Unothered

“And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd.” -John 10:16

Introduction: The Scandal of Inclusion

John 10:16 is not a gentle pastoral metaphor. It is a disruptive theological grenade. In a cultural atmosphere saturated with religious and academic gatekeeping, ethnic superiority, sectarian enclosures, and philosophical elitism, Jesus speaks a sentence that dismantles the entire scaffolding: “Them also I must bring.”

His words announce a profound truth, one that still offends today. Christ claims the outsider. He reaches beyond our assumptions of who belongs and insists that the Other is already His. Not as a project. Not as a guest. As a possession: “I have them.”

In doing so, Jesus unravels every system of exclusion, ecclesiastical, ideological, racial, and political, and replaces it with a single axis of belonging: proximity to His voice.

The Fractured Landscape of Modern Identity

We live in an age obsessed with group identity, tribal formation, and performative moral demarcation. The modern self is fractured, anxious, and desperate for coherence. But lacking a shared telos, it constructs meaning through conflict, especially by defining the “other”.

Douglas Murray argues that we are witnessing a “crowd derangement” wherein grand unifying narratives have collapsed and identity itself has become a battleground.¹ In the vacuum left behind by the retreat of religion and the failure of political ideologies, new metaphysics have emerged: identity politics, intersectionality, and expressive individualism.

Carl Trueman calls this the triumph of the modern self, a self that finds its authenticity not in relationship or responsibility, but in the radical assertion of its own self-definition.² Identity becomes performance; morality becomes theatre. Public life devolves into a battle over narratives and pronouns, not principles.

Alasdair MacIntyre observes that once a culture loses a shared conception of the human good, moral discourse disintegrates into “interminable” conflict, not because people are irrational, but because they are operating from incommensurable frameworks.³ Ethics becomes emotivism. Agreement becomes impossible. And invented identity becomes all that’s left.

But identity politics, for all its revolutionary posturing, is not new. It simply repackages an ancient instinct: the impulse to divide, to purify itself through abstract definitions, to exclude, to construct meaning through negation. In this light, identity politics is not liberationist. It is sacrifices truth, goodwill, and honest love, whilst deifying rituals, performances, and social categories. Where ancient societies sacrificed others, modernity is sacrificing itself. Happily, Willingly. And unbeknownst that it is lying to itself. Much like taking a bet on a three-legged, blind horse hoping for a win.

The Scapegoat Reflex: Ancient Rituals, Modern Forms

René Girard’s analysis of scapegoating reveals a dark but familiar pattern: when a community becomes anxious or destabilised, it instinctively unifies by directing collective hostility onto a chosen “other”.⁴ The scapegoat becomes the vessel for the group’s internal tensions, allowing unity to form, not through truth or repentance, but through shared condemnation. Society becomes Hilterist.

Modern scapegoating is less bloody but no less real. Cancel culture, ideological purging, social media pile-ons, and doctrinal gatekeeping serve the same function. The crowd does not seek understanding or healing. It seeks cohesion through elimination.

What is startling in John 10:16 is not merely that Jesus includes the outsider. It is that He Himself becomes the scapegoat. The shepherd who seeks the outsider does not avoid the consequences. He absorbs them. The one who includes is the one who is crucified. And in doing so, He breaks the entire mechanism of exclusion. The Cross is the paradoxical sacrificial anti-sacrifice. The Gospel through Jesus’ lens is the undoing of othering. Jesus reveals authentic justice through redeeming relationships that He makes righteous through Himself.

One Flock, Not One Fold: The Grammar of Belonging

Jesus’ wording is surgical in John 10:16:

“…other sheep I have, which are not of this fold… there will be one flock and one shepherd.”

Two Greek terms distinguish His meaning:

αὐλή (aulē), “fold”: a walled enclosure, often used to describe physical or institutional boundaries. ποίμνη (poimnē), “flock”: a community gathered under the care of a shepherd.

Jesus does not say there will be one fold. He says there will be one flock. This distinction matters. Folds divide. Flocks unite. Folds are architectural. Flocks are relational. Jesus is not building one global structure; He is gathering one global people, those who know His voice and follow.

D.A. Carson points out that the radical claim in John 10:16 is that the unity of God’s people is not institutional but vocal.⁵ The voice of the shepherd is the centripetal force of Christian identity. Ecclesial traditions, national cultures, or denominational distinctives may remain, but they are not ultimate. Only the Shepherd is.

Historically, the Church has often reversed this logic. Jerome’s Latin translation of John 10:16 rendered “one flock” as “one fold” (unum ovile), a seemingly small error that laid theological foundations for centuries of exclusivist ecclesiology.⁶ Roman Catholic dogma built upon this to declare there could be no salvation outside the Roman fold.

But Jesus’ words subvert such institutional absolutism. He does not flatten difference. He redefines belonging. His claim is not to conformity but to allegiance: “They will hear My voice.”

