Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of John 10:11

I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.

11 18. The Allegory of the Good Shepherd

11. I am the Good Shepherd ] The word translated ‘good’ cannot he adequately translated: it means ‘beautiful, noble, good,’ as opposed to ‘foul, mean, wicked.’ It sums up the chief attributes of ideal perfection. Christ is the Perfect Shepherd, as opposed to His own imperfect ministers; He is the true Shepherd, as opposed to the false shepherds, who are hirelings or hypocrites; He is the Good Shepherd, who gives His life for the sheep, as opposed to the wicked thief who takes their lives to preserve his own. Thus in Christ is realised the ideal Shepherd of O.T. Psalms 23; Isa 40:11; Jeremiah 23; Ezekiel 34, Eze 37:24; Zec 11:7. Perhaps no image has penetrated more deeply into the mind of Christendom: Christian prayers and hymns, Christian painting and statuary, and Christian literature are full of it, and have been from the earliest ages. And side by side with it is commonly found the other beautiful image of this Gospel, the Vine: the Good Shepherd and the True Vine are figures of which Christians have never wearied.

giveth his life ] Better, layeth down His life. The phrase is a remarkable one and peculiar to S. John, whereas ‘to give His life’ occurs in the Synoptists (Mat 20:20; Mar 10:45). ‘To lay down’ perhaps includes the notion of ‘to pay down,’ a common meaning of the words in classical Greek; if so, it is exactly equivalent to the Synoptic phrase ‘to give as a ransom.’ It occurs again, Joh 10:15 ; Joh 10:17, Joh 13:37-38, Joh 15:13; 1Jn 3:16. In this country the statement ‘the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep’ seems extravagant when taken apart from the application to Christ. It is otherwise in the East, where dangers from wild beasts and armed bands of robbers are serious and constant. Comp. Gen 13:5; Gen 14:12; Gen 31:39-40; Gen 32:7-8; Gen 37:33; Job 1:17; 1Sa 17:34-35.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

The good shepherd – The faithful and true shepherd, willing to do all that is necessary to defend and save the flock.

Giveth his life – A shepherd that regarded his flock would hazard his own life to defend them. When the wolf comes, he would still remain to protect them. To give his life, here, means the same as not to fly, or to forsake his flock; to be willing to expose his life, if necessary, to defend them. Compare Jdg 12:3; I put my life in my hands and passed over, etc.; 1Sa 19:5; 1Sa 28:21. See Joh 10:15. The Messiah was often predicted under the character of a shepherd.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Joh 10:11-15

I am the Good Shepherd

Christ the Good Shepherd

Christ is the Good Shepherd.

He is this because

I. He OWNS the sheep. He is the Proprietor of the flock. They are His

1. By the gift of the Father. Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me.

2. By creative ties. His own–sheep which are His even before they are called.

3. By purchase. The Good Shepherd giveth as a deposit, layeth down as a pledge, His life for the sheep (Heb 13:20). The blood He shed was not in His own defence, but for the sake of those whom He came to rescue.

II. He KNOWS His sheep.

1. By their faces. An ancient and convenient custom among shepherds is to put a mark upon their sheep, an ear-mark, as they call it; and by the mark they know them in years to come. Jesus Christ, too, puts a mark on His sheep, not on the ear, but on the forehead (Rev 14:1).

2. By their names. He knows His followers, not as men and women only, but as Peter and Andrew, Mary and Martha. The saints have queer names in the Epistles. I cannot remember them, but Jesus does. He calls the stars by name too, but then the stars are very big things. The wonder is that He calls the tiny sheep by name, scattered as they are. Whats in a name? A great deal, especially in a Christian name, given at the font, and accepted by Christ.

3. Their circumstances (Rev 2:13). The Good Shepherd knows where you live–the town, the street, the house (Act 9:11; Act 10:5-6).

4. By a thorough apprehension of their character. In the fourth and fifth verses know signifies outside acquaintance–that Christ and man have come within the same circle. But in the fourteenth verse it means a clear discerning insight into the springs of life and the motives of action.

III. He FEEDS His sheep (Joh 10:9).

1. They go in first to the fold. Rest after wandering. He leadeth me beside the still waters (services of Gods House: perusal of the Bible).

2. They go out to graze. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures (marg. in pastures of tender grass). The Bible pasture is green pasture. Every truth as fresh as if it were spoken but yesterday. Not only is the grass green, but there is plenty of it (Joh 10:10).

IV. He LEADS the sheep (Joh 10:3).

1. He leads the sheep. Exceedingly simple and helpless is a sheep gone astray. And when the Bible speaks of sinners it compares them to erring Isa 53:6).

2. He leads them gently (verse 4). He is not behind them, searing them with the lashes of the law, but in front of them, drawing them with the cords of His love, and adapting His steps to theirs.

3. He leads them safely along the paths of righteousness for His names sake. This is, to me, one of the most cogent reasons for believing in His Divinity, that He was able to stamp His feet so deeply on the rock of history, that their prints have not yet been erased. The weight of Godhead was in His steps, the emphasis of the Infinite in His tread.

4. Not only does He lead us through life, but He goes before us through Psa 23:4). Not a single sheep will be wanting, they shall all be safely folded by Divine love (verse 16). (J. C. Jones, D. D.)

Christ the Good Shepherd

This is one of those Divine sayings in which there is so much of truth and love, that we seem able to do little more than to record it and ponder on it, to express it by symbols, and to draw from it a multitude of peaceful and heavenly thoughts. It was the symbol under which, in times of persecution, His presence was shadowed forth. It was sculptured on the walls of sepulchres and catacombs; it was painted in upper chambers and in oratories; it was traced upon their sacred books; it was graven on the vessels of the altar. The image of the Good Shepherd has expressed, as in a parable, all their deepest affections, fondest musings, most docile obedience, most devoted trust. It is a title in which all other titles meet, in the light of which they blend and lose themselves. Priest, Prophet, King, Saviour, and Guide, are all summed up in this more than royal, paternal, saving name. It recalls in one word all the mercies and lovingkindness of God to His people of old, when the Shepherd of Israel made His own people to go forth like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock. It recites, as it were, all the prophecies and types of the Divine care which were then yet to be revealed to His elect: it revives the visions of Isaiah and Ezekiel (Isa 40:11; Eze 34:12-27; Eze 37:24; Isa 49:9-10). And, moreover, by this title He appropriates to Himself the fulfilment of His own most deep and touching parable of the lost sheep. There is no thought or emotion of pity, compassion, gentleness, patience, and love which is not here expressed. It is the peculiar consolation of the weak, or of them that are out of the way; of the lost and wandering; of the whole flock of God here scattered abroad in the midst of this naughty world. And though it be an office taken on earth, and in the time of our infirmity, it is a name which He will never lay aside. Even in the heavenly glory it still is among His titles. He is even there the chief Shepherd, that great Shepherd of the sheep; and in the state of bliss shall still guide His flock: though more fully to express the unity of His nature with theirs, and His own spotless sacrifice in their behalf, He is called the Lamb (Rev 7:17). Let us then consider awhile the surpassing and peculiar goodness of the One True Shepherd. And this He has revealed to the world in His voluntary death. There was never any other but He who came down from heaven that He might lay down His life for the sheep. This is the one perpetual token of His great love to all mankind–a token ever fresh, quickened with life, full of power to persuade the hearts of His people to Himself. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends; and therefore the death of the good Shepherd is the subject of all the Churchs testimony. Again, His surpassing goodness is shown in the provision He has made of all things necessary for the salvation of His flock in this state of mortality and sin. For this He has provided, first, in the external foundation and visible perpetuity of His Church. He has secured it by the commission to baptize all nations, by the universal preaching of His apostles, by shedding abroad the Holy Ghost, by the revelation of all truth, by the universal tradition of the faith in all the world. And, secondly, His love and care are shown, not only in the external and visible provision which He thus made beforehand for the perpetual wants of His flock, but in the continual and internal providence wherewith He still watches over it. The whole history of His Church from the beginning–the ages of persecution, and times of refreshing; the great conflicts of faith with falsehood, and of the saints with the seed of the serpent; the whole career of His Church amid the kingdoms of the earth and changes of the world, are a perpetual revelation of His love and power. (Archdeacon Manning.)

Christ the Good Shepherd

He is the Good Shepherd in the sense of real or genuine. He is the Shepherd from the very centre of His being. Every instinct of His nature, every feeling of His heart, every thought of His brain, every touch of His hand are those of the true Shepherd, whose constant purpose is to guide and feed and save the flock, and for that purpose He counts no toil too severe, no suffering too intense, no sacrifice too costly. He has thoroughly identified Himself with the sheep, and whatever adds to their well-being He gladly does and bears. He is the Good Shepherd in contrast with the hireling, whose care is selfish and whose aim is wages. Jesus here gives us a distinction that applies in the most direct way to every phase of life. Interests of all kinds are intrusted with paid workers. Some of these are good shepherds, putting the very best of their lives into their toil; some are hirelings, faithful only so long as fidelity is easy, safe, and profitable. The railroad engineer who sees imminent danger and remains at his post, hoping to save precious lives entrusted to his care, is the good shepherd. The need today in the State, the bank, the factory, the store, the kitchen, is for good shepherds. The presence of hirelings brings disaster to every cause. The Good Shepherd guides His sheep by going before them. Those who follow where Jesus led are safe. He was at times in a very whirlwind of human beings who were wrought to the highest pitch by diverse passions, but His feet never made a misstep, His face never turned in the wrong direction. His lips spoke the right word, His hands wrought the most helpful work always. Jesus said, I know My sheep, and am known of Mine. I lay down My life for the sheep. These were the proofs that He was the true Shepherd. He certainly knew what was in man. He saw the treachery working in the heart of Judas. He saw in Peters self-trusting, impulsive nature the flame that soon burnt itself out to leave only the ashes of his boasted faith and devotion. But further than this, He saw the repentant Peter converted into the brave hero. He looked into the very soul of Zaccheus in the sycamore tree and taw in him a stedfast purpose of righteousness. He knew that back of the cleanly appearance of the Pharisees there was moral leprosy. On the briefest acquaintance with Nathanael He spoke of him as one in whom there was no guile. The young man who came to Him with eager inquiries for eternal life was before Him as an open book–a man with a kindly heart, but too weak to brave danger and privation and sacrifice. There was no martyr stuff in him. Sin blunts the faculties. The most exalted natures have the keenest insight. Jesus, the Perfect One, knew instantly the false and the true. (Boston Homilies.)

The Good Shepherd

These words are equivalent to

I. I am A Shepherd. I stand in a peculiar relation to a peculiar people, who are My sheep.

II. I am a GOOD Shepherd. I possess the appropriate qualifications and perform the appropriate duties of the character I sustain.

III. I am THE Shepherd–the one Shepherd–not like him of Joh 10:2, one of the shepherds, but the great, chief, proprietor Shepherd, whose own the sheep are–the Shepherd of shepherds as well as of sheep.

IV. I am THE GOOD Shepherd. I possess in the most perfect degree all the qualifications that are requisite for the discharge of the numerous, varied, and difficult duties of this most exalted office.

V. I am THAT GOOD Shepherd, i.e., the Divine Guardian foreshadowed in prophecy (Eze 34:11-24), and answering in every respect to the type. Christ is all this

1. As He secures for His peculiar people all the blessings they require.

2. As He secures these advantages to them at the greatest conceivable expense to Himself.

3. As there subsists the most endearing mutual acquaintance and intercourse between Him and His people.

4. As He cares for the happiness, so He secures the salvation of all. (J. Brown, D. D.)

The Good Shepherd

The truth here is Christs exceeding love and care for the Church. He would show that He sustained towards it a relationship beyond parallel. Not a king, however wise his rule; not a parent, however fond his care; not a friend, however great his service, for all these are kindnesses of beings of the same nature only. They suggest nothing of that condescension by which a Being of the highest order could embrace one reduced to the condition of fallen man. Hence Christ selected as the type of our lost race the most helpless of animals, and compares Himself to one of the kindest of guardians. Let us consider some of His pastoral offices in which His love is set forth.

I. HE PROVIDES FOR THEIR SPIRITUAL WANTS. This would be the first thing looked for according to the predictions (Psa 23:1-6).

1. Pasture for the flock–enough for all; variety for each.

2. Wisdom to guide.

3. Watchfulness to tend.

4. Constraint to rule.

5. Diligence to seek out.

6. Power to restore.

II. HE PRESERVES THEM FROM FOES AND DANGERS (Joh 10:12). It is our lot to be sent forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. If our soul escapes at all it is because the snare is broken by our Deliverer. That which enables the Good Shepherd to effect our deliverance is His profound and comprehensive knowledge (Joh 10:14). These perils are foreseen and provided for. How many tempted ones have derived comfort from the thought that when Satan has desired to have them, he has prayed, etc. Hence the encouragement, Fear not little flock. He that keepeth Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps.

III. HE IS DILIGENT IN RECOVERING THOSE WHO STRAY (Eze 34:1-31; Isa 53:1-12). In relation to the whole human family Christ came to seek and save the lost. The whole history of the Church has been the gathering in of outcasts. He is found of them that sought Him not; and under backslidings after conversion, will He go after us again. He may leave us to eat the bitter fruits of our ways for a time, and make us contrast the misery of the wilderness with the blessedness of the fold. He, who of all the saints of God lived nearest to Him, and yet wandered furthest, said, He restoreth my soul.

IV. HE HAS SPECIAL CARE OF THE YOUNG, whether young in years or in grace (Isa 40:1-31). An untended lamb is the very type of helplessness and folly. The temptations are many which beset the flock in early life from the example of companions, worldly pleasures, buoyant spirits, etc.; but for these and every spiritual danger the Good Shepherd provides. Still, there are special dangers which account for this pastoral care. The very warmth and freshness of their religious feelings render them more liable to fall. Hence the first duty enjoined on restored Peter was Feed My lambs.

V. HE IS WITH THE FLOCK TO THE END. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, etc. (D. Moore, M. A.)

The Good Shepherd

I. THE PASTORAL CHARACTER CLAIMED BY CHRIST.

1. We shall learn nothing from the text unless we enter humbly and affectionately into its spirit. We must dismiss all Western ideas. Here the connection between shepherd and sheep is simply one of pecuniary interest; but beneath the burning skies and clear starry nights of Palestine there grows up between the man and the dumb creatures he protects, often at the peril of his life, a kind of friendship. For this is after all the true school in which love is taught; dangers and hardships mutually shared, alone in those vast solitudes the shepherd and the sheep feel a life in common. The vast interval between the man and the brute disappears, and the single point of union is felt strongly–the love of the protector, and the love of the grateful life. Those to whom Christ spoke felt all this and more. He appealed to associations which had been familiar from childhood, and unless we try, by realizing such scenes, to feel what they felt by association, these words will only be dry and lifeless.

2. To the name shepherd Christ adds the significant word Good–not in the sense of benevolent, but true born, genuine, just as wine of a noble quality is good compared with the cheaper sort; and a soldier who is one in heart and not by mere profession, or for pay. This expression distinguishes the Good Shepherd from

(1) The robbers who may guard the sheep simply for their flesh and fleece: they have not a true shepherds heart any more than a pirate has the true sailors heart. There were many such marauders in Palestine. David protected Nabals flock from them. Many such nominal shepherds had Israel in by-gone years: rulers whose rule had been but kingcraft: teachers whose instruction had been but priestcraft. Government, teachership are sublime pastoral callings; but when the work is even well done for the sake of party, or place, or honour, or consistency, it is the spirit of the robber.

(2) The hirelings, who are tested by danger. A man is a hireling who does his duty for pay. He may do it in his way faithfully. The paid shepherd will not desert the sheep for a shower or a cold night. But he is not paid to risk his life against the lion or bear, and so the sheep are left to their fate. So a man may be a hired priest, or a paid demagogue, a great champion of rights paid by applause; and while popularity lasts he will be a reformer–deserting the people when danger comes. The cause of the sheep is not his.

3. Exactly the reverse is the Good Shepherd. The cause of man was His, and His only pay the cross. He might have escaped it all, and been an honoured leader by prudent time service. But this would have been the desertion of Gods cause and mans.

II. THE PROOFS WHICH SUBSTANTIATE THE CLAIM.

1. I know My sheep as the Father knoweth Me, and not simply by omniscience. There is a certain mysterious tact of sympathy and antipathy by which we discover the like and unlike of ourselves in others character. A man may hide his opinions, but not his character. There is a something in an impure heart which purity detects afar off. The truer we become, the more unerringly we know the ring of truth. Therefore Christ knows His sheep by the mystic power, always finest in the best natures, by which like detects what is like and unlike itself; and how unerringly did He read men–the enthusiastic populace, Nathanael, the rich ruler, Zacchaeus, Judas, the Pharisees! It was as if His bosom was some mysterious mirror, on which all that came near Him left a sullied or unsullied surface, detecting themselves by every breath. This Divine power must be distinguished from that cunning sagacity which men call knowingness. The worldly wise have maxims and rules; but the finer shades of character escape. Eternal judgment is nothing more than the carrying out of these words, I know My sheep; for their obverse is I never knew you.

2. Christs sheep know Him, not by some lengthened investigation, whether the shepherds dress be the identical dress, the crozier genuine–but instinctively. Truth is like light; risible in itself, not distinguished by the shadow it casts.

