No matter what he does, they will not believe.  He cures the sick, makes the blind see, lets the lame walk and even raises the dead, and yet still they do not believe.   They are not his sheep and they have no desire for the truth.  They are stuck in their ways and they will remain there.

John 10:27 My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.

Christ knows his sheep and his sheep know him. To his sheep his identity is not in question. They have seen his works and because of them they believe in him and that he is the Christ.

John 10:28 And I give eternal life to them, and they shall not perish to the age, never! And not anyone shall pluck them out of My hand.

Jesus will give them eternal life, something only God can give in the mind of the Jews questioning him. Yet, is this making Jesus God? No, for Jesus had to receive the authority from God to provide it to his disciples.

John 17:1 Jesus spoke these things and lifted up His eyes to Heaven, and said, Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son may also glorify You, 2 as You gave to Him authority over all flesh, so that to all which You gave to Him, He may give to them everlasting life.

God has given Christ the authority necessary to impart everlasting life. Without this from God Christ can do nothing (c.f. Joh. 5:30), and so it can be said that God alone is the ultimate source of everlasting life. Yet, just as God gave him the authority, he also provided him with the disciples themselves.

John 17:10 And all My things are Yours, and Yours are Mine; and I have been glorified in them.

What is Christ's is God's. Why? Because God is the creator of all things, and so in an absolute sense, there can never be something that does not belong to God. Yet, what is Christ's is not his because of some godship, but rather because the Father gave them to him to be his disciples. Just as they shall not be plucked out of Christ's hands, so shall they shall not be plucked out of God's. Why? Because God provides them and the authority to hold them to Christ.

John 10:29 My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all, and no one is able to pluck out of My Father's hand.

God and Christ thus work in unity. Their one goal is to save those that Christ has been given, and so just as they will not be plucked out of Jesus’ hands, they will not be plucked from God’s.  

John 10:30 I and the Father are One!

They are one.  The plural verb refutes Modalism, for there is more than one in view.  The terminology refutes Trinitarianism based upon Jesus’ words in John 17.

John 17:11 And no longer am I in the world, yet these are in the world; and I come to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, those whom You gave to Me, that they may be one as We are.

In no way can God and Jesus be one in a single essence, for that would demand such of the disciples if “they [are to to be] one as We are.”   These texts call to mind the words of the apostle Paul, where he speaks of himself and Apollos. 

1 Corinthians 3:6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God made to grow. 7 So as neither he planting is anything, nor he watering, but God making to grow. 8 So he planting and he watering are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor.

The text displays a unity of purpose and function.  God and Jesus have the same agenda.  They are holding onto Jesus’ followers and they will give them everlasting life.  Hence, the Expositor's Greek Testament states for John 10:30: "An ambassador whose demands were contested might quite naturally say: 'I and my sovereign are one'; not meaning thereby to claim royal dignity, but only to assert that what he did his sovereign did, that his signature carried his sovereign's guarantee, and that his pledges would be fulfilled by all the resources of his sovereign. So here, as God's representative, Jesus introduces the Father's power as the final guarantee, and claims that in this respect he and the Father are one."[2]  The lexical gloss provided by A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature is in support of this, placing an identical reference for 1 Corinthians 3:6, John 17:11 and John 10:30.[3]

John 10:31 Then again the Jews took up stones, that they might stone Him.

This claim is extremely powerful.  Not only is Jesus claiming perfect unity with God, but also he is claiming the authority to give them life.  No mere man could have this authority for himself.  In their eyes God had certainly not given him this authority, for they did not view him as originating with God.

John 10:32 Jesus answered them, I showed you many good works from My Father. For which work of them do you stone Me?

The works of Jesus speak for him and show whom he originates with, and yet they deny this.  He does not claim that the works are his, but they are from his Father (c.f. Acts 2:22).   He asks which of these it is that they want to stone him for. 

John 10:33 The Jews answered Him, saying, We do not stone You concerning a good work, but concerning blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself God.

They are not trying to stone him for his works.  Let him do whatever works he desires, but it is what he claims for himself is the cause of their desire to stone him.  He “makes himself θεος”.  This is blasphemy, for as earlier noted, to exalt oneself to a high position that only God could grant would be construed as blasphemy.  God had not exalted this man, but he had “made himself” exalted. 

 

In commenting on this verse it is noted that we did not translate θεος as “God.”  The noun lacks the definite article, hence allowing for the possibility of an indefinite translation (though admittedly not demanding it), such as provided by the New English Bible and the Emphatic Diaglott. However, an allowable translation is not necessarily an accurate translation. The only way to determine an accurate translation is by context.

 

In order to determine the most reliable translation let us consider the text that we have already discussed, the Jewish perspective of these words and then what follows.

