 17. - Therefore doth the Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. The διὰ τοῦτο points to the whole of the previous statement, and ὅτι to a more complete exposition of the precise point in it on which the Divine Father's love (ἀγαπή) rests. The "I" and "me" refer to the incarnate Son, i.e. to the Divine-human Personality of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Father loveth me, because, not merely that I lay down my life, for such might be the consequence of helplessness in the presence of victorious and desperate foes. The love which merely "laid down life" would be a Buddha-like self-sacrifice, producing certain moral effects upon the minds of the onlookers, and revealing a large and loving sense of the need of others. Yet in such expression of his sacrificial love he would have relinquished his undertaking. There would have been no more that he could do for his flock, this Shepherd-functions would, in the consummating act, cease, he would be a beautiful Memory, not a living Energy; a glorious Example, not the Author of eternal salvation. He would cease to be the great Shepherd of the sheep. Now the Father's love contemplated more than this, viz. the Lord's own purpose to take up again that life which he was prepared voluntarily to lay down for the sheep. Thus he would indeed die, that he might be more of a Shepherd to them than he had ever been before. How otherwise would he personally bring the other sheep into his flock, or be known of them, as the Father was known by him? Christ declares that after his death he would still exercise royal rights, be as much a Divine-human Personality as ever. Christ, as a sinless Man, the sinless One, might indeed, after the victory over the tempter in the wilderness, or from the Mount of Transfiguration, have returned to the spiritual world without accomplishing an exodus on Golgotha, but he chose, he willed, to lay down his life. Having done this much, he might have joined the great majority, and been their Head and Chief, and left his work to be commented on by others. But such a consummation would have fallen far short of the true and sufficing object of the Father's love. Christ declares that the very end of his death was his resurrection from death. In retaking his life, he is able to continue, on perfectly different terms, the shepherding of his people he becomes in the highest sense, the great Shepherd, the good Shepherd, the archetypal, and the veritable Shepherd of the flock of God.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(17) Therefore doth my Father love me . . . For the meaning of this difficult verse, comp. Notes on John 5:17 et seq., and on Philippians 2:8-9. The thought is that in the relation between the Father and the human nature of Christ, the reason of the Father's love is based upon the self-devotion of the Son. He who so loved the world that he gave His only-begotten Son to die for it, loves the Son who of His own will gives Himself to die. It is, if we might presume so to speak, as though the salvation of mankind had called forth a new relation of love between the Father and the Son.That I might take it again.--This is given as part of the reason of the Father's love; and the words admit of no other construction. At first sight they seem to us paradoxical, beyond and against common feeling. In acts of sacrifice, the fact that that which is lost will be certainly regained, seems to us to take away all value from the act; but here the fact that Christ will lay down His life, is stated to be in order that He may take it again; and this is the foundation of the Father's love! The key to the meaning is in the truth that for Christ the taking again of human life is itself a further sacrifice, and that this is necessary for the completion of the Great Shepherd's work. The scattered sheep during the whole of the world's existence are to be gathered in by Him whose continued union with human nature makes Him at once the Shepherd who gives His life for the sheep, and the Door by whom we ever have access to the Father.