3. Pastoral fidelity, I lay down My life. Here is the doctrine of vicarious sacrifice. Unitarians say He died as a martyr in attestation of His truths; but we cannot explain away the for. This sacrificing love is paralleled by the love of the Father to the Son. Therefore that sacrifice is but a mirror of the heart of God. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)

The Good Shepherd

We have here

I. THE COMPLETE CHARACTER. There is more in Jesus than you can pack away in shepherd or any other emblem. But note

1. He sets Himself forth as a shepherd: not such as is employed in England to look after sheep a few months till they are slaughtered. The Eastern shepherd is

(1) The owner or his son. His wealth consists in sheep. He has seldom much of a house, or much land. Ask him How much are you worth? He answers, So many sheep. We are Christs wealth, the riches of the glory of His inheritance is in the saints. The Lords portion is His people. For their sakes He gave not only Ethiopia and Seba, but Himself.

(2) The Caretaker. Christ is never off duty. He has constant care for His people day and night. He knows and prescribes for their every complaint.

(3) The Provider. There is not one in the flock who knows about the selecting of pasturage. For time and eternity, body and soul, Christ supplies all our need.

(4) The Leader.

(5) The Defender.

2. Christ completely fills this character.

(1) He is the Good Shepherd–neither thief nor hireling. What He does is con amore.

(2) He is the Good Shepherd. Of others we can only say a shepherd. All the rest are shadows: He is the substance.

3. Christ rejoices in this character. He repeats it so many times here that it almost reads like the refrain of a song. And if He is so pleased to be our Shepherd, we should be pleased to be His sheep, and avail ourselves of all the privileges wrapped up in the name.

II. THE COMPLETE KNOWLEDGE.

1. Christs knowledge of His own, As the Father, etc. Do you know how much the Father knows the Son who is His glory, other self, yea, one with Him? Just so intimately does the Good Shepherd know His sheep.

(1) Their number.

(2) Their persons–age, character, hairs, constitution; and never mistakes one for another

(3) Trials.

(4) Sins.

(5) This ought to be a great comfort, inasmuch as it is not cold, intellectual knowledge, but that of love. He knows you–

(a) By acquaintance.

(b) By communion.

(c) Sympathy. Though He were a Son yet learned He, etc.

2. Our knowledge of the Lord, as I know the rather. This is

(1) By delight.

(2) By union.

(3) By love.

III. THE COMPLETE SACRIFICE. These words are repeated in different forms four times (Joh 10:11; Joh 10:15; Joh 10:17; Joh 10:13), and mean that

1. He was always doing so. All the life He had He was constantly laying out for the sheep.

2. It was actively performed. He did not die merely.

3. It was voluntary.

4. It was for the sheep. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The Good Shepherd

I. HIS QUALIFICATIONS TO MEET THE NEED OF THE SHEEP.

1. His knowledge of all the wants of the sheep is perfect.

2. His wisdom to provide is infinite.

3. His power enables Him to carry out all His will.

4. His kindness endures through all their waywardness.

5. His faithfulness will never forsake them.

6. His undying interest forgets and omits nothing for their good.

II. HIS ACTIVE WORK FOR THE SHEEP.

1. He rescues them from the great robber.

2. Brings them into His own fold.

3. Provides them with all the nourishment needed.

4. Given them refreshing repose amid the cares and toils of life.

5. Guards them from all danger.

6. Guides them in all perplexity.

7. Heals all their diseases.

8. Reclaims them from all their wanderings.

9. Folds them at last in heaven. (W. H. Van Doren, D. D.)

The slain Shepherd

I. FORESAW THAT HE SHOULD DIE FOR THE SHEEP. The termination of the Saviours life was not accidental nor unforeseen. Many were the intimations He gave of it, which disproves the notion that His death was the disappointment of His hopes.

II. SPONTANEOUSLY UNDERTOOK TO DIE FOR THE SHEEP. He might have saved Himself; He made no attempt at escape; He prayed for no legion of angels to rescue Him; He told Pilate that there was a limitation of his power in regard to his apparently helpless captive; He committed His spirit into His Fathers hands.

III. DIED IN THE STEAD OF THE SHEEP. A shepherd while defending his sheep sometimes falls a victim to his faithfulness. So Christ died a vicarious death, the just for the unjust, which exempted the sinner from the doom deserved. Not that there was a commercial equivalent, as when a debt is paid; but a moral equivalent accepted by a righteous and gracious God.

IV. DIED ON BEHALF OF THE SHEEP. It was not for His own but our advantage. By His sacrifice we are redeemed from the curse of the law and the power of sin, and have secured for us eternal life. Application:

1. Adore and bless the love which animated the Good Shepherd.

2. Live as those who have been bought with a price, and have returned to the Shepherd and Bishop of souls. (Family Churchman.)

The Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep

In this statement we notice the following characteristics of this sacrifice which the Good Shepherd makes for His sheep.

1. It was deliberate. For this purpose He came into the world.

2. It was voluntary. No man taketh My life. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.

3. It is vicarious. Not for them in defence, but for them vicariously. He died for them as a substitute, bearing their own sins in His own body.

4. It was an accepted sacrifice. Therefore doth the Father love Me, because I lay down My life, that I may take it again (Joh 10:17). (G. F. Pentecost, D. D.)

The Shepherd and the sheep

I. THE FLOCK. Were we to take a walk some spring morning among the Yorkshire hills or on the downs of Sussex or Bedfordshire, we should see thousands of sheep belonging to different flocks and masters. Christ has members of His flock not only in Sussex, etc., but in Africa, India, etc.; yes, all the world over. This flock

1. Is an exceedingly large one. If you were to go on counting for a whole year you could not count them all. The patriarchs had large flocks, so have many English farmers, but not altogether one so large. Some say all who are baptized, or take the Lords Supper, or belong to this or that Church, are the Lords sheep. But many of these are wicked, and so cannot be Christs, while some where there are no churches and sacrament are Christs because they love and obey Him. Ever since Abel died men have been gathered in, and thousands are joining the upper fold every day, and still millions are left behind.

2. While it is so large it is increasing very rapidly. Other flocks are to decrease. Every new convert is an addition, and what numbers are sometimes converted in a day (Act 2:1-47)! Missionaries tell us of whole tribes casting away their idols, etc. It ought to increase more than it does when we consider the agencies at work Bibles, tracts, churches, schools, ministers, teachers, Christian fathers and mothers.

3. Christs sheep are very much alike.

(1) In their actions. Just as we can tell wolves from sheep, so we can tell who are Christs and who are not. When we see a man roar like a lion, or greedy like a wolf, we know he is not of Christs fold.

(2) In their colour. If I wash thee not thou hast no part with Me.

(3) In their disposition. If any man have not the spirit of Christ, etc.

(4) In the treatment they require. None can do without the Shepherds care.

4. They bear His mark. What strange marks farmers sometimes put upon their sheep–circles, crosses, initials. Some of Christs sheep have got His mark in greater boldness, but the porter can detect it however faint. If a king were to attempt to enter without it he would be turned away, while a prodigal with it would be welcomed.

(1) This mark is not being an Episcopalian, Independent, etc. We may have the Churchs mark and not Christs.

(2) It is likeness to Christ, and we cannot be like Him without being born again. Some try to imitate this mark and affix Morality, Liberality, Good resolution, Fasting, etc.

5. This is a loving flock. Members of the same family, school, place of worship, ought to be kind and gentle, but Christs flock is the most loving in the world. By this the world knows Christs disciples.

II. THE SHEPHERD.

1. He is awake and watchful. A good many people are awake but not watchful. Sometimes lambs are worried by strange dogs when the shepherd was asleep, and sometimes stray into danger when he is awake but inattentive. But nothing escapes Christs sleepless vigilance. He that keepeth Israel, etc.

2. He is patient. A shepherd cannot have too much patience: much as he may have it will be sorely tried. In all trials Christs patience never left Him; and were it to leave Him now how many would be expelled the fold!

3. He is strong. Look at what He has done in Nature. All power is given unto Me. All ministers, teachers, and angels combined would be unable to provide for or protect His flock. Then His stock of provisions never diminishes, and every sheep is fed according to its need.

4. He goes after every sheep or lamb that goes astray. How strange that any should desert such a fold; stranger still that those who stray should refuse to return. (J. Goodacre.)

Christ the Good Shepherd

The shepherd who can always go to bed regularly at night, and who is able to say, I do not have much trouble with my flock, is not the man to be envied. He coolly says, a few lambs died last winter; we must expect that kind of thing. It is true that some sheep died of starvation; but if the meadows failed, I could not help that. That is the kind of shepherd who deserves to be eaten by the next wolf; but the man who is able to say with Jacob, By night the frost devoured me, and by day the heat, is the true shepherd. He is most irregular as to his rest; the only thing regular about him is his labour and his disappointment, and yet faith makes him a happy man. When you grow very weak as a pastor, and your charge utterly overcomes you, do not repine at such weakness, for then you will be at your full strength; but when you are strong as a pastor, and say, I think that to be a minister is an easy matter, you may depend upon it that you are weak. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The Good Shepherd and His sheep

I. WHAT THE GOOD SHEPHERD DOES FOR HIS SHEEP?

1. He protects them. Sheep are exposed to many dangers, from which they are not able to protect themselves. When David was a shepherd, he tells us of a lion and a bear, that each came and stole away a lamb from his flock; and how he went after the wild beasts, and slew them, and saved his lambs. And this is just what Jesus, the Good Shepherd, does for His sheep. He protects them from Satan, their great enemy. And in the same way He protects them from all their enemies, and from every danger. A Christian mother who lived in the city of New York, in very humble circumstances, had only one child, a little boy about seven years old, whom she had taught to know and love the Saviour. One day, when this good mother was going quietly on with her work at home, she was startled by a loud knock at the door of her humble dwelling. On opening the door she received this alarming message: Hurry away to the police station; your little boy has been run over. She was terribly frightened, and, hastening as fast as she could to the station house, on arriving there she found her little boy surrounded by strangers. The doctor had been sent for, but had not yet arrived. She was told that the wheels of a large carriage had gone over his foot, but, on examining it carefully, she was surprised to find no real injury about the foot. Why, Willie darling, how was it possible for the wheel of the carriage to have gone over your foot, and not have crushed it? The child looked tenderly up into his mothers face, and said–Mamma, dear, I guess God must have put it in a hollow place. This shows what faith that little boy had in the protection which Jesus, the Good Shepherd, has promised to exercise over His sheep. He always has a hollow place to put them in when danger is near.

2. He provides for them. This is something which the sheep cannot do for themselves, and unless the shepherd does it for them they must perish.

II. WHAT THE GOOD SHEPHERD EXPECTS HIS SHEEP TO DO FOR HIM?

1. To hear His voice. My sheep hear my voice, He says.

2. To follow Him. The sheep set us an example here, not only in hearing the shepherd, but in obeying him. (R. Newton, D. D.)

The Shepherd and His sheep

(Childrens sermon).

I. THE FIGURE OF SHEEP SUITS US. We call them silly sheep.

1. They cannot guide their own way. As wild beasts can.

2. They cannot keep or defend themselves. Frightened at danger.

3. They quickly follow bad examples. Running after wilful one.

4. They are surrounded by unknown dangers. How much mother knows, and teacher knows, that we do not.

II. THE FIGURE OF SHEPHERD SUITS CHRIST. A most blessed thing that we have someone to care for us.

1. Shepherd must be strong. To defend, carry, etc.

2. Shepherd must be wise. To guide to food and water.

3. Shepherd must be watchful. To see foes.

4. Shepherd must be loving and gentle. To tend in weakness.

III. WHEN WE SPEAK OF JESUS, WE WANT TO CALL HIM THE GOOD SHEPHERD. Especially because He was willing to die in defending us, Jesus. The old and familiar tale of Eric, who threw Himself to the wolves to save his master. Or, case of shepherd who died fighting three robbers.

IV. WHEN CHRIST SPEAKS OF US, HE WOULD LIKE TO CALL US GOOD SHEEP. What is it to be good, so that Christ can think us good? A great difference in sheep. The good sheep know the Shepherds voice. They follow, they keep close, they obey. (Weekly Pulpit.)

He that is an hireling

The hireling is

I. MERCENARY. He tends the flock simply for wages as Jacob did Gen 29:15; Gen 29:13), though not with the love that Jacob showed Gen 31:33). An emblem of the Pharisees and Jewish rulers generally who served God in a purely legal spirit, and shepherded the flock with an eye to the merit they might acquire, or the recompense they should receive; of those who in Christs day thrust themselves into the priests office for a morsel of bread (1Sa 2:36); of all who enter the ministry for filthy lucres sake (Tit 1:11).

II. SELFISH. He pursues his calling with an eye to his own interest and comfort–a type of Ezekiels shepherds (Eze 34:2-3), and of socalled Christian pastors who use their official position solely to secure worldly emolument, social preferment, or temporal renown (1Ti 3:3; 1Ti 3:3).

III. NEGLIGENT. Chiefly occupied with thoughts of his own happiness, he not only leaves the sheep to cater for themselves (Eze 34:4; Zec 11:16-17), but fleeing at the first approach of danger, permits the helpless creatures to be ravaged and scattered. Once more a representative of the corrupt hierarchy that presided over Israel, and of such nominally Christian teachers who, neglecting the highest interests of their people, leave them to fall a prey to the principalities and powers of evil. (T. Whitelaw D. D.)

Self-sacrificing teachers

Paton records that at a time of great danger on Tanna he tried to prevail on one of the native teachers from Aneityum to remain at the mission house. The man insisted on returning to his post, and with this unanswerable defence of his conduct: Missi, when I see them thirsting for my blood, I just see myself when the missionary first came to my island. I desired to murder him as they now desire to kill me. Had he stayed away for such danger, I would have remained a heathen; but he came, and continued coming to teach us, till by the grace of God I was changed to what I am. Now the same God that changed me can change these poor Tannese to love and serve Him. I can not stay away from them. On mission ground the term pastor is restored to its original meaning, shepherd, with good reason. Hanningtons message to the ruler who compassed his death was: Tell the king that I die for Buganda. I have bought this road with my life. (Monday Club Sermons.)

The hireling

It is not the bare receiving hire which denominates a man a hireling, but the loving hire; his loving the hire more than the work; the working for the sake of the hire. He is an hireling who would not work were it not for the hire; to whom this is the great (if not only) motive of working. O God! if a man who works only for hire is such a wretch, a mere thief and a robber, what is he who continually takes the hire, and yet does not work at all? (J. Wesley.)

The Wolf

Satan a wolf

1. His attacks are deadly.

2. His surprises are crafty.

3. His hatred of Christ is implacable.

4. His hunger to devour is insatiable.

5. He attacks under darkness.

6. He scatters the flock by tempting them to luxury, avarice, and sensuality. Filling their minds with pride, envy, anger, deceit. (W. H. Van Doren, D. D.)

I.know My sheep and am known of Mine

The mutual knowledge of Christ and His people

I. CHRISTS KNOWLEDGE OF HIS PEOPLE.

1. The faithful and experienced Eastern shepherd knows every one of his sheep. So does Christ. He knows

1. Their persons; not only the numbers of His flock. We are as well known to Him as the stars (Isa 40:1-31), and as our children are to us.

2. Their condition and circumstances–but general and peculiar–our sins that He may pardon them; our diseases that He may heal them; our wants that He may supply them; our fears that He may quiet them; our burdens that He may give us strength to bear them; our prayers that He may grant them, our graces that we may delight in them; our services that He may reward them.

2. We trace this knowledge to

(1) His great love. It is clear that the shepherd who loves his sheep best will know them best.

(2) His intimacy. He dwells with them.

(3) His omniscience.

II. CHRISTS PEOPLES KNOWLEDGE OF HIM is

1. Peculiar. Their fellow men do not possess it or understand it.

2. Acquired. It is not natural to us. Nature does not teach it. The young sheep knows its mother by instinct, but not its shepherd. All real knowledge of Christ is the effect of a special manifestation of Him to the soul.

3. Experimental chiefly. Some knowledge we get of Him from faith in Gods testimony concerning Him, but our chief spring is this: when we have hungered, He has fed us; when we have not known our way, He has guided us; where we have fallen into danger, He has extricated us.