 

We note that Jesus spoke of himself and the Father, whom the Jews considered to be the Almighty, Jehovah.

Thus, regardless of whether or not Jesus and the Father are one being in a Trinity, to the Jews listening to him he would not be claiming to be that God. He had spoken of God and himself, and then claimed for them to be one. To those listening there would be no more basis in concluding that this one in essence or being than there would be to conclude that Paul and Apollos are one being in 1 Corinthians 3. What then?

 

As we noted earlier, Jesus made a claim of giving his disciples everlasting life, a function that could only be performed with divine authority. No mere man could do this without an authority granted from God, and of course Jesus claimed that he did receive this authority from God (Joh. 5:30; 17:2).   Claiming it for himself, the Jews rejected the claim that he had receive this authority from God, instead holding the view that he was “making himself” one in authority. 

John 10:34 Jesus answered them, Has it not been written in your Law, "I said, you are gods"?

Jesus here quotes from Psalms 82:6, apparently considering the entire sum of the Hebrew Scriptures to constitute the law.  These judges were called gods because they judged with authority fro God. They were God's agents (for more on this, please see our discussion on Monotheism). They represented him and possessed divine authority (that is, authority that belonged to God, which he allowed them to exercise). In the case of these judges, the authority was found for them to serve in God's stead in leading the people and making judgments.  While appropriately entitled gods, it was not that they were such in the sense of the Almighty, but neither does anything indicate that Christ was making himself to be such either.

 

With Jesus, he was claiming to be a god for he was claiming to be one that had been bestowed the authority that God would grant his representatives.  In their eyes he was of Satan.  He had a demon.  To claim that his authority originated with God would be blasphemous to them, for in them holding him to have a demon they viewed his activities as originating from the devil. While they viewed him as blasphemous for attributing his actions to God through the Holy Spirit when it was actually Satan and his demons that did them, they were the ones blaspheming for his actions were from God though they attributed them to the demons (c.f. Matt. 12:24-31).   

John 10:35 If He called those gods with whom the Word of God was, and the Scripture cannot be broken,

These men were called gods. If they were arguing that Jesus was claiming to be the Almighty, of what significance would it be to bring up the title in application to men? However, if Jesus were claiming to a divine prerogative that was granted to him by God as with the judges of Israel, he would be claiming exactly what the judges had, thus making himself a god as each of them were. That is, they were called gods because God bestowed upon them the divine prerogative of judgment and rulership, and Christ in this context is called a god for God has granted him the divine prerogative of giving his disciples everlasting life. That is not to say that he was not one also in a greater sense as well, but if they could be call such, so could he. Thus, just as it was not blasphemy for them to do such, neither was it for him. Yet, with the Jews refusing to accept him as being from God, they could do nothing but blindly see it as blasphemy.

John 10:36 do you say of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, You blaspheme, because I said, I am Son of God?

We can thusly conclude that the Jews felt Jesus was falsely making himself to be God's son and thus committing the act of blasphemy, for we have already noted the contextual impossibility of him claiming to be the Almighty himself. He defends himself in noting that he did not “make himself” anything, but God “sanctified [him] and sent [him] into the world.”   

John 10:37 If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me.

Jesus' actions prove that he is who he claims to be, for the works he does are from his Father. He heals the sick, cures the blind, and raises the dead. Yet they attribute this to the demons (Matt. 12:27). Because of this, no matter what Christ did or said he would never receive their approval. They were blinded (2 Cor. 4:4).

John 10:38 But if I do, even if you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may perceive and may believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him.

Jesus here uses language to describe the unity between himself and his Father. Some make the irrational conclusion that this language is somehow describing an omnipresence of the Father and the Son, with them being "in" each other. Yet this passage provides little basis to back such lines of reasoning. Rather, we find the same language used of the disciples in relation to Christ and God.

John 17:21 that all may be one, as You are in Me, Father, and I in You, that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.

Indeed, considering that if the disciples are one in God and Christ, and they are not omnipresent, while too noting that they are one "as" God and Jesus are one (John 17:11), there is no basis for concluding that 10:38 is speaking of an omnipresence of God and Christ. Neither the context nor the grammar leads to such a conclusion. Even though the unity was obvious from his actions, the Jews continued to reject him.

John 10:39 Then again they sought to seize Him. And He went forth from their hand.

The Jews refused to believe that God sent Jesus. To claim such a position, as that of being the Christ, was blasphemy, for in their eyes he falsely attributed his appointment to God. They refused to accept the truth and so they attempted to take hold of him, but he escaped.

Therefore, having examined this passage we can rightfully conclude that there is nothing to support Trinitarian teaching.  Modalism is further refuted by the use of the plural pronoun which requires that there be two distinct persons[4]. This passage is quite simple and it requires no theological import to make sense of.