Modernity and the New Othering

Modernity has not only failed to dismantle exclusion, it has baptised it in new language.

Public health scholars Nurcan Akbulut and Oliver Razum describe othering as a complex social process that assigns belonging to some and non-belonging to others, often based on arbitrary binaries.⁷ It’s not just about prejudice; it is about constructing difference as a source of moral meaning and control.

In the Church, this takes subtler forms. Denominations may claim orthodoxy while quietly implying that others are suspect. Theological tribes often gatekeep through vocabulary and aesthetics. Liturgical traditions risk behaving as if Christ’s voice must sound like Gregorian chant, or alternatively, like a band in skinny jeans.

The academies of supposed learning are no less guilty: intellectual legitimacy is often reserved for those fluent in approved jargon, theoretical trends, or citation networks, while dissenting perspectives are dismissed as naïve or unsophisticated. Yet, reward academic accolades for theoretical frameworks divorced from reality, and then abstaining from accountability.

In the business world, culture fit becomes code for ideological conformity, and diversity is often celebrated only within a narrow spectrum of acceptable difference. But John 10:16 rebukes all of this.

The Church’s unity, however, is neither imposed nor manufactured, unlike Spain’s legislative move to cancel same-sex attraction Christian help. (https://www.christianpost.com/news/bill-spain-seeks-to-imprison-pastors-helping-people-struggling-same-sex-attraction.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook&fbclid=IwQ0xDSwLey4lleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHoa0UzbxqcUQWZD4zZ1jLnrEM9lksFzJaNoB3__G-tl1Bjb8k09fC3EwtU-y_aem_JdBRlMaEVNjckl4NGx1H7Q). Yet, lives are free-willingly being transformed by Jesus (https://linktr.ee/changedmovement?fbclid=PAQ0xDSwLfCNFleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABpyRq_SoCWRoPS6rtxF-oWFVK81o9UQhi5BvfaJGT-3ZGDr1sT_7lOf69nHR7_aem_SG23cNsNk2f79tN1kTvD6g)

Jesus’ Church emerges when sheep, from diverse folds, respond to the same Shepherd.

A Covenant Beyond the Fold

Michael Horton reminds us that covenant theology is not an ethnic or institutional programme. It is a divine declaration: “I will be your God, and you will be My people.”⁸ Covenant identity predates cultural identity. In Christ, the covenant explodes beyond Israel’s borders and encompasses every nation, tribe, tongue, not by erasing difference, but by drawing all into one story, under one Lord.

John Stott affirms this in The Cross of Christ, where he describes reconciliation not merely as vertical (God to man) but horizontal (man to man).⁹ The Cross does not only forgive sin; it kills hostility. It doesn’t merely invite; it reconstitutes. It creates one new humanity.

The Unothered Church: Proximity, Not Purity

What does this mean for us? It means that the mark of the Church is not purity of tribe but nearness to the Shepherd. It means that our unity is not found in shared politics, preferences, or even praxis, but in shared hearing. Jesus does not organise His flock by theological IQ or cultural affinity. He organises it by recognition: “My sheep hear My voice.”

This is not ecclesiastical relativism. It is covenantal realism. It means we must hold our folds lightly, and our Shepherd tightly.

Practical Application

Examine your defaults: Is your sense of Christian fellowship based on shared beliefs, or shared submission to Christ’s voice?

Challenge structural tribalism: Whether denominational elitism or ideological echo chambers, resist folds that mute the Shepherd.

Welcome theological outsiders: Not with suspicion, but with expectation. If they hear His voice, they are family.

Model a polyphonic orthodoxy: Allow diverse expressions of faithfulness to coexist under the same Lord.

Teach unity as presence: True belonging is not institutional but incarnational, it happens where the Shepherd walks.

Prayer

Lord Jesus,

Good Shepherd of the one flock, teach us to hear Your voice. Silence the noise of our tribal instincts, our institutional pride, and our self-appointed gatekeepers.

Forgive us for building fences You never authorised. Unother us. And let us welcome all those You already claim as Yours. May our unity be real, because You are near.

In Your Holy name Messiah King Jesus

Amen.

References

1. Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (London: Bloomsbury, 2019).

2. Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Wheaton: Crossway, 2020).

3. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 3rd ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007).

4. René Girard, The Scapegoat, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986).

5. D.A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 1991), 384–386.

6. James Montgomery Boice, The Gospel of John: Volume 3 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2005), 1012–1014.

7. Nurcan Akbulut and Oliver Razum, “Why Othering Should Be Considered in Research on Health Inequalities,” SSM – Population Health 20 (2022): 101286.

8. Michael Horton, Introducing Covenant Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2006).

9. John R.W. Stott, The Cross of Christ, 20th Anniv. ed. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006).