4. Practical. The soul that possesses it becomes willing and obedient. (C. Bradley, M. A.)

The true sheep

What is the knowledge by which Christs true sheep are known? There are many kinds of knowledge, of which only one can be the true. There is a knowledge which even fallen angels have of Him (Luk 4:33-34; Luk 4:41; Mat 8:29). This is a knowledge of the spiritual intelligence, which may be possessed in energetic wickedness, and with direct resistance of the will against the will of Christ. Again, there is also a knowledge which all the regenerate possess. The preaching of the Church, the reading of Holy Scriptures, the commemoration of fasts and festivals, the tradition of popular Christianity, and all the knowledge which from childhood we unconsciously imbibe, give us a general knowledge of the evangelical facts and of the history of our Lord. This cannot be the knowledge of which He here speaks. It must be something of a deeper kind, something more living and personal. It is plainly, therefore, such a knowledge as He has of us. It is that mutual consciousness of which we speak when we say that we know any person as our friend. We do not mean that we know him by name; for many strangers we know by name; many whom we have never seen, or further care to know: neither do we mean only that we know all about him, that is to say, who he is, and whence, of what lineage, or from what land, or what has been his history, his acts and words, and the like; for in this way we may be said to know many who do not know us, and with whom we have nothing to do. When we say we know anyone as our friend, we mean that we know not only who he is, but what, or as we say, his character,–that he is true, affectionate, gentle, forgiving, liberal, patient, self-denying; and still more, that he has been, and is, all this to ourselves; that we have made trial of him, and have cause to know this character as a reality, of which we have, as it were, tasted, by often meeting with him, seeing him at all times, under all circumstances and in all changes, familiarly conversing with him, doing service to him, ourselves receiving from him in turn tokens of love and goodness. This is the knowledge of friendship and of love. It is something living and personal, arising out of the whole of our inward nature, and filling all our powers and affections. And such is the knowledge the true sheep have of the Good Shepherd. Let us, then, consider in what way we may attain this knowledge.

1. It must be by following Him. My sheep hear My voice and they follow Me. By living such a life as He lived. Likeness to Him is the power of knowing Him. Nay, rather it is knowledge itself: there is no other. It is by likeness that we know, and by sympathy that we learn.

2. There are peculiar faculties of the heart which must be awakened, if we would know Him as He knows us. There can be no true obedience without the discipline of habitual devotion–in prayer, meditation, sacramental communion.

3. This true knowledge of Him is not a transitory state of feeling. Out of obedience and devotion arises an habitual faith, which makes Him, though unseen, yet perceptibly a part of all our life. (Archdeacon Manning.)

The understanding between shepherd and sheep

You will notice the difference between the Old and the New translation here. The new translation makes the meaning of our Saviours words much clearer. He says, I am the Good Shepherd; and there is an understanding between Me and My sheep, as there is an understanding between My Father and Me. For people to understand one another, there must be something in common. The Pharisees could not understand our Lord. They had nothing in common with Him. As He said to them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above; ye are of this world; I am not of this world. No, they could not understand Him; any more than a man without an ear for music can understand music, or a dull prosy mind can understand poetry, or a person who always acts from self-interested motives can understand another who has more thought for others than for himself. But Christs disciples could understand Him: not perfectly, often very imperfectly; still they had that which made them capable of understanding Him to some extent, and of being trained to understand Him more fully in time; as one who loves music can enjoy and to some extent understand a great musician, one who is not altogether selfish can appreciate the nobility of self-sacrifice for the good of others. Some of Christs disciples had made sacrifices for Him, though small compared with what He had made for them. There were those among His little flock who had left all they had on earth to follow Him, and this, and the faith which led them to it, had made them able to know and understand Him who had left all He had in heaven for their sake. (J. E. Vernon, M. A.)

The shepherds mark

Edmund Andrews was a thoughtless, cruel boy. One day he was passing by Burltons farm, and saw Wilkinson, the old shepherd, busy with his pitch kettle and iron, marking the sheep with the letters J.B., for John Burlton. So you are putting your masters mark upon the sheep, are you? said he. Yes, Master Edmund; but God, the Almighty Maker, has put His mark upon them before. What do you mean? asked Edmund. I mean that our Heavenly Father, in His wisdom and goodness, has put marks upon the creatures He has made, and such marks as none but He could put upon them. He gave wings to the cockchafer, spots to the butterfly, feathers to the bird, a sparkling eye to the frog and toad, a swift foot to the dog, and a soft furry skin to the cat. These marks are His marks, and show that the creatures belong to Him; and woe be to those that abuse them! Thats an odd thought, said Edmund, as he turned away. It may be an odd thought, said the shepherd, but odd things lead us to glorify God, and to act kindly to His creatures. The more we have, Master Edmund, the better.

How Christ knows His sheep

Suppose one of the sheep in a fold were to go to the shepherd, and say, I think Im your sheep, because you get six pounds of wool off me; and another should say, And I think Im your sheep, because you get four pounds of wool from me; and a third, I hope I am your sheep, but I dont know, for you only get three pounds of wool from me; and sometimes it is but two. Finally, suppose one poor scraggy fellow comes who dont know whether he is a sheep or a goat, and makes his complaint; the shepherd would say, I know who are the best sheep, and who are the worst. I wish you could all give me ten pounds of wool; but whether you give me ten pounds or one, you are all mine. I bought you, and paid for you, and you are all in my fold, and you every one belong to me. It is not how much a sheep brings his owner which proves him his. The proof that the sheep belongs to the shepherd is, that the shepherd bought him and takes care of him. (H. W. Beecher.)

Christs knowledge of His sheep

The most fearful attributes of the Godhead turn to the sweetest comfort of a believer. His justice, to the natural man so awful, requires Him to forgive those whom He has punished in our Substitute. His power so tremendous when turned against us is assuring in the same proportion, when it is for us. So with omniscience, a terror to the wrongdoer, but a comfort to the penitent believer.

I. CHRIST KNOWS WHO ARE HIS SHEEP. Leave it then to Him to pronounce who are so. We seldom make a greater mistake then when we attempt to trespass on this province of Deity. I know, almost as much as to say, You do not. And there are times when it will be best not to form the judgment respecting ourselves. Leave it thus. He knows whether I am His; and if not, that I wish to be, and therefore will make me. If I am, He will keep me.

II. HE KNOWS THEM AS A WHOLE. As all one, gathered out of the same desert, washed in the same fountain, etc. In this collectiveness He expects concert of action, sympathy, unity among His people. We are accustomed to regard ourselves as separate individuals, families, churches. Hence our narrowness, selfishness.

III. HE KNOWS THEM AS INDIVIDUALS. Each stands out known and loved as if He cared for none else. He knows

1. You, and not merely about you.

2. How long you have been in the fold, and expects accordingly.

3. Your natural temperament, what you can and cannot bear, how much exposure, liberty, etc. What kind of pasture you require.

4. Your future, and is always working up to it.

IV. HE KNOWS HIMSELF IN THEM AND THEREFORE HIS FATHERS MIND ABOUT THEM. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

I lay down My life for the sheep

Christ died to save men

At the time of the gold fever in California, a man went from England to the diggings. By and by he sent money for his wife and child to follow him. They arrived safely in New York, and there took a passage in one of the beautiful Pacific steamers. A few days after sailing, the terrible cry of Fire! fire! rang through the ship. Everything that the captain and sailors could do was done, but it was of no use; the fire rapidly gained ground. As there was a powder magazine on board, the captain knew that the moment the flames reached it the vessel would be blown up; so he gave the word to lower the life boats. These were got out, but there was not room for all; so the strong pushed in and left the weak to their fate. As the last boat was moving off, a mother and her boy were on the deck and she pleaded to be taken. The sailors agreed to take one but not both. What did the mother do? Did she jump in herself? No! Kissing her boy and handing him over the side of the ship, she said If you live to see your father, tell him I died to save you. That was great love, yet it is but a faint type of what Christ has done for us. (J. L. Nye.)

Damon and Pythias

Damon, being condemned to death by Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, obtained liberty to visit his wife and children, leaving his friend, Pythias, as a pledge for his return. At the appointed time Damon failed in appearing, and the tyrant had the curiosity to visit Pythias in prison. What a fool you were, said he, to rely on Damons promise! How could you imagine that he would sacrifice his life for you or for any man? My lord, said Pythias, with a firm voice and noble aspect, I would suffer a thousand deaths rather than my friend should fail in any article of honour. He cannot fail. I am as confident of his virtue as I am of my own existence. But I beseech the gods to preserve his life. Oppose him ye winds! Disappoint his eagerness, and suffer him not to arrive till my death has saved a life of much greater consequence than mine, necessary to his lovely wife, to his little innocents, to his friends, to his country! Oh! let me not die the cruelest of deaths in that of Damon! Dionysius was confounded and awed with the magnanimity of these sentiments. He wished to speak: he hesitated, he looked down, and retired in silence. Pythias was brought forth, and with an air of satisfaction walked to the place of execution. He ascended the scaffold and addressed the people. My prayers are hoard; the gods are propitious; the winds have been contrary. Damon could not conquer impossibilities: he will be here tomorrow, and my blood shall ransom that of my friend. As he pronounced these words, a buzz arose; a distant voice was heard; the crowd caught the words, and Stop, stop, executioner! was repeated by every person. A man came at full speed. In the same instant he was off his horse, on the scaffold, and in the arms of Pythias. You are safe! he cried, you are safe, my friend! The gods be praised, you are safe! Pale and half speechless in the arms of Damon, Pythias replied in broken accents, Fatal haste! cruel impatience! What envious powers have wrought impossibilities against your friend? But I will not be wholly disappointed. Since I cannot die to save you, I will die to accompany you! Dionysius heard and beheld with astonishment. His eyes were opened, his heart was touched, and he could no longer resist the power of pity. He descended from his throne and ascended the scaffold. Live, live, ye incomparable pair! Ye have demonstrated the existence of virtue, and consequently of a God who rewards it. Live happy, live revered; and as you have invited me by your example, form me by your precepts to participate worthily in a friendship so divine.

Other sheep I have which are not of this fold

Outsiders

The grace of God is no mans little property, fenced off all for ourselves. It is not a kings park, at which we look through a barred gateway. It is a Fathers orchard with bars to let down and gates to swing open. There are Christians who keep a severe guard over the Church, when God would have all come and take the richest and ripest of the fruit. Then, again, we have those who get up statistics and say so many Methodists, Presbyterians, etc., there, that is the number of Christians. Christ comes and says No! you have not counted rightly, other sheep have I which are not of these folds.

I. The heavenly Shepherd will find many of His sheep, among those who are NON-CHURCH GOERS. I do not think that the Church gains when you take sheep from one fold and puts them into another. It is the lost sheep on the mountains we want to bring back.

II. The heavenly Shepherd will find many of His sheep among those who are now REJECTORS OF CHRISTIANITY. I do not know bow you came to reject Christianity: but I want you, before you finally discard it, to give it a fair trial. You want what it alone can give–if it does not give that to you then you may reject it. But it will. Take not the word of a clergyman, who may be speaking professionally, but that of laymen who have never preached–Milton, Wilbcrforce, Newton, Boyle, Locke, Morse.

III. The heavenly Shepherd will get many of His sheep among THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN FLUNG OF EVIL HABIT. The way Christian people give up the prodigal is outrageous. They talk as though the grace of God were a chain of forty or fifty links, and, when they had been run out, there was nothing to touch a mans iniquity. But there is only one class about whom we may be despondent: those who have been hearing the gospel for twenty, thirty, forty years, and who are gospel hardened. (T. De Witt Talmage.)

Other sheep and one flock

I. OUR LORD HAD A PEOPLE UNDER THE WORST CIRCUMSTANCES. This fold was not the Jews, but His handful of disciples.

1. Doubtless these times are exceedingly dangerous, and some brethren never allow me to forget it, for they play well on the minor key. But I heard it thirty years ago, and the times have been bad ever since, and always will be. This is better, perhaps, than living in a fools paradise; but certainly the days of Christ were terrible days in the point of

(1) Utter ungodliness. A few godly ones watched for the coming of Christ, but the great mass were altogether gone out of the way.

(2) Will worship; the commandments of men were taught for the doctrines of God.

(3) Fierce opposition, as seen in the treatment Christ received. Yet He had a chosen company, and however guilty our age may be in these points, there is an election of grace still.

2. This company was a fold. Afterwards they were to be called a flock; but as yet one glance was sufficient to embrace them all.

(1) They were distinct from the world Ye are not of the world, etc.

(2) In that fold they Were protected from ill-weathers, and from the wolf and the thief.

(3) Even there were goats–One of you is a devil.

(4) They were being strengthened for future following of the Great Shepherd.

3. When Jesus had thus shut them in He would not allow them to be exclusive, but opens wide the door of the sheepfold and cries, Other sheep I have. Thus He checks a common tendency to be forgetful of outsiders. Seeing that He has those who would be found by Him through His faithful people, let us rouse ourselves to the holy enterprise,

4. Never despair. The Lord is with us. We may be poor, but we are Christs, and that makes us precious. There were three men who had to carry on a college when funds were running short. One complained that they had no helpers and could not hope to succeed. Why, said another, we are a thousand. How is that? I am a cipher, and you and our brother; so we have three noughts to begin with. But Christ is ONE. Put Him down before the ciphers, and we have a thousand directly.

II. OUR LORD HAS OTHER SHEEP NOT YET KNOWN TO US. I have, not shall have. The apostles never dreamed of His having sheep in Britain or Rome. Their most liberal notion was that the scattered seed of Abraham might be gathered.

1. Who are these sheep?

(1) Christs chosen–Ye have not chosen Me, etc.

(2) Those whom the Father had given Him.

(3) Those for whom He laid down His life that they might be the redeemed of the Lord, Ye are not your own, etc.

(4) Those on whose behalf He had entered into suretyship engagements even as Jacob under took the flock of Laban that he should lose none.

2. What was their state? People without a shepherd–lost, wandering, ready to be devoured by the wolf. Bad as the world is today it must have been far worse in the vile Roman world.

3. This thought gave Christ great encouragement when confronting their adversaries, and should be a great comfort to Gods people now. I have much people in this city. This is our authority for seeking the lost sheep in whoevers preserves they may be.

III. OUR LORD MUST LEAD THOSE OTHER SHEEP, not bring; Christ must be at their head, and they must follow.

1. It is Christ who has to do this, even as He has done it hitherto, also. As Jesus has done it for us He must do it for others.

2. He must do it. Subjects are usually bound by a must; this must binds the sovereign. Who can resist it? Clear out all enemies!

3. How He must do it? They shall hear my voice. Christ is going to save people still by the gospel, and we must not look for other means. Go ye into all the world.

IV. OUR LORD GUARANTEES THE UNITY OF HIS CHURCH. One flock.

1. We hear a great deal about the unity of the Church. We are to have the Roman, Greek, and Anglican all one. God has chosen people in each, but their union would be a dire mischief.

2. This has been carried out as a matter of fact. There never was but one Shepherd and never will be but one flock. All the visible Churches contain parts of it.

3. As a matter of experience this is carried out in believers. A spiritually minded man is at one with all spiritually minded men. Set a Calvinist and an Arminian at prayer: let the Spirit work on Baptist and Paedo-Baptist. What Protestant but loves Bernard?

4. The external Church is needful, but it is not the one and indivisible Church of Christ.

5. This Church is known by its obedience to Christ. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

This fold and the other sheep

I. THIS FOLD: the seed of Israel. By His personal ministry our Lord founded the kingdom in Israel and some of the seed of Abraham were gathered in.

II. OTHER SHEEP NOT OF THIS FOLD. Here the expansive love of Jesus breaks forth. He began at Jerusalem, but the longings of His heart go forth to the end of the earth.

III. I HAVE. Mark the all encompassing sovereignty of His love. They were His in the covenant from the beginning. At a time when they were neither born nor born again He counts them His.

IV. THEM ALSO. There is no respect of persons. No poor slave will be left out because he is black; no servant pushed aside to make way for his master; no rich or powerful man is kept out at the cry of the envious mob. If any were kept back the Lord would say, them also; gather up the fragments, etc. What a cheering word l It embraces the prodigal, the dying thief, Saul of Tarsus.

V. I BRING. He sends none forward to make or find their own way. In all their afflictions He is afflicted. They shall not traverse the valley of the shadow alone. None shall stand at the Judgment to make the best of his own case. I am the Way. He brings them through the regeneration into the fold on earth. It often takes much bringing; but all power is given to the Captain of our salvation. The drunkard, miser, etc., are made willing in the day of His power. And that same bringing power shall rend the gates of death.

VI. I MUST. He commands the winds and the sea and they obey; who then can command Him? His own yearning love. (W. Arnot, D. D.)

The missionary’s warrant

We have a right to go anywhere to seek after our Masters sheep. If they are my Masters sheep who shall stop me over hill and dale inquiring, Have you seen my Masters sheep. If any say, You do intrude in this land, let the answer be, We are after our Masters sheep which have strayed here. You have a search warrant from the King of kings, and, therefore, you have a right to enter and search after your Lords stolen property. If men belonged to the devil we would not rob the enemy himself; but they do not belong to him. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Them also I must bring.–They must be brought

1. To realize the visions of ancient prophecy.

2. To accomplish the promise of the Father (Psa 2:3).

3. To secure the object, and to recompense the suffering and the toil of the Redeemers mediatorial undertaking.

4. To answer the prayers, fulfil the expectations, and crown the prayers which He has animated and inspired. (T. Raffles, LL. D.)

One fold and one shepherd

I. CHRISTS PROPERTY IN HIS SHEEP.

1. How acquired.

(1) By donation. Thine they were and Thou gavest them Me. Ask of Me, etc.

(2) By purchase, Ye are bought with a price.

(3) By the sanctification of the Spirit; after which He gives them back to the Father to be glorified.

2. There are but three possessions to which the word property really belongs.

(1) The sinners possession of his own sins.

(2) The believers possession of his own Saviour.

(3) Christs possession of His own people.

3. Possession is an endearing thing. If you possess a thing you love it; and that feeling is a faint copy of the mind of Christ.

