The thief cometh not, but that he may steal, and kill, and destroy. Christ, elaborating, evolving, what is contained in the image of "thief," regards his rival as the thief of souls; he whose pretension to be a way to God is based on no inward and eternal reality, who comes for no other purpose than to make the sheep his own, not to give them pasture; to sacrifice them to his selfish ends, to use them for his own purposes, not to deal with them graciously for theirs; but to destroy, since in the pursuit of his selfish ends he wastes both life and pasture.
A terrible impeachment, this of all who have not recognized the true Door into the sheepfold, who would shut up the way of life that they may exalt their own order, would diminish the chances of souls in order to secure their own position.
This forms the transition to the second interpretation of the parabolic words; for he adds, I came that they might have life, and that they might have it abundantly; more even than they can possibly use.
This is one of the grandest of our Lord's claims. He gives like God from overflowing stores (Titus 3:6). Those who receive life from him have within them perennial sources of life for others—fullness of being (see notes, John 7:38; John 4:14).
One of the differentiae of "life" is "abundance" of supply beyond immediate possibility of use. Life has the future in its arms. Life propagates new life. Life has untold capacities about it—beauty, fragrance, strength, growth, variety, reproduction, resistance to death, continuity, eternity.
In the Loges is life—and Christ came to give it, to communicate "life to the non-living, to the dead in trespasses, and to those in their graves" (John 5:26).