4. Concerning this possession, Christ declares that He holds it not only over those He was then addressing, but over others separated from them–perhaps other worlds, certainly Gentiles, of whose admission Jews werejealous.

5. Note, then, that Christ said this of those who were then unconverted. Paul (Act 13:1-52) was almost driven from Corinth by opposition, but was stopped by I have much people in this city; and yet, with the exception of two or three persons, all were locked in unbelief. But it was not so eighteen months after. What a joy to the Christian worker to be able to think that any man may be among Christs other sheep!

II. CHRISTS ENGAGEMENT FOR HIS SHEEP. Them also I must bring.

1. The imperative obligation. God permits Himself to be ruled by His own covenant.

2. This certified engagement is this: They shall hear My voice.

(1) When a soul just awakened hears Thou art the man.

(2) When the stricken conscience hears Go in peace, etc.

(3) When the soul, better knowing now Christs accents, hears It is I; be not afraid.

(4) When the heart, better ordered, always hears and says, Speak Lord, etc.

(5) When the ear shall drink in Come ye blessed, etc.

3. Your corresponding duty to this pledge is to hear–obey. This is happiness here and glory by and by.

III. CHRISTS INTENTION WITH HIS SHEEP. One fold, etc.

1. This will be literally fulfilled in heaven.

2. It is spiritually fulfilled herein

(1) Unity of condition.

(2) Unity of Spirit.

(3) Unity of action.

(4) Unity of headship–One Shepherd. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

Christs collected flocks

I. WHAT THINGS ARE TO BE DONE FOR THE COMPLETION OF THIS END? I observe

1. The views of mankind concerning religious subjects are to be extensively changed.

2. A mighty change, also, must be wrought in the disposition of man.

3. The change will not be less in the conduct of men.

II. IN WHAT MANNER ARE THESE THINGS TO BE DONE? I answer, they are to be accomplished not by miracles, but by means.

III. BY WHOM ARE THESE THINGS TO BE DONE? Solitary efforts will here be fruitless; divided efforts will be equally fruitless; clashing efforts will destroy each other. Learn

1. The work to which you are summoned is the work of God.

2. The present is the proper time for this glorious undertaking.

3. The necessity of this work irresistibly demands every practicable effort. The whole world, says St. John, speaking of his own time, lieth in wickedness (1Jn 5:19). Lieth–for such is the indication of the original–as a man slain lies weltering in his blood.

4. The day in which these blessings are to be ushered in has arrived. The day in which the mighty work will be seen in its full completion is at hand. We must labour, that those who come after us may enter into our labours. (T. Dwight, D. D.)

Unity the final purpose of God

An old Scottish Methodist, who had clung vehemently to one of two small sects on opposite sides of the street, said, when dying: The street I am now travelling in has nae sides, and if power were now given me I would preach purity of life mair and purity of doctrine less. Since I was laid by here I have had whisperings of the still small voice telling me that the wranglings of faith will neer be heard in the kingdom I am nearing; and, as love cements all differences, Ill perhaps find the place roomier than I thought in times past. (Dean Stanley.)

United in anticipation of death

When seven men imprisoned in a Pennsylvania coal mine were rescued after five days imprisonment they were asked if they hoped to escape. We prayed for it, was the reply; we prayed together. Some were Protestants and some Catholics, but when death is as close as that you only think of God.

Unity defined

I distinguish the unity of comprehensiveness from the unity of mere singularity. The word one, as oneness, is an ambiguous word. There is a oneness belonging to the army as well as to every soldier in the army. The army is one, and that is the oneness of unity; the soldier is one, and that is the oneness of the unit. There is difference between the oneness of a body and the oneness of a member of that body. The body is many, and a unity of manifold comprehensiveness. An arm or a member of a body is one, but that is the unity of singularity. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)

Therefore doth My Father love Me

The Fathers love of Jesus

Observe what Christ says

I. OF LAYING DOWN HIS LIFE.

1. No mere man could have said this. Power over life is Gods prerogative. To none but the Son has He given to have life in Himself; and power to take it again is manifestly not ours. But we must not separate this claim from His obedience. Christ knows no power but to do the Fathers will.

2. Much of our metaphysics is here silenced. Is obedience free if we are not also free to disobey? The truest liberty is voluntary restraint. The freedom of obedience is learned as we love to obey. The fullest consciousness of power is that of power to do Gods will.

3. Christs assertion of power is intended to illustrate His obedience. I lay down My life of Myself. He could have withdrawn Himself from the people, or by yielding to their prejudices have won them. He could have awed them, as He did the soldiers, by His majestic presence. He had power over mens consciences, as was seen in the case of the Pharisees who brought the woman taken in adultery, and in the case of Pilate. The concealed aid of heaven was at His bidding. But more than all this was the strength of His submission. He speaks of His power to show how full was His obedience.

4. We have here an awful revelation of the powerlessness of sin. The Jews were simply tolerated, ignorant of the power that restrained itself. So with all sinners. But Christ was thus patient that when they had done their worst He might be their Saviour.

5. The chief truth here is the fulness of Christs obedience. The consciousness that we might escape would be to us a motive for disobedience. We are kept submissive by weakness. He speaks not of power to avoid the sacrifice but to make it.

II. OF THY FATHERS LOVE.

1. We see the reason of this partly in Christs obedience. Here is the oneness of the Father and the Son; the Son rejoices to obey; the Father commits His whole counsel to the Son that He may accomplish it.

2. The commandment was that Christ should lay down His life for the sheep. The Fathers love for the Son is not one in which all others are shut out. We read that God did not rest in Creation till He had made man in His own image. His love is so bountiful that it forms objects on which to lavish itself. Here we have something more surprising–the pity for lost man which is in the Father, and that pity finding response in the Son. Well was it said that God is love.

3. Christ tells us why the Father loves Him.

(1) That we may know the men who are dearest to God–not as with us the learned, wealthy, powerful, but the obedient and loving.

(2) That we may understand Christs life and death. Neither Jews nor disciples could understand the Man of Sorrows. Hence the double proclamation, This is My beloved Son. How many a reason has been given why Christ must die! But how poor all reasons beside the simple one that He loved us.

(3) In order that we may know God. The object of our affection reveals ourselves. If the man of force be our hero, we show ourselves worshippers of power; if a good man, we prize goodness. Christ is dear to the Father because He loves us. What a witness to the love of God.

III. OF THE ISSUE OF LAYING DOWN HIS LIFE. Christ is to reap the reward of His sacrifice, and we of the travail of His soul.

1. This alone renders His sacrifice lawful or possible, and distinguishes between sublimity of sacrifice, and scornful waste of self. The Fathers commandment is not that the Son should perish. The life which is yielded up for the ends of love is restored in the triumph of love.

2. This illustrates the true character of trust in God–the assurance that He is righteous to vindicate fidelity and loving to reward it.

3. It is not love for men which is indifferent about sharing with them the joy of their restoration–this makes any sacrifice an affront. Christ anticipates the joy of leading many sons to glory.

4. Heaven would lose its value if Christ perished to secure it for us. We should feel that our salvation had been too dearly purchased, and the bitter sorrow that He was absent whose joy it would have been to meet His redeemed.

5. To labour in hope of reward is not always selfish. We need the triumph to vindicate the suffering.

6. We learn how to sustain ourselves in Christian struggle and endurance. If we suffer with Him, etc. The sacrifice and resurrection of Christ is a rebuke to all despondency. (A. Mackennal, D. D.)

God loving His Son

The assertions of Christ as to His relation to God are very different from those of Old Testament saints. Not once did they call God Father–this Jesus always does; and the Father acquiesces. This is My beloved Son. Here Christ seems to found His Fathers love on something He is about to accomplish on earth. But a stranger having rescued a child from drowning and restored it to its parent might say, Therefore doth the Father love me. And so some infer that Christ was related to God only in virtue of His obedience to death. Not so. God is love; but love cannot exist without an object, and this object must be coexistent with the eternal affection. So Christ is the eternal object of an eternal love, and the text only states an additional reason for that love. A king has a beloved son and a revolted province. The latter he could crush, but prefers to accept a voluntary mission of the former to win the rebels by privation, forbearance, and kindness. This succeeds. The king expresses his satisfaction, and the son says, Therefore doth my father love me. The idea of the text is similar. What were the elements in Christs death which drew forth the love of Christ?

I. PERFECT SPONTANEITY IN THE OBEDIENCE HE RENDERED. Not that His sufferings or death were in themselves well pleasing to the merciful Father. All men die, and by Divine appointment; but God does not love them for this, else the wicked would be loved as well as the righteous. It was the Divine principle that prompted it–obedience. It was not snatched from Him, nor did He yield it in idle passivity; He laid it down of His active free will, and so revealed the Fathers will, developed the plan of redemption, and is therefore the object of Gods intensest love.

II. FAITH. There would have been no merit in His death had He sacrificed Himself without assurance of resurrection. It might have been from despair. Nor could it have taken place without this assurance. The extinction of such a one could not be permitted in the government of a righteous God. Knowing that He was sinless, He must have known that death, the wages of sin, had no power over Him. Hence He never spoke of His death apart from His resurrection. The taking up was as much in the Divine plan as the laying down. He was confident of the successful issue, and God loved Him because of this. Conclusion:

1. If God finds a new reason for loving His Son in the moral qualities He displayed, He will love us if we strive to live as Christ lived. Wherever He sees men obedient and self-sacrificing He will love them.

2. We should do our duty in spite of consequences, or rather with regard to the remoter consequences. Lay down our lives that we may take them again. Whosoever loseth his life for My sake shall find it. (T. James, M. A.)

The stimulating power of the consciousness of being loved

What heat is in nature that love is in the human realm. It tends to quicken and expand and beautify those on whom it lights; it assists men to be better and stronger and more gracious than they would otherwise be. Under its influence, souls are enabled to bud and blossom more freely; and let none of us be ashamed of needing it, and leaning on it for succour. (S. A. Tipple.)

The Sons work approved of the Father

I. THE GREAT WORK IN WHICH THE SON IS ENGAGED–the salvation of His sheep

1. From danger, the curse of the law, eternal death.

2. To obedience, holiness, blessedness, heaven.

II. THE APPOINTMENT OF THE SON TO THIS GREAT WORK BY THE FATHER. This commandment. This principle holds a high place in the Bible. Christ was predicted as the servant and sent of God; gladly accepts this subordination; and His apostles teach the same doctrine.

III. THE QUALIFICATIONS OF THE SON FOR HIS GREAT WORK.

1. To atone for guilt He must be and was free from guilt.

2. To save man He must be and was man, and yet more than man. As man He had a life to lay down; but He had no power as man to lay it down of Himself; this was Divine.

3. This Divine-human life had sufficient merit to expiate the sin of the world.

4. But redemption could not have been consummated without its resumption; and so He had power to take it again.

IV. THE SONS ACCOMPLISHMENT OF HIS GREAT WORK. His offering has been effectual for the purpose for which it was presented. There remaineth no more sacrifice for sin. Millions are now through His expiation the spirits of just men made perfect, and millions are preparing for that blessed state.

V. THE COMPLACENCY MANIFESTED BY THE FATHER TO THE SON IN AND FOR THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF HIS GREAT WORK. (Php 2:9-11). (J. Brown, D. D.)

Christ comforting Himself

The people were listening with sneers and anger to Christs asservations of the union between Himself and God, and contemplating a step which would expose their emptiness. When put out of the way, His presumptuous claims would be shattered. He read this thought, and answered it calmly, with the inward consciousness that that event would only culminate His voluntary self-sacrifice, and render Him the special object of the Fathers love. Such is frequently the blindness and defeat of bad men. It is poor business trying to hurt a saint. You can never be certain that your hardest blows will not ensure him more abundant consolation.

I. CHRIST COMFORTING HIMSELF

1. With the reflection that someone loves Him. We find Him constantly doing this. I am not alone, etc.; pausing in the midst of hostility, etc., to get soothing and inspiration. He could not get on without it any more than we can. Let none of us weakly and selfishly long for this, nor stoically determine to be above it; but value it as an impulse for work.

2. With His felt possession of power. His adversaries regarded Him as their victim. He muses, they are mistaken; instead of being dragged helplessly, I shall march in might to die. We need not shrink from the thought that Jesus found solace in the consciousness of His superiority to what He looked: that while He seemed weak, He was sublimely strong. It is both natural and legitimate, when we are being estimated falsely, to feel the excellence or the gift that is not perceived. We may need this in encountering disparagement, to preserve our self-possession and keep ourselves from fainting. There are others, however, who can never have this consolation. Their reputation is the best thing they have; they are meaner than the social estimate of them.

II. THE GROUNDS OF THIS COMFORT.

1. The Father loved Christ because He lay down His life in order to take it again. The beauty of self-sacrifice lies not in the act, but in its animating purpose. There is no necessary virtue in denying yourself. Sacrifices are often made out of mere weakness, regard for the usages of society, self-indulgence, even to spite others, and in disregard of the right and the claims of other people. Christ laid down His life in order to take it again. This explanation is at first sight disappointing. What was there to charm the heart of God in surrender for the purpose of recovery? But this recovery was meant to be a great source and fountain of good, that He might be the first-born among many brethren. It is noble to sacrifice self with a view to acquiring more capacity for service.

2. The secret of Christs power was not that He had a right to elect to die, which we have not, but that He felt Himself able to make the sacrifice required of Him. He did not need to be dragged or urged into it, but was able to make it freely. What happens there then is in the sense of the power to respond at once to the call of a difficult, trying duty. But He was certain not only that He could bear the Cross, but that He should reap to the full the anticipated fruit of it. What more blessed than this–the assurance of power to do what is wholly true, and an assurance of gaining the object?

3. What was the secret of it all? This commandment, etc. What God calls one to, one will have strength to accomplish, and it will assuredly yield its due fruit. In other things you may break down or be disappointed–never in this. (S. A. Tipple.)

I lay down My life

Victim and priest

Types, like shadows, are one-sided things. Hence in the shadowy worship of Judaism Christ was brokenly seen in a variety of disconnected images. The sacrificial lamb was a picture of Him who is the first of sufferers and the only sin bearer; but the dumb brute, led in unresisting ignorance to the altar, not otherwise than it might have been to the shambles, was no picture of the perfect willingness with which He devoted His life to God. For the type of that we must go to the white-robed priest. There was need for a double shadow. But in the one real sacrifice the two are one. Jesus is priest and victim. There are certain steps we must take in comprehending Christs self-sacrificing will as expressed in the text.

I. It was CONSTANT. The strength of ones will to suffer is tested by its deliberate formation and persistent endurance.

1. Our Saviours resolution was no impulse born of excited feeling, liable to fail before calmer thought; nor a necessity for which He was gradually prepared, and at last shut up to through circumstances; but a habitual purpose, steadily kept in view from the first, till it grew almost to a passion. How am I straitened, etc.

2. Many men are heroic only by impulse; give time, and the bravery yields to prudence. Men have ignorantly taken the first step towards martyrdom; but, having taken it, have felt bound to go forward. But when the mind can form so terrible a purpose, and calmly hold it on for years, in the face of unromantic neglect and mockery, the purpose must have its roots deep. Such will was never in any except Christ. Precious life, which carried its own death in its bosom, like a bunch of sweet flowers, filling all its days with fragrance.

II. It was ACTIVELY FREE.

1. While resignation was the habitual attitude of His soul, there was more than resignation. We underestimate His priestly act, by thinking more of His willingness than of His will to suffer. I lay down My life means that, with ardent desire and fixed resolution, He is, at His own choice, giving away His own Spiritual Person, including that which is the most personal thing of all–His will. And this active exposure to penalty accompanied Him through every stage. His was both the right and strength at every stage to free His soul; but He chose to go on deeper into the darkness till all was over. This came out very plainly when Peter put before Him the alternative; when, His time being come, He set Himself to go to Jerusalem, when He said to Judas, What thou doest, etc.; when, on His arrest, He spoke about the legion of angels; yes, and when the torment reached Him, Let Him now come down from the cross.

2. Now, it is harder to will a disagreeable lot than to consent to bear it when it is laid upon us. Many a man has piety to submit to unavoidable evil, or even to rest in it as wise, who would yet be unequal to make it a choice. Most men, therefore, aim at nothing higher than passive acquiescence in suffering; but it is nobler to seal Gods afflictive will with our own, and will not to have it otherwise. It is a further advance still to enter voluntarily into affliction for righteousness sake. Yet even the martyrs choice of death before sin is less absolute and free than that of Christ.

III. It was CROSSED BY HINDRANCES FROM THE WEAKNESS OF THE FLESH AND IT OVERCAME THEM. As you walk by the side of a deep, swift-running river, you know not how strong the current is till you reach the rapids, where its flow is broken. So on reading the smooth, constant story of Jesus life, there is little to tell us with what power He was advancing to His agony. Near the end came one or two places where this was seen (chap. 12:27-29). That was a short struggle. His will to die soon overcame the momentary perplexity, and the voice from heaven was needed not by Him, but for the bystanders. This, however, was only a foretaste of the greater strife in the garden–the weak flesh against the willing spirit; yet in the end it is divinely upborne to bear the unimaginable suffering for the worlds guilt. In that hour He sacrificed Himself–laid down His life. With what relief do we read, It is enough, the hour has come, etc. (J. O.Dykes, D. D.)

I have power to take it again

Our Lords resumption of life

I. WAS HIS OWN ACT. Nowhere is the majesty of our Lords Divine Person more manifest than here.

1. He had power to lay His life down. Could we use His words? There is much in life we can control, but not our way of leaving it.

(1) So far from laying it down, we yield it up. It is wrung from us by disease, violence, or accident. No men of this century have wielded more power than the two Napoleons; they little meant to die–the first at St. Helena, the third at Chislehurst. Bishop Wilberforce never entered a railway carriage without reflecting that he might never leave it alive. He was a fearless horseman, but he met his death when riding at a walking pace.

(2) But cannot a man lay down his life at pleasure? And did not the Stoics commend it? As a matter of physical possibility, we can; but what about its morality? It is at once cowardice and murder.

(3) A good man may find it his duty to accept death at the hands of others. Patriots and martyrs have had moral power to lay down their lives; but they could not control the circumstances which made death a duty.

(4) Our Lords act differs from that of the suicide in its moral elevation (Joh 10:11), and from that of the martyr in His command of the situation. As the Lord of Life, He speaks of His human life as His creature.

2. He had power to take it again.

(1) Here His majesty is more apparent, for He speaks of a control over His life which no mere man can possibly have. When soul and body are sundered, there is no force in the soul such as can reconstitute the body. In the Biblical cases of resurrection, the power came from without.

(2) Here barbarism and civilization are on a level. Science has done wonders in bringing the various forces of nature under control; but no scientist cherishes the hope of undoing the work of death, or of keeping it indefinitely at bay.

(3) When Christ claims to take His life again, He stands in relation to His life, which is only intelligible if we believe Him to be the Son of God.

II. WAS HIS ACT AND THE FATHERS CONJOINTLY?

1. He is repeatedly said to have been raised by the Father. This was Peters language (Act 2:24; Act 3:15; Act 4:10; Act 5:30; Act 10:40), and Pauls (Act 13:30-37; 1Th 1:10; 2Ti 2:3; Rom 4:24-25; Rom 6:4; Rom 3:11, etc., etc.).

2. On the ether hand, our Lord speaks of it as an act distinctly His own Mar 10:34; Luk 13:33; Joh 2:19, and text).

3. There is no contradiction here. The resurrection does not cease to be Christs act because it is the Fathers. When God acts through mere men, He makes them His instruments; but the power which effected the resurrection is as old as the eternal generation of the Son (chap. 5:26).

4. There is a moment when imagination, under the conduct of faith, endeavours, but in vain, to realize when the human soul of our Lord, surrounded by myriads of angels, on His return from the ancient dead, came to the grave of Joseph and claimed the body that had hung upon the cross.

III. SUGGESTS THE FOLLOWING CONSIDERATIONS.

1. What Christianity truly means. Not mere loyalty to the precepts of a dead teacher, or admiration of a striking character who lived eighteen hundred years ago. It is something more than literary taste or a department of moral archaeology. It is devotion to a living Christ. If it were a false religion, literary men might endeavour to reconstruct the history of its earliest age. This is what has been done with the great teachers of antiquity, and with Christ. But there is this difference. What Socrates, etc., were is all that we can know of them now. They cannot help us or speak to us. But in the fulness of that power which He asserted at His resurrection, Christ still rules and holds communion with every believer. A living Christianity means a living Christ.

2. What is the foundation of our confidence in the future of Christianity? Based as it is on a Christ who raised Himself from the dead, it cannot pass away.

(1) Mankind has lavished admiration on great teachers; but they have died and been forgotten. Their age proclaimed the dust of their writings gold; a succeeding age scarcely opens their folios. Why are we certain that this fate does not await Christ? Because mens loyalty rests not on His words mainly, but in His Person. Christ is Christianity. And why is it that, in thus clinging to His Person, Christian faith is so sure of the future? Because she has before her not a Christ who was conquered by death.

(2) Had it been otherwise Christianity might have perished more than once; by the wickedness of the Roman Court in the tenth century; by the hordes of Islam in the first flush of their conquests, or by the great Turkish sultans of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; by the accumulated weight of corruption which invited the Reformation; by the Babel which the Reformation produced; by the relation of the Church to corrupt governments: by the dishonest enterprises of unbelieving theologians. Men said the Church was killed under Decius and Diocletian, after the French Revolution. But each collapse is followed by a revival, because Christ willed to rise.

3. What is our hope for the departed? Because Christ lives, they live also; because He rose, they shall rise. (Canon Liddon.)

The mastery of life

These are the strongest words that human lips have uttered, I think; the strongest, because they give us a glimpse of what elsewhere we cannot find in man or his history–the complete mastery and control of life. Where is the man who comes to life as the workman comes to his clay or marble, and shapes out his idea precisely as he first has thought and designed it, and leaves it fulfilled without that obedient material having demanded any change in the work? How little of such mastery you and I have. Your very purpose in life, of which you speak so proudly, have you not got it by living? And when you had conceived it, when you had said I will, That is my purpose, did life flow liquidly and obediently into your mould, and stay there, and harden in it lastingly? Who has just the life he planned? And when you begin to see your purpose, or something like it, coming on:, of life, what control have you over it and its continuance? You have time to say, Yes, that is the shape of my wish, of my plan, and you or it are hurried away. But even suppose that a man cares not whether his purpose be lasting, if for a moment he reaches the place at which he had aimed; if he stands there where he had struggled through life to be; if he has made life carry him there–is he not master and victor? May he not say, as the soldier who dies in victory, I die happy? The hands that stiffen at that moment, are they not, after all, a conquerors? Oh! but think if the mastery of life does not include something else. It is not only to carry ones own purpose for a moment; it is to do it in such a way as to show that you are not indebted to lifes favour for it; that it is not a gift to you; that you will take it at your own time, as one who is completely, unanxiously master; that you will not be hurried by the thought, Now life is offering me my prize; if not now, never; but can quietly choose the time of acquisition when it is best, and then reach out the hand to take it. But stop again. Mastery of human life–is it not something vastly more than all of this? Is it not to be above counting it indispensable, to use it only as one help in the working out of the great purpose; to lay it down, and yet win the aim by other help; to lay it down as a workman puts down a tool and takes it again? But who of us is so boldly independent as that? Who can work out his human purpose without the help of human life? But I must go yet one great step farther in this description of what it is to be a master of human life. It is this: Suppose you were independent of this human life, yet you are not master of it if it can withdraw itself and you have no power to keep or resume it. If, after showing your ability to do without it, it were able to keep away from you, if you had no power to take it again, you would not be its master. That is the complete mastery of human life, not only to work out your purpose independently of it, but to really resume it, to take it again when it has been laid down I find, in the midst of all this history of man and his life–believing himself master, and yet never so in reality–one life which has no such feature, which could never have been troubled by the thought of fate. There is One among all human existences which bears all the marks of the mastership of life, which claims from all the title of Lord and Master. First of all, Christ comes to human life with His own purpose fully formed and self-originated. He brought a Divine purpose to earth. Then see how absolutely, without change, that purpose of Christs is carried out. Not a feature is altered; not a circumstance is varied, nor any addition made. It is accomplished just according to the heavenly purpose. Life has no power to change it in the smallest particular. But this royal purpose, will not human life override it, and outgrow it, and destroy it, or gather it into itself and its own purpose, like the little rift that your hand makes in the water of the strong river? Will it remain as it was planned? How those words, the everlasting gospel, answer our question! What is there but the word of God, which endures forever? Oh! what is there today in the world which remains unchanged but the salvation of Christ? But did life give to Him the fulfilment of His purpose, as it does to its favourites, granting the prize to Him in its own time as its favour? I do not know anything more quietly grand about Jesus life than the way in which He chooses the very time when it all shall be done. My time is not yet come; I lay down My life of Myself; I must work today and tomorrow, and the third day I shall be perfected, He says, conscious of controlling the time completely. But how His Mastership grows upon us! Still let me go on to show you how His great purpose is independent of human life. Life is not indispensable to it as to our purpose. He can fulfil His purpose in loss of life, and by loss of life. I lay down My life of Myself. This commandment have I received of My Father. The Divine purpose is not lost, but won, by passing into death. I, if I be lifted up, shall draw all men unto Me. How little is human life necessary to His purpose, who died that we might live! How little dependent on this human existence is that love of God which came from heaven, which has heavens life, which is greater than death, which survives the loss of earthly life! There is but one more addition. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. Here is the highest and last sign of the Master. Can you not see how the river of life flows from the throne of God and the Lamb, where Christ, the ascended God-man, sits, who has taken human life again? Christ would take us all into His great purpose. Follow your own human purposes alone, and then, indeed, life is your master. But become our Lords follower, have a share in His purpose, have a real part and place in the salvation of Christ, and then you, too, have a superiority to life, a mastery of life. Then you, too, are living for an aim which life did not give you; an aim which life cannot modify or destroy; an aim which will be fulfilled in its own chosen time of heavenly happiness; an aim that can survive death and the loss of human life; an aim which, in a resurrection, will be able by its power to resume life as its obedient servant. (Fred. Brooks.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 11. I am the good shepherd] Whose character is the very reverse of that which has already been described. In Joh 10:7; Joh 10:9, our Lord had called himself the door of the sheep, as being the sole way to glory, and entrance into eternal life; here he changes the thought, and calls himself the shepherd, because of what he was to do for them that believe in him, in order to prepare them for eternal glory.

Giveth his life for the sheep.] That is, gives up his soul as a sacrifice to save them from eternal death.

Some will have the phrase here only to mean hazarding his life in order to protect others; but the 15th, 17th, and 18th verses, Joh 10:15; Joh 10:17; Joh 10:18, as well as the whole tenor of the new covenant, sufficiently prove that the first sense is that in which our Lord’s words should be understood.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

That good Shepherd prophesied of, Isa 40:11. I cannot agree with those who think that Christ here speaketh not of himself as the good Shepherd, with reference to his office, as he was the Messiah, but only in opposition to the hirelings after mentioned. I can allow that he thus calleth himself, both in the one respect and the other; but I cannot allow the latter sense exclusively to the former; for what followeth is peculiar to the Messiah, of whom it was prophesied, Dan 9:26, that he should be cut off, but not for himself: and though it be true, that the true shepherd will hazard his life for his sheep, as David did, when he encountered the lion and the bear, 1Sa 17:34,35; yet it cannot be said to be the duty of the best shepherd to lay down his life for the sheep, for the life of a man is much more valuable than the life of any beast. Our Saviour therefore, doubtless, in this place showeth wherein he was the most excellent Shepherd, far excelling the best shepherds in the world, because he was come, not only to expose, hazard, and adventure his life, but actually, willingly, and freely to lay it down.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

11. I am the goodshepherdemphatically, and, in the sense intended, exclusivelyso (Isa 40:11; Eze 34:23;Eze 37:24; Zec 13:7).

the good shepherd giveth hislife for the sheepThough this may be said of literalshepherds, who, even for their brute flock, have, like David,encountered “the lion and the bear” at the risk of theirown lives, and still more of faithful pastors who, like the earlybishops of Rome, have been the foremost to brave the fury of theirenemies against the flock committed to their care; yet here, beyonddoubt, it points to the struggle which was to issue in the willingsurrender of the Redeemer’s own life, to save His sheep fromdestruction.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

I am the good shepherd,…. A shepherd of his Father’s appointing, calling, and sending, to whom the care of all his sheep, or chosen ones, was committed; who was set up as a shepherd over them by him, and was entrusted with them; and who being called, undertook to feed them; and being promised, was sent unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel; and under the character of a shepherd, died for them, and rose again, and is accountable to his Father for everyone of them; the shepherd, the great and chief shepherd, the famous one, so often spoken and prophesied of, Ge 49:24. And discharging his office aright, he is the good shepherd; as appears in his providing good pasture, and a good fold for his sheep; in protecting them from their enemies; in healing all their diseases; in restoring their souls when strayed from him; in watching over them in the night seasons, lest any hurt them; in searching for them, when they have been driven, or scattered in the dark and cloudy day; in caring for them, so that he lose none of them; and in nothing more than in what follows,

the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep: not only exposes it to danger, as David did his, for the sake of his father’s flock, but gives it away freely and voluntarily, for the sake of the sheep; in their room and stead, as a ransom for them, that they may be delivered from death, and might have eternal life: the Ethiopic version renders it, “the good shepherd gives his life for the redemption of his sheep”; so Nonnus paraphrases it, the “ransom price of his own sheep”: this belongs to Christ’s priestly office, and with the Jews priests were sometimes shepherds hence we read q of , “shepherds that were priests”. Philo the Jew speaks r of God as a shepherd and king; and of his setting his word, his firstborn Son, over the holy flock, to take care of it: and a good shepherd is thus described by the s Jews;

“as , “a good shepherd”, delivers the flock from the wolf, and from the lions, (see Joh 10:12) so he that leads Israel, if he is good, delivers them from the idolatrous nations, and from judgment below and above, and leads them to the life of the world to come, or eternal life; (see Joh 10:10).”

Which description agrees with Christ, the good shepherd; and so the Lord is said to be , “the good shepherd”, and merciful, and there is none like him t.

q Misn. Becorot, c. 5. sect. 4. r De Agricultura, p. 195. & de nom. mutat. p. 1062. s Zohar in Exod. fol. 9. 3. t Aben Ezra in Psal. xxiii. 3. & Kimchi in Psal. xxiii. 2.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

I am the good shepherd ( ). Note repetition of the article, “the shepherd the good one.” Takes up the metaphor of verses 2ff. Vulgate pastor bonus. Philo calls his good shepherd , but calls attention to the beauty in character and service like “good stewards” (1Pe 4:10), “a good minister of Christ Jesus” (1Ti 4:6). Often both adjectives appear together in the ancient Greek as once in the New Testament (Lu 8:15). “Beauty is as beauty does.” That is .

Layeth down his life for his sheep ( ). For illustration see 1Sa 17:35 (David’s experience) and Isa 31:4. Dods quotes Xenophon (Mem. ii. 7, 14) who pictures even the sheep dog as saying to the sheep: “For I am the one that saves you also so that you are neither stolen by men nor seized by wolves.” Hippocrates has (he laid down his life, i.e. died). In Jud 12:3 means “I risked my life.” The true physician does this for his patient as the shepherd for his sheep. The use of here (over, in behalf of, instead of), but in the papyri is the usual preposition for substitution rather than . This shepherd gives his life for the sin of the world (John 1:29; 1John 2:2).

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

The good shepherd [ ] . Literally, the shepherd the good (shepherd). Kalov, though not of frequent occurrence in John, is more common than ajgaqov, good, which occurs but four times and three times out of the four in the neuter gender, a good thing, or that which is good. Kalov in John is applied to wine (ii. 10), three times to the shepherd in this chapter, and twice to works (x. 32, 33). In classical usage, originally as descriptive of outward form, beautiful; of usefulness, as a fair haven, a fair wind. Auspicious, as sacrifices. Morally beautiful, noble; hence virtue is called to kalon. The New Testament usage is similar. Outwardly fair, as the stones of the temple (Luk 21:5) : well adapted to its purpose, as salt (Mr 9:50) : competent for an office, as deacons (1Ti 4:6); a steward (1Pe 4:10); a soldier (2Ti 2:3) : expedient, wholesome (Mr 9:43, 45, 47) : morally good, noble, as works (Mt 5:16); conscience (Heb 13:18). The phrase it is good, i e., a good or proper thing (Rom 14:21). In the Septuagint kalov is the most usual word for good as opposed to evil (Gen 2:17; Gen 24:50; Isa 5:20). In Luk 8:15, kalov and ajgaqov are found together as epithets of the heart; honest (or virtuous, noble) and good. The epithet kalov, applied here to the shepherd, points to the essential goodness as nobly realized, and appealing to admiring respect and affection. As Canon Westcott observes, “in the fulfillment of His work, the Good Shepherd claims the admiration of all that is generous in man.”

Giveth his life [ ] . The phrase is peculiar to John, occurring in the Gospel and First Epistle. It is explained in two ways : either (1) as laying down as a pledge, paying as a price, according to the classical usage of the word tiqhmi. So Demosthenes, to pay interest or the alien tax. Or (2) according to Joh 13:4, as laying aside his life like a garment. The latter seems preferable. Tiqhmi, in the sense of to pay down a price, does not occur in the New Testament, unless this phrase, to lay down the life, be so explained. 34 In Joh 13:4, layeth aside His garments [ ] is followed, in ver. 12, by had taken His garments [ ] . So, in this chapter, giveth [] His life (ver. 11), and I lay down [] my life (vv. 17, 18), are followed by labein “to take it again.” The phrases thn yuchn He laid down His life, and tav yucav qeinai to lay down our lives, occur in 1Jo 3:16. The verb is used in the sense of laying aside in the classics, as to lay aside war, shields, etc. Compare Mt 20:28, dounai thn yuchn, to give His life.

For the sheep [] . On behalf of.

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

1) “I am the good shepherd,” (ego eimi ho poimen ho kalos) “I am (exist as) the good shepherd,” or the ideal shepherd, as described, Isa 40:11; Eze 34:11-13; Eze 34:22-25; Heb 13:20, 1Pe 2:25; 1Pe 5:4.

2) “The good shepherd giveth,” (ho poimen ho kalos tithesin) “The ideal shepherd lays down or sets out,” voluntarily, or of his own will, choice, and accord, a thing that may be observed, witnessed, or evaluated by any who will behold Him; It was a conscious divestiture of Himself, of His own life, that the sheep might live, in contrast with the vicious destruction of wolves and cowardly fleeing of hirelings, Joh 10:10; Joh 10:12-13; Joh 15:13.

3) “His life for the sheep.” (ten psuchen autou huper ton probaton) “His soul-life on behalf of the sheep,” as the good shepherd, Joh 10:14; Joh 10:18; 1Jn 3:16. The Shepherd died that the sheep might live, might be ransomed, Mat 20:28, Such was a substitutionary death for wandering, straying sheep, Isa 53:3-8; Gal 3:13; 1Pe 2:24; 2Co 5:21.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

11. The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. From the extraordinary affection which he bears towards the sheep, he shows how truly he acts towards them as a shepherd; for he is so anxious about their salvation, that he does not even spare his own life. Hence it follows, that they who reject the guardianship of so kind and amiable a shepherd are exceedingly ungrateful, and deserve a hundred deaths, and are exposed to every kind of harm. The remark of Augustine is exceedingly just, that this passage informs us what we ought to desire, what we ought to avoid, and what we ought to endure, in the government of the Church. Nothing is more desirable than that the Church should be governed by good and diligent shepherds Christ declares that he is the good shepherd, who keeps his Church safe and sound, first, by himself, and, next, by his agents. Whenever there is good order, and fit men hold the government, then Christ shows that he is actually the shepherd But there are many wolves and thieves who, wearing the garb of shepherds, wickedly scatter the Church. Whatever name such persons may assume, Christ threatens that we must avoid them.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

THE GOOD SHEPHERD

Text 10:11-21

11

I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep.

12

He that is a hireling, and not a shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, beholdeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth, and the wolf snatcheth them, and scattereth them:

13

he fleeth because he is a hireling, and careth not for the sheep.

14

I am the good shepherd; and I know mine own, and mine own know me,

15

even as the Father knoweth me, and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.

16

And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, (or, lead), and they shall hear my voice; and they shall become (or, there shall be . . .) one flock, one shepherd.

17

Therefore doth the Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again.

18

No one taketh it away from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power (or right) to take it again. This commandment received I from my Father.

19

There arose a division again among the Jews because of these words.

20

And many of them said, He hath a demon, and is mad; why hear ye him?

21

Others said, These are not the sayings of one possessed with a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?

Queries

a.

Why the contrast between the good shepherd and the hireling?

b.

Who are the other sheep, not of that fold?

c.

What is so important about Jesus laying down His life that causes the Father to love Him?

Paraphrase

I, Myself, am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd willingly lays down his very soul on behalf of the sheep. The hireling, who is neither the true shepherd nor the owner of the sheep, when he sees the wolf coming, deserts the sheep and runs awayand the wolf attacks the flock and scatters thembecause the hireling is what he isone who cares not for the welfare of the sheep. I, Myself, am the Good Shepherd; I know those that belong to Me, and those that are mine know Me, just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father. My life I willingly lay down on behalf of the sheep. Now I have other sheep which are not of this particular fold; unto them also must I become Shepherd and they shall hear and heed my voice and all who heed my voice will become in equality one Flock on the basis of their heeding and obeying one Shepherd. This is the reason why the Father loves Mebecause I willingly suffer death in order that I might be resurrected from the dead! No one has the power to take it from Me, but to the contrary I, Myself, voluntarily give it up. I only have authority to lay it down and I only have authority to take it up again. I received this charge from My Father.
There came a division again among the Jews on account of the words which Jesus had spoken. Many of them were saying, He has a demon in him and is insanewhy do you listen to Him? But others were saying, at the same time, These are not the words of one being possessed of demons. A demon-possessed person does not have the power to open the eyes of one born blind, does he?

Summary

The Lord has, in the previous section, contrasted the evil shepherds with good shepherds in general. Now He makes the contrast even more vivid by casting alongside the hireling the One and Only, Good Shepherd of the sheepHimself. His relationship to the sheep is like that of His Father to Himself. He willingly sacrifices Himself for the sheep.

Comment

The syntactical arrangement of the first sentence of Joh. 10:11 in the original is good Greek idiom to stress both the pronoun and the adjective. In other words, the original Greek would be translated literally, I, Myself, am the shepherd, the good shepherd . . . Both I and good are stressed. In the preceding section (Joh. 10:1-10) Jesus contrasted the evil shepherds (the Pharisees) with good shepherds in generalbut now the distinction is made even more vivid by contrasting all who propose to be shepherds with The One Good and Faithful Shepherd.

The Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. After meditation upon this statement, we begin to see that there is more involved here than the mere sacrificing of a ransomas profoundly sublime as that is itself! Inherent in His goodness as The Shepherd is the fact that only His life as a ransom would be efficacious. Other shepherds of the flock might indeed willingly lay down their lives, but none would bring salvation and safety to the flock through their sacrifice!

Now the hireling is described. Hireling is simply one who receives wages for his labor. He may be a good hireling or an evil hireling Moses and Paul were under-shepherds of Gods flock who received wages for their labors and they were hired men with a large measure of the love and concern of the Good Shepherd in their hearts for the sheep. But the Pharisees and Sadducees were mercenary, evil hirelings whose primary concern was not for the sheep but for the wages. The sheep do not belong to the hirelinghe has no personal relationship to them, nor will he tender any personal commitments to them. The hireling is not willing to give up himself for the sheep when they are attacked, but looks out for number one flees to preserve his own safety. Read Eze. 34:1-10 for Gods condemnation of the hireling shepherds.

We quote here from an anonymous Palestinian traveler of many years agoa beautiful illustration of a good shepherd:

It was while riding through the low hills covered with this vegetation, and coming out on the blighted flats of the Dead Sea, that one of those pictures passed before me which are ever after hung up in the minds gallery among the choicest of the spoils of Eastern travel, By some chance I was alone, riding a few hundred yards in front of the caravan, when, turning the corner of a hill, I met a man coming toward me, the only one we had seen for several hours since we had passed a few black tents some eight or ten miles away. He was a noble-looking young Shepherd, dressed in his camels-hair robe, and with the lithesome, powerful limbs and elastic step of the children of the desert. But the interest which attached to him was the errand on which he had manifestly been engaged on these Dead Sea plains from which he was returning. Round his neck, and with its little limbs held gently by his hand, lay a lamb he had rescued, and was doubtless carrying home. The little creature lay as if perfectly content and happy, and the man looked pleased as he strode along lightly with his burden; and as I saluted him with the usual gesture of pointing to heart and head, and the Salaam alik! (Peace be with you!), he responded with a smile and a kindly glance at the lamb, to which he saw my eyes were directed. It was actually the beautiful parable of the Gospel acted out before my sight. Every particular was true to the story; the Shepherd had doubtless left his ninety and nine in the wilderness, round the black tents we had seen so far away, and had sought for the lost lamb till he found it, where it must quickly have perished without his help, among those blighted plains. Literally, too, when he had found it, he laid it on his shoulders rejoicing.

What a high ideal the Good Shepherd, the Chief Shepherd (1Pe. 5:4), has set for all his under-shepherds! Elders are, by divine appointment, shepherds of Gods flock under His Chief-Shepherdship. In our opinion, deacons, evangelists and teachers should be considered in some sense shepherds, inasmuch as they feed (teach) and minister to the flock. Those who desire the awesome responsibility of shepherding Gods flock need to remember that they watch in behalf of the souls of the sheep as they that shall give account (cf. Heb. 13:17). The under-shepherd is to feed the flock of God and protect it against wolves both from within and from without (cf. Act. 20:26-32); he is to accept the oversight willingly and not by constraint, to do it eagerly and not for love of money, not to use the position for the exercise of power, and to be an example to the flock (1Pe. 5:2-3). One of the qualifications for elders is that they must not be greedy of filthy lucre. The ministry or the eldership is not to be considered as a calling on the basis of pay scale. The Lord is not interested in hirelings (those interested primarily in their wages). This does not mean, however, that ministers should not be paid a living wage. When the Lord ordained that they that proclaim the gospel should live of the gospel (1Co. 9:14), He intended that the man who labors in the kingdom is worthy of his hire. We should never think of the ministers salary as simply a giftif he labors he earns, and is worthy of, his hire.

Another characteristic of the Divine Shepherd is held up for an example in Joh. 10:14-15. The Good Shepherd knows His own sheep and His sheep know Him, just as the Son knows the Father and the Father knows the Son. And what is this knowing relationship between the Father and the Son which is to be exemplified in under-shepherds and the flock? It is a union of wills, purpose and works (cf. Joh. 5:19-23 and our comments, Vol. I, pp. 184186). There is absolute harmony and oneness. The Father was constantly aware of His Sons needs and sustained Him every momentwhen Jesus felt pain or hunger the Fathers heart went out to Him. When Jesus knew joy, the Father rejoiced. On the other hand, the Son knew the Fathers will and found exceeding joy in doing His will (cf. Joh. 8:29). Now, the Good Shepherd knows His sheep individually and knows their needs better than they themselvesHe is constantly sustaining them. Those who are true sheep of the Good Shepherd hear His voice and are united with Him in will, purpose and workthey obey Him for they trust Him as the Shepherd of their souls. This characteristic is applicable, also, to under-shepherds (elders and ministers) and to the flocks which they serve. The matter of shepherding the Lords flock and being a member of the Lords flock is a reciprocal arrangement, The under-shepherds should know their flock as much as possible, like Jesus knows them. The members of the flock should know the voice of their under-shepherds the same as Jesus was in harmony with His Fathers will! Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit to them: for they watch in behalf of your souls, as they that shall give account; that they may do this with joy, and not with grief: for this were unprofitable for you (Heb. 13:17). When elders are to be chosen to act as Christs under-shepherds, this allegory of the Good Shepherd, the hireling, the Door of the Sheep ought to be studied and applied:

. . . the flock suffers from a double danger. It is always liable to attack from outside from the wolves and the robbers and the marauders. It is always liable to trouble from the inside from the false shepherd. The Church runs a double danger. It is always under attack from outside. It often suffers from the tragedy of bad leadership, from the disaster of shepherds who see their calling as a career and not as a means of service. The second danger is by far the worse; because, if the shepherd is faithful and good, there is a strong defense from the attack from outside; but if the shepherd is faithless and a hireling, then the foes from outside can penetrate into and destroy the flock. The Churchs first essential is a leadership which is based on the example of Jesus Christ. (The Gospel of John, Vol. II, Daily Study Bible, by William Barclay.)

It is very evident in the incident of the man born blind and the Pharisees (Joh. 9:1-41) that the supposed shepherds of Israel did not know the sheep (the blind man) as the Good Shepherd would have them knowthey were hirelings. Further, once the stubborn unbelief and obstinate ungodliness of the Pharisees was revealed, the blind man recognized them as false shepherds and did not know them (obey them) as his spiritual shepherds.

His contrast throughout this allegory has been between evil shepherds and good shepherds, and finally, The Good Shepherd. A big difference between the two has been their concept of who are and who are not true sheep. Now in Joh. 10:16 Jesus looks ahead a few short months when the middle wall of partition will have been broken down and the Gentiles will be led into the one flock. The Jewish spiritual leaders refused to accept this idea from the very beginning of Jesus ministry (cf. Luk. 4:16-30). The uniting of Jew and Gentile into one flock was plainly foretold in their prophets (cf. Isa. 56:8 and Eze. 34:23). The Gentiles were not to be gathered into the Old Covenant fold, but both Jew and Gentile would be led into a New Covenant flock. It was not intended that the Gentiles be led into the fold of Judaismthe Old Covenant was intended exclusively for the Hebrews (cf. Deu. 5:1-3; Rom. 3:19; Eph. 2:11-18).

When Jesus said I have, He is manifesting divine foreknowledge. It is not a predestination in the sense that He has made an absolute and irrevocable choice of some and passed over others. The sovereign will of man is not violated in foreknowledge. His foreknowledge and mans will is exemplified in Judas, the traitor, whom Jesus foreknew, while Judas very evidently exercised his own free will in betraying Him.

And so Jesus, through His apostles, went out into the wilderness of heathendom and led the strays and the outcasts into the one flock (cf. Act. 9:15; Act. 22:21). They did gladly hear His voice through the apostles and many thousands obeyed (cf. Rom. 1:5; Rom. 1:8; Eph. 1:15; Php. 1:9; Col. 1:3-4).

The important phrase of Joh. 10:16 is: . . . and they shall become one flock, one shepherd. Jesus sees the unity of the future church. Most commentators on this verse hold to a mystical, invisible unity only as the inference of one flock, one shepherd. It is true that Christians are one in Christ, held together by a spiritual bond which is stronger and higher than any visible structure. But it is also true that this spiritual unity must, by its very nature, express itself in a visible unity of doctrine and worship according to the divine standard in the New Testament (cf. Eph. 4:1-16).

This is not an enforced unityheld together by a great superstructure or World Church organization. This is a unity based on faith and love where all the true sheep hear, answer and obey one shepherd. This oneness is based on loyalty to Jesus Christ and His person. The very foundation for Christian unity is in all the sheep hearing and obeying one Shepherd, even Jesus. It is as simple as this: If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments (Joh. 14:15), and, By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another (Joh. 13:35). An intelligent, believing, obeying, sacrificing love for Christ and His Body will result in unity!

Joh. 10:17-18 are full of meaning. Jesus willingly lays down His life for the very purpose that He may take it up again, We like the statement of Hendriksen in this connection, The dying and rising again are deeds, not merely experiences. Jesus was not helplessly caught up in a mesh of circumstances over which He had no power. There was purpose behind His death and that purpose was the resurrection! He did not lose His life: He gave it. He was not killed: He chose to die. Every word and every deed of Jesus had a purpose within the plan of redemption and none of it was accidental (e.g., Joh. 7:30; Joh. 8:20; Joh. 12:23-28; Joh. 13:1; Joh. 17:1; Joh. 18:4-11; Joh. 18:37; Joh. 19:11).

The Son willingly emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross (cf. Php. 2:5-8). As an earthly fathers love is the more drawn out when his child willingly and lovingly obeysso on account of this willing obedience by Jesus, His Fathers love is the more drawn out. Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is above every name; (Php. 2:9-11).

Jesus possessed the prerogatives of Divine Omnipotence. No one had power or authority to take His life. When He died it was because He allowed it (Mat. 26:53; Joh. 19:11)! And He permitted wicked men to kill Him for the very purpose of Himself taking up His life again in three days! The Father presented the Son with this charge or commission (commandment), the Divine plan for mans salvation (cf. Joh. 3:14; Joh. 8:28; Joh. 12:32). This death and resurrection of the Incarnate Word was the Fathers scheme of redemption for man because Gods wisdom and love decreed it so; it was the only way to win mans heart! The Son, being the Son, is in perfect accord (in knowledge, love, authority) with the Father (cf. our comments on Joh. 5:19-23, Vol. I, pp. 183186). Although equal with the Father and free to do that which He wills to do, He wills to lay down His life and take it up again. His will is motivated, directed and controlled by His divine love and trust in His Father and by His love for mankind.

All of this dissertation concerning the Good Shepherd (especially the power to lay down life and take it up again) has been sort of a parabolic statement of divine equality with God by Jesus. Evidently many of the Jews present understood clearly that Jesus was claiming what would be preposterous for any mortal to claimdivine power over life and death. This could only mean to the Jews that He was claiming to be God; in their eyes blasphemous, demonical or insanity. Many of them did indeed speak out and call Him insane and possessed of demons. Others, remembering the great miracle they had witnessed could not, inspite of the consequences of disagreeing with the rulers, deny what they had seen. The choice still remains today; the claims which Jesus makes through the historical records of the Gospel writers are either the claims of a deluded maniac, a deliberate liar, or the Divine Son of God. In light of the empirical, historical and absolutely trustworthy evidence, the first two alternatives are absurd! We shall discuss the evidence for His deity more fully in the next section. Suffice it to say here, there is overwhelming evidence of verifiable nature sufficient to convince any honest-hearted searcher that Jesus is all He claims to be!

Quiz

1.

What is the evident purpose for declaring Himself to be The Good Shepherd?

2.

What is the essential characteristic of the hireling?

3.

What application may be made in the church from this allegory of the Good Shepherd and the sheep and the hireling?

4.

What responsibilities do the elders have to the flock? The flock to the elders?

5.

What is the very foundation stone to unity? How is unity expressed?

6.

Was Jesus death a mistake? Explain!

7.

What alternatives present themselves in light of Jesus claims?

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

(11) I am the good shepherd.The central point of the allegory has now passed from the Door, through the last verse as the connecting-link, to the Good Shepherd. If we think that the whole discourse was suggested by a scene actually occurring (comp. Note on Joh. 10:1), then the prominence of an actual shepherd passing before them would suggest the turn which it now takes.

The word good means that which is fair, and is in a physical sense that which is in its own nature excellent, and in a moral sense that which is beautiful and noble. St. John uses the word only in Joh. 2:10, of the good wine, and in this chapter here and in Joh. 10:14; Joh. 10:32-33. (Comp. Note on Luk. 8:15.) The passage of the Old Testament referred to above has prepared our minds for this thought of Christ, especially Psalms 23; Isa. 40:11; Eze. 34:11-16; Eze. 34:23; Eze. 37:24. He is the Shepherd who is ideally good, fulfilling every thought of guidance, support, self-sacrifice that had ever gathered round the shepherds name. No image of Christ has so deeply impressed itself upon the mind of the Church as this has. We find it in the earliest Christian literature, as in Tertullian (Works, vol. i., p. 371, in Ante-Nicene Library), or Clement of Alexandria (Works, vol. i., pp. 149, 462, A.N. Lib.). We find it in the very earliest efforts of Christian art, in painting, embroidery, and even statuary. (See Kuglers Handbook, Italian Schools, Lady Eastlakes Trans., 4th Ed., pp. 5 and 6.) It comes to us naturally in our hymns and prayers. The pastoral staff is the fit emblem of the Bishops work, and the Pastor is the name by which the humble way-side flock thinks of him who in Christs name is appointed to be their guide.

Giveth his life for the sheep.This was true of the actual shepherds, of whose devoted bravery many instances are told. A striking one is that of David himself who rescued the lamb of his fathers flock from the mouth of the lion and the bear (1Sa. 17:34-37). That self-sacrifice that would lead the shepherd to risk his own life for that of his flock has its ideal fulfilment in Him who is the Good Shepherd, and will give His life for mankind. The word rendered giveth is life, should be almost certainly layeth down His life. They are found only in St. Johns writings. The other passages are Joh. 10:15; Joh. 10:17-18; Joh. 13:37-38; Joh. 15:13; 1Jn. 3:16 (twice).

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

11. The good shepherd Rather, the noble shepherd; the model and original shepherd. The shepherd does not, as some think, symbolize the mere teacher. It includes the various ideas of government, guardianship, maintenance, training, and leading. Kings were called by Homer the shepherds of the people. Hence, Christ also is called the shepherd and bishop (or overseer) of our souls.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

“I am the good shepherd, the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

He is a good shepherd, efficient and trustworthy, in contrast to the bad shepherds. He does His job thoroughly, watches over His sheep constantly, has deep affection for them and in the end is ready to give His life for them. But He is also the good Shepherd because He is pleasing to the Father, to Whom true goodness alone is acceptable.

As we know, giving His life for the sheep is what in fact He did, but His listeners would not know that, although they would recognise the picture of One Who had deep concern for His sheep.

The claim to be the good shepherd is at the least a claim to Messiahship (Eze 34:23; Eze 37:24-28 compare Jer 23:4) and to being God’s true Servant (see Psa 23:1; Psa 80:1; Isa 40:10-11). See also the opening comments above. The shepherd of Israel has come.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Jesus the Good Shepherd:

v. 11. I am the Good Shepherd; the Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep.

v. 12. But he that is an hireling, and not the Shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth; and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep.

v. 13. The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep.

v. 14. I am the Good Shepherd, and know My sheep, and am known of Mine.

v. 15. As the Father ‘knoweth Me, even so know I the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep.

v. 16. And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice; and there shall be one fold and one Shepherd.

Jesus here applies the parable in still another way, from another view-point. He calls Himself the Good shepherd, with emphasis, as the only one that may bear this name with full justice. In this sense the name is applicable to Christ alone; He is the one most excellent Shepherd of the spiritual sheep. The first feature which distinguishes Him as the true Shepherd of souls is this, that He gives His life, His own soul, as a ransom, as the one complete sacrifice, for the guilt of all sinners, who have earned eternal damnation. He became their Substitute; He took upon Himself their transgressions and died in their stead. Thus the guilty, the sinners, were delivered from sin and destruction. In this respect Jesus incidentally is an example for all those that bear the name pastor as His assistants in the great work. For that purpose He also places Himself in deliberate contrast to the hirelings, the false teachers, the Pharisees. Such hirelings, whose sole concern is the money and the desire to take their ease in Zion, have no interest in the souls of men entrusted to their care. They are strictly mercenary and will work only so long as their lives and well-being seem to be safe. At the first sign of the wolf, at the first indication of real danger, of probable persecution, suffering, and even martyrdom, they turn in precipitate flight. The result is the dispersion and the murder of the sheep on the part of the enemies. But the hireling does not care; he has no worry, no anxiety for, no interest in, the sheep. “He that will be a preacher, let him love the work with all his heart, that he seek only God’s honor and the welfare of his neighbor. If he does not seek God’s glory and his neighbor’s salvation only, but thinks, in such office, of his benefit and detriment, there you need not think that he will last. Either he will flee shamefully and desert the sheep, or he will keep silence and let the sheep go without pasture, that is, without the Word. Those are hirelings that preach for their own benefit, are covetous, and do not want to be satisfied with that which God gives them daily as an alms. For we preachers should not desire more from our office than enough and to spare. Those that want more are hirelings that do not care for the herd; whereas a pious preacher will give up everything on that account, even his body and life. ” The second feature that distinguishes Jesus as the Good Shepherd, in contrast to all others, is the fact of the intimate acquaintance and knowledge between Him and His sheep. Just as Jesus knows them that are His, according to body, mind, and heart, so the believers know Jesus; their heart, their mind and will, is centered in Jesus, rests in Jesus. The expression fitly pictures the intimate, cordial relation and communion of love that obtains between Christ and His true disciples. This intimacy and communion is as close and embracing as that which exists between Father and Son. Their hearts and minds are open to each other; there is a mutual interchange of thoughts and ideas, all guided by a wonderful love. Thus it is between Christ and the believers. It is due to Christ’s knowledge of the Father and His will that Jesus declares that He will lay down His life for the sheep. The ransom is paid for the sins of the whole world, but the believers alone take advantage of the mercy of the Savior, they alone obtain the grace of the Father. And Christ has other sheep, which are not of this fold; He shall gain believers in Him also from the members of other nations outside of the Jewish. For the Father has given a great number to Him, out of every nation in the world; they are His by the Father’s design and gift. Christ here declares that His voice, In the Word of the Gospel, would go out unto the people of other; descent and tongue than the Jews. It is the, obligation of the divine will resting upon Him, which is urging Him to gain also these for the Gospel. And they would listen, they would obey His voice in the Gospel, and the final result would be one dock, composed of all such as have accepted salvation through the blood of Christ, and one Shepherd, the Son of God Him! self. “But nothing is said of unity of organization. There may be various folds, though one flock. ” The dreams of unionism find no support in this passage. The “holy Christian Church, the communion of saints,” has been gathered in the world ever since the first proclamation of the Gospel, and all the true believers in Christ form the great invisible Church. But there is not a word here of uniting visible church organizations into one great, powerful body.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

Joh 10:11-12. I am the good shepherd: “I am not a hireling shepherd, appointed by the owner to take care of the flock; but I am the good Shepherd, promised Isa 40:11. Eze 34:23; Eze 34:31 and the proprietor of the sheep; as is evident from hence, that I cheerfully endanger my life for the safety of the flock: whereas a hireling, proposing nothing but his own gain, when he sees the wolf coming,deserts the sheep, because, instead of loving them, he loves himself, and will not expose himself to any danger on their account; so that the beast of prey, without any resistance, tears some of the flock to pieces, and disperses the rest.” Hence it plainly appears to be the duty of every minister of the gospel to spend his whole time in ordinary with his flock or flocks; for if approaching danger is no excuse for his fleeing away, and leaving them, far less will interest, or pleasure, or any less matter, be an excuse for such unfaithfulness.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Joh 10:11 . ] Repeated again with lively emphasis. It is no other.

] the good , the excellent shepherd , conceived absolutely as He ought to be: hence the article and the emphatic position of the adjective. In Christ is realized the ideal of the shepherd, as it lives in the Old Testament (Psa 23 ; Isa 40:11 ; Eze 34 ; Jer 23 ; Zec 11 ; also Mic 5:3 ). With the conception of compare the Attic (also Tob 7:7 ; 2Ma 15:12 ), and the contrary: , , .

In the following specification of the things in which the good shepherd proves himself to correspond to his idea, . is solemnly repeated.

. ] As to substance, though not as to the meaning of the words, equivalent to . . (Mat 20:28 ). It is a Johannean expression (Joh 13:37 f., Joh 15:13 ; 1Jn 3:16 ), without corresponding examples in Greek classical writers (against Kypke, I. p. 388); and must be explained, neither from the simple , Isa 53:10 (Hengstenberg), nor from (Jdg 12:3 ; 1Sa 19:5 ), where is essential; but from the idea of the sacrificial death as a ransom that has been paid (Mat 20:28 ; 1Ti 2:6 ). Its import accordingly is: to pay down one’s soul, impendere, in harmony with the use of in the classics, according to which it denotes to pay (so frequently in Demosthenes and others; see Reiske, Ind. Dem. p. 495, ed. Schaef.; Dissen, ad Dem. de Cor. p. 271). Compare Nonnus: , .

] for the good of, in order to turn aside destruction from them by his own self-sacrifice. Compare Joh 11:50 f. It is less in harmony with this specific point of view, from which the sacrifice of the life of Jesus is regarded throughout the entire New Testament, to take , with De Wette, Ebrard, Godet, as denoting merely lay down (as in Joh 13:4 ); or to assume the idea which is foreign to the passage, “to offer as a prize for competition” (Ewald).

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

11 I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.

Ver. 11. I am the good shepherd ] So he is by an excellency, for he left his glory to seek out to himself a flock in the wilderness. “He feeds them among the lilies,” Son 2:16 ; gives them golden fleeces, and shepherds to keep them, after his own heart; watcheth over them night and day in his Migdal Eder , or tower of the flock, Gen 35:21 ; seeks them up when lost, bears them in his bosom, and gently leads those that are with young, Isa 40:11 ; pulls them out of the power of the lion and the bear, punisheth such as either push with the horn or foul with the feet, Eze 34:19 ; washeth them in his own blood, and so maketh them kings and priests to God, Rev 1:5 , &c., so that they need not fear the spiritual Assyrian, Mic 5:5 .

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Joh 10:11-18 . In these verses Jesus designates Himself “the Good Shepherd” and emphasises two features by which a good shepherd can be known: (1) his giving his life for the sheep, and (2) the reciprocal knowledge of the sheep and the shepherd. These two features are both introduced by the statement (Joh 10:11 ) , “the good shepherd”; “good” probably in the sense in which we speak of a “good” painter or a “good” architect; one who excels at his business. The definite article claims this as a description applicable to Himself alone. Cf. Psa 23 , Isa 40:11 , Eze 34 , etc. For other descriptions of the ideal shepherd, see Plato’s Repub. , p. 345, and the remarkable passage in the Politicus , 271 275, and Columella (in Wetstein), “Magister autem pecoris acer, durus, strenuus, laboris patientissimus, alacer atque audax esse debet; et qui per rupes, per solitudines atque vepres facile vadat”. , the good shepherd, whoever he is, , “lays down his life for the sheep”. is not a classical phrase, but in Hippocrates occurs a similar expression, , Kypke. Ponere spiritum occurs in Latin. Of the meaning there is no doubt. Cf. Joh 13:37 . , “for the good of the sheep,” that is, when the welfare of the sheep demands the sacrifice of life, that is freely made. Here it is evident Jesus describes “the good shepherd” as revealed in Himself.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Joh 10:11-18

11″I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. 12He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13He flees because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep. 14I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me, 15even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. 16I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd. 17For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. 18No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.”

Joh 10:11; Joh 10:14 “I am the good shepherd” This was an OT title for the Messiah (cf. Eze 34:23; Zechariah 11; 1Pe 5:4) and for YHWH (cf. Psa 23:1; Psa 28:9; Psa 77:20; Psa 78:52; Psa 80:1; Psa 95:7; Psa 100:3; Isa 40:11; Jer 23:1; Jer 31:10; Eze 34:11-16).

There are two Greek terms which can be translated “good”: (1) agathos, which is usually used in John for things, and (2) kalos, which was used in the Septuagint to refer to good as opposed to evil. In the NT it has the meanings of “beautiful,” “noble,” “moral,” and “worthy.” These two terms are used together in Luk 8:15. See note at Joh 8:12.

Joh 10:11 “the good shepherd lays down His own life for the sheep” This refers to the vicarious substitutionary atonement of Christ (cf. Joh 10:11; Joh 10:15; Joh 10:17-18). He voluntarily laid down his life for sinful mankind (cf. Isa 52:13 to Isa 53:12; Mar 10:45; 2Co 5:21). True life, abundant life only comes through His death.

Bruce M. Metzger’s A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament has an interesting point on this verse:

“Instead of the expression ‘to lay down one’s life,’ which is characteristically Johannine (Joh 10:15; Joh 10:17; Joh 13:37-38; Joh 15:13; 1Jn 3:16), several witnesses (P45, *, D) substitute the expression ‘to give one’s life,’ which occurs in the Synoptic Gospels (Mat 20:28; Mar 10:45)” (p. 230).

Joh 10:14 “I know my own and My own know Me” This is the Hebrew sense of the word “know” (see Special Topic at Joh 1:10). As the Son knows the Father and the Father the Son, so too, Jesus knows those who trust Him and they know Him. They have “seen” and “heard” (cf. Joh 10:4) and responded (cf. Joh 1:12; Joh 3:16). Christianity is a personal relationship (cf. Joh 17:20-26).

Joh 10:15 “even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father” This is a recurrent theme in John. Jesus acts and speaks out of His intimate relationship with the Father.

The surprising analogy in Joh 10:14-15 is that the intimacy between Father and Son is compared to the intimacy between Son and followers (cf. Joh 14:23). John focuses on the Hebrew connotation of “know” as intimate fellowship, not cognitive facts. Jesus knows the Father; those who know Jesus, know God!

Joh 10:16 “I have other sheep, which are not of this fold” This is an allusion to Isa 56:6-8. The context seems to demand that this refers to (1) the Samaritans (cf. Joh 4:1-42) or (2) the Gentile Church (cf. Joh 4:43-54). This speaks of the unity of all who exercise faith in Christ. The new covenant unites Jews and Gentiles (cf. Eph 2:11 to Eph 3:13; also note 1Co 12:13; Gal 3:28; Col 3:11)! Gen 3:15 and Joh 3:16 merge!

“and they will become one flock with one Shepherd” This has always been the goal of God (cf. Gen 3:15; Gen 12:3; Exo 19:5-6). The theological aspects of this unity are discussed in Eph 2:11 to Eph 3:13 and Eph 4:1-6.

Joh 10:17 “For this reason the Father loves Me” As the Son was not forced to lay down his life, the Father was not forced to give His Son. This should not be interpreted that God rewarded the man Jesus for his obedience (this heresy is often called adoptionism, see Glossary).

“I lay down My life so that I may take it again” This implies the resurrection. Usually in the NT it is the Father who raises the Son (cf. John 18 b) to show His acceptance of His sacrifice. But here the power of Jesus Himself in the resurrection is asserted.

This phrase is an excellent opportunity to show that the NT often attributes the works of redemption to all three persons of the Godhead.

1. God the Father raised Jesus (cf. Act 2:24; Act 3:15; Act 4:10; Act 5:30; Act 10:40; Act 13:30; Act 13:33-34; Act 13:37; Act 17:31; Rom 6:4; Rom 6:9; Rom 10:9; 1Co 6:14; 2Co 4:14; Gal 1:1;Eph 1:20; Col 2:12; 1Th 1:10)

2. God the Son raised Himself (cf. Joh 2:19-22; Joh 10:17-18)

3. God the Spirit raised Jesus (cf. Rom 8:11)

Joh 10:18 “I have authority” This is the same term used in Joh 1:12. It can be translated “authority,” “legal right,” or “power.” This verse shows the power and authority of Jesus.

Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley

I am, &c. See note on Joh 6:33.

the good Shepherd = the Shepherd-the good [one]. Connect this with death, and Psa 22; connect the “great” Shepherd with resurrection (Heb 13:20), and Psa 23; and connect the “chief” Shepherd with glory (1Pe 5:4), and Psa 24.

giveth His life = layeth down His life. The expression is frequent in John. See verses: Joh 10:15, Joh 10:17, Joh 10:18; Joh 13:37, Joh 13:38; Joh 15:13. 1Jn 3:16. Agreeing with the presentation in this Gospel. See page 1511. Compare Mat 20:35. Mar 10:45.

life = soul. Greek. psuche. See App-110.

for = on behalf of. Greek huper. App-104.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

Joh 10:11. , the Good Shepherd) He, concerning whom it was foretold by the prophets. The Shepherd, whose peculiar property the sheep are: good, as being the One who lays down His life for the sheep; also as being He to whom they are an object of care, Joh 10:13, The hireling careth not for the sheep. In our day, they who tend for pay the flocks of one town, or one village, are called pastors; but in this passage the signification of the term, pastor, is more noble. [The whole and complete office of Christ is contained in this parabolic discourse concerning the pastor and the door.-V. g.]-, lays down) This is five times said, thereby there being expressed the greatest force. In this, the highest benefit, all the remaining benefits conferred by the Shepherd are presupposed, included, and are to be inferred [Isa 53:10; Isa 53:6, When Thou shall make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His clays, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand: All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way: and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all],- , for the sheep) Christ here declares what kind of a shepherd He evinces Himself towards the sheep: for which reason, it cannot be inferred from this, that He did not die also for the rest of men.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Joh 10:11

Joh 10:11

I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep.-He distinctly announces that he himself is the good Shepherd who came from heaven to earth to give his life to save those who would trust and follow him.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

The Good Shepherd

I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep.Joh 10:11.

1. The imagery of the text is an incidental claim on the part of our Lord to be the Messiah of Israel. For it was as a shepherd that Jehovah was to fulfil His promise of redemption to His people. He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom. So wrote Isaiah, and Ezekiel after him, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I, even I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out. The Divine promise is fulfilled in Jesus who preaches Himself as the fulfiller and the fulfilment of Israels hope and expectation: I am the good shepherd; and then, going beyond all former revelation of Divine grace and love, He adds, the good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep.

How quietly and unostentatiously, but at the same time with what confidence and assurance, our Lord assumes to Himself titles that were predicted of the Messiah in the Old Testament. He adopts them in the most natural manner, folds them about Him as a man would clothe himself in his own garments. There is never any excuse or apology for doing so. Everywhere our Lord takes His Messiahship for granted. He and no other is the being pointed to by the finger of prophecy, and so after His resurrection He took trouble with His disciples to show them out of those Scriptures the things concerning Himself.

2. This Messianic title of Shepherd is also freely accorded to Him afterwards by His followers, as, for example, by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, who calls Him that great shepherd of the sheep, and by St. Peter, who speaks of Him as the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls, and says to the faithful presbyters of the Church when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away. When we pass out of the region of Scripture and from the Apostolic Church the figure still haunts us. The early Christians in the days of their trial and persecution loved to depict on the walls of the catacombs Jesus as the Good Shepherd, with His sheep standing round Him, and earnestly gazing up into His face. With authority and power did our Lord arrogate to Himself the care and guidance of His Church to the end of time when He spoke these expressive wordsI am the good shepherd.

There are two points to be considered

I.Christs Claim.

II.Its Significance.

I

Christs Claim

I am the good shepherd.

1. I am the Shepherd. We are all familiar enough with the ideas connected with shepherd-life as it is pictured amongst ourselves. The poetry of our country dwells much upon it, especially down to about the beginning of last century. It was described as the ideal of a simple natural life. It was associated with the piping times of peace. The shepherds were regarded as happy swains, living a free, healthy life in communion with nature.

But the shepherds life in Palestine was attended with much hardship and great danger. In a country where at any moment sheep are liable to be swept away by a mountain torrent, or carried off by hill robbers, or torn by wolves, every hour of the shepherds life is risk. David tells how, in defence of his fathers flock, he put his life in his hand and slew both a lion and a bear; while Jacob reminds Laban how he watched the sheep, exposed to the extreme of heat and cold. Pitiless cold at night, long hours of thirst in the day, must be endured, if the flock is to be kept in safety. So it is not difficult to imagine how a feeling of affection would spring up between the lonely Syrian shepherd and the dumb objects of his care. The sheep would follow him wherever he might lead, or call them with his voice.

And so it was the ordinary duty of every shepherd not only to gather and feed and watch the flock, but also to lead them, to know them and to run some risk for them. A great deal has been made out of these last three points in the application of the metaphor to Christ, showing how Christ is the Good Shepherd because He leads His flock, because He knows them, and because He runs some risk for them. But these are not characteristic points of the Good Shepherd as distinguished from the hireling. Even the hireling in the East led the sheep, as that was the ordinary custom, even he knew them to a certain extent, and it was a necessary part of shepherd life to run some risk for the flock.

If that had been all, Jesus might have said I am a shepherd, but His words are I am the good shepherd.

A man may be a hired priest, as Demetrius was at EphesusBy this craft we get our living. Or he may be a paid demagogue, a great champion of rights, and an investigator of abusespaid by applause; and while popularity lasts, he will be a reformerdeserting the people when danger comes. There is no vital union between the champion and the defenceless, the teacher and the taught.1 [Note: F. M. Robertson.]

2. I am the good shepherd. The shepherds work may be done and done well by the paid servant, it may be faithfully performed and the reward honestly earned; but our Lords claim to be a shepherd was something essentially different.

I am the good shepherd. Good, not in the sense of benevolent, but in the sense of genuine, true born, of the real kindjust as wine of nobler quality is good compared with the cheaper sort, just as a soldier is good or noble who is a soldier in heart, and not a soldier by mere profession or for pay. It is the same word as that used by St. Paul when he speaks of a good, i.e. a noble soldier of Christ. Certain peculiar qualifications made the genuine soldier, certain peculiar qualifications make the genuine or good shepherd.

What, then, is that quality which constitutes the essential characteristic of the Good Shepherd, and without which you cannot conceive the idea of one bearing a true shepherd heart and doing a true shepherd work? The Lord tells us: The good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep. He seeks the slafety and well-being of the sheep; and He does so at the cost of any self-sacrifice, even of life itself.

Out on one of the great sheep-ranges of the North-West of America, a shepherd was left in a very lonely station in charge of a large flock of sheep. He lived in a little cottage which was fitted up with the necessary comforts for all seasons of the year. There was no other house anywhere near. This man, Hans Neilson, lived there with only his dog Shep for company. After he had lived out there for two years there came a dreadfully severe winter. The sheep-sheds were old, and the shelter for the sheep was poor. New sheds were to be built in the following spring. It was hard work for Hans, but he succeeded in saving all his sheep until the last and most violent blizzard of all. The wind blew and the snow fell for three days. After it was over, help was sent from headquarters to see how Hans had fared. They found his dead body near the sheep-folds, and his dog standing on guard by his master. The sheep were all alive and well, and it was quite clear to the men that Hans had been trying to place additional protection at the broken places in the old sheds when his brave battle ceased and he was overcome by the intense cold. He might have saved his life by neglecting the sheep, but he had literally given his life for his sheep.1 [Note: J. Learmount, In Gods Orchard, 221.]

3. I am the good shepherd. Why did Christ call Himself the Good Shepherd? Many interpret this the as a the of degree, and amplify the passage thus: There are many good shepherds, but I am the Good Shepherd, par excellence. But this is not the meaning of the text. Christ has showed us that the essence of good shepherding lies in this fact of laying down ones life for the sheep. No man has any claim at all to be called a good shepherd unless he does lay down his life for the sheep. Christ is the only one to whom the epithet Good Shepherd in its metaphorical sense may be applied at all. The the is an absolute one. Christ is not to be considered as first among compeers, but as the one between whom and others there can never be any comparison at all. Our Lord not only declares that He is the reality of which the earthly shepherd is the shadow, and that He as such is the flawless, perfect One, but that He alone is the reality. I am the Good Shepherd; in Me and in Me alone is that which men need.

This question, Was Christ merely a good Man and a great Teacher, or was He something more? Is He to be to us simply one of many teachers, to be discarded possibly sooner or later because, however valuable in the past, the world is destined more and more to outgrow His teaching? Is He to be merely one of many, or are His claims upon us unique, supreme, paramount?this is a question which I do not think you can afford to leave wholly unanswered. To this extent the question, What think ye of Christ? is one which you must face. To leave it on one side is virtually to negative any exceptional claim on Christs part.1 [Note: H. Rashdall, Doctrine and Development, 83.]

We have just lost one who was at the time of his death, with one exception, the greatest master of the English language still left among us. Some of the press notices of the late Professor Seeley show a strangely inadequate recognition, as it seems to me, of his true place both in English literature and in English religion. The advance of criticism may have somewhat diminished the value of Ecce Homo as an historical study: I do not think it has touched its usefulness as a help to practical Christianity. To many in our generation Ecce Homo has taught far more than such a book as Imitatio Christi (with all its truth and beauty) can teach to men who do not live in a medieval monastery, about the practical application of our Lords moral teaching to the spiritual needs and the everyday duties of modern life. To some of us it has come to seem almost like the very Gospel itself rewritten in the language of the nineteenth century. Its declared purpose is simply to constitute an historical inquiry into the ethical teaching of Jesus Christ. With Theology, strictly speaking, it does not avowedly concern itself at all. And yet the writer who summed up the essence of Christs teaching in the famous phrase, the enthusiasm of humanity, found that he could not give an historical account of what Christ taught or of the reasons of His success without recognizing in the fullest and most explicit manner the claim to a unique personal authority which is implied as much in the Sermon on the Mount as in the Johannine version of the Masters life. A morality which is essentially bound up with a devotion to a Person is already a religion. I hardly know of any book that appeals so directly to the conscience of a man anxious, amid all difficulties intellectual and practical, to get an answer for his own souls sake to the old question, What must I do to be saved? The book is throughout intensely practical, and yet it distinctly implies a Theology, a Theology which may be all the more impressive to some minds because it is more often implied than expressed. Had its author attempted to sum up that implied Theology in a sentence, he would perhaps have expressed himself in some such words as these, which I take from a like-minded writer whose name is revered in this place [Oxford]: For most of us, said Arnold Toynbee, Christ is the expression of God, i.e., the eternal fact within us and without us. In time of peril, of failing, and of falsehood, the one power that, enables us to transcend weakness is the feeling of the communion of the two eternal facts in Christ.1 [Note: H. Rashdall, Doctrine and Development, 86.]

II

The Significance of Christs Claim

The good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep.

Christ not only proclaims Himself the Good Shepherd; He expounds the significance of this great word. In His exposition, He leads us into depths of Divine wisdom which must evermore constitute the subject of profound study.

1. The good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep. Christs love as portrayed in His death illustrates the law of Sacrifice. The goodness of Jesus Christ shines forth from Him, and in His death finds its crown and consummation. That death is not an isolated fact, for it is associated with the whole history of Christs redemption. The Lord, throughout His earthly ministry, set that before Him, and said of it as His baptism, How am I straitened till it be accomplished. Thus that death was no mere accident or afterthought. It was the necessary outcome of the life and ministry of the incarnate Son of God. Messiah had been represented as the Shepherd of Israel, but it remained for the Son of God, in His supreme revelation, to represent the Shepherd as dying for His flock. And so He says, the good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep.

(1) We must observe the perfect voluntariness of His self-devotion. No man, He says of His sacrificed life, taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. There was no external need for Jesus dying an early, violent death. If He had so willed it, He could have kept Himself out of the hands of the men who crucified Him. He lived a life that none other lived, and He died a death that none other died. He lived because He willed to live, and He died because He willed to die. The law of love never expressed itself so gloriously as in the death of Jesus Christ. So He taught mankind through all time that love is sacrifice, when for us men and for our salvation He made that oblation of Himself upon the Cross of Calvary, once, and once for all.

Love must be prepared for the greatest sacrifice. We may never conclude that love is unreal merely because its thoughts are large. It may have the widest schemes, and be prepared to devote the utmost pains to their accomplishment. It should give itself freely to the most romantic enterprises. The Lord would not be for all time the King of Love if He had shrunk back from the cup of suffering which, as He knew, was to be drained at the end of that progress to Jerusalem. We need public soulsmen and women who are capable of cherishing great ideas, and who delight to spend themselves for their brethren. There is a growing demand for such in the Church and in the Empire. If, in the providence of God, the way should open for any of us to some conspicuous path of devotion, let us count it high honour, and prepare ourselves bravely for the cost it will involve, cost far greater than will appear at the outset; cost of opposition, and criticism, and misunderstanding, and disappointment; cost, it may be, of seeming failure to achieve anything, or to make any immediate impression. Love must be prepared for the greatest sacrifice. That is the first criterion and test.1 [Note: A. W. Robinson, The Voice of Joy and Health, 167.]

(2) Christ, the Good Shepherd, in pronouncing goodness to lie in self-sacrifice, is but realizing and consummating that principle which is striving to free itself from the tangled web of Nature. But have we always recognized that the heart of goodness, of natural goodness, lies in self-sacrifice? Have we been loyal to this as the verdict of Nature? Somehow, as we know, we came to believe a little time ago that whatever supernatural grace might demand, Nature laid its approval not upon self-sacrifice, but upon self-assertion. So Science had seemed to say. It had opened our eyes upon a dismal scene in which beast battled with beast, each struggling with desperate energy for its own survival. Nature appeared as a wild and blind monster, working with tooth and claw, shrieking against our moral creed. There was no goodness to be detected at work in a war where egoism alone counted. But ever since the early recognition of the law of natural selection, which Darwin emphasized as the sole determinant of evolution, Science has been limiting and qualifying the range of its activity.

To many of us it seems there is too much red in the picture which Darwin painted; and the trouble is that his picture has been reproduced by cheaper and coarser processes, until it has lost all subtlety and truth, and become a harsh and ugly print of Nature, as if it were a dismal type of vast gladiatorial show. This is not merely bad as a piece of unbalanced cosmogony; but by a vicious circle the libel projected upon Nature is brought back to justify one set out of human methods, the egoistic; and to condemn others as altruistic. But the organic process depends on much more than a squabble round a platter, or internecine struggle at the margin of subsistence; it includes all the multitudinous efforts for others, as well as for self, between the two poles of hunger and love; all endeavours that mate makes for mate, and parent for offspring, and kin for kin. Love and life are factors in progress as much as pain and death, and the premium in the struggle for existence on tooth and claw is not greater than that on the warm solicitude of the maternal heart, or on the patience of a brooding bird. So, again, we will say if we make a curve of the ascent of vertebrates, marking their position according to the degree of brain development, we find that as the curve ascends the co-ordinates of parental affection and parental love and gentle emotions are heightened. And those organisms so endowed survive, in spite of the admitted egoistic competition. And that is the proof of Natures censure. Earth may be strong, but it is also lovely, and the lovely and the strong exist together. And we see that, according to its own ascending mind and age, the loving become more and more strong. From the dawn of life, as Herbert Spencer said, altruism has been no less essential than egoism; self-sacrifice is as primordial as self-preservation. More and more we see that it is possible to interpret the ideals of ethical progress through love and sociality, through co-operation and sacrifice, not as mere Utopias, contradicted by natural experience, but as the highest expression of the central evolutionary process in the natural world.1 [Note: Geddes, Ideals of Science and Faith, 70.]

Learn in self-sacrifice to find thy joy,

The only bliss unmingled with alloy;

All lesser pleasures soon must pall and cloy.

Better it is to give than to receive,

All to forsake than unto aught to cleave;

Tis in the act of giving that we live.

All spiritual Being lives by this

The ground and basis of the Godhoods bliss;

Who turn therefrom the Life Eternal miss.

For though discharged in full strict dutys round,

If in the chains of self-hood thou art bound

Lifeless and void of worth thy works are found.

Throughout the extent of Natures wide domain

See this great law of sacrifice obtain,

The creatures loss conditioning its gain.

The very elements this law obey,

The beams that from the solar source outray,

The springing founts perpetual sparkling play.

All living things are constituted so,

All organisms from out earths womb that grow;

As is the outward, so the to-ward flow:

So that whateer impedes or hindereth

The pores free play, the issue of the breath,

Is the concomitant or cause of death:

Wouldst truly live?let go!1 [Note: W. Hall, Via Cruris.]

2. The good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep. Christs death illustrates the law of Redemption. Here is the doctrine of vicarious sacrifice: the sacrifice of one instead of another: life saved by the sacrifice of another life. Most of us know the meagre explanation of these words which satisfies some men: they say that Christ merely died as a martyr, in attestation of the truths He taught. But we must observe the strength of the expression which we cannot explain away, I lay down my life for the sheep. If the Shepherd had not sacrificed Himself, the sheep must have been the sacrifice.

There was something the Lord passed through, passed through once and for ever, something awful and unspeakable, in order that we might never share it. We Christians shall never die as He died. Our material bodies will wear away and cease, and they will be carried over the well-trodden way to the cemetery. Men will speak of us as having died, hut we shall never die as our Saviour died. There was something in His death which His followers will never know. He that believeth in me shall never taste death.

The danger which threatened us was not bodily death, for from that we are not delivered. But it was something with which the death of the body is intimately connected. Bodily death is as it were the symptom, but not the disease itself. It is that which reveals the presence of the pestilence, but is not itself the real danger. It is like the plague-spot that causes the beholder to shudder, though the spot itself is only slightly painful. Now a skilful physician does not treat symptoms, does not apply his skill to allay superficial distresses, but endeavours to remove the radical disease. If the eye becomes bloodshot he does not treat the eye, but the general system. If an eruption comes out on the skin, he does not treat the skin, but alters the condition of the blood; and it is a small matter whether the symptom goes on to its natural issue, if thereby the eradication of the disease is rather helped than hindered. So it is with death: it is not our danger; no man can suppose that the mere transference from this state to another is injurious; only, death is in our case the symptom of a deep disease, of a real, fatal ailment of soul. We know death not as a mere transference from one world to another, but as our transference from probation to judgment, which sin makes us dread; and also as a transference which in form forcibly exhibits the weakness, the imperfection, the shame of our present state. Thus death connects itself with sin, which our conscience tells us is the great root of all our present misery. It is to us the symptom of the punishment of sin, but the punishment itself is not the death of the body but of the soul; the separation of the soul from all good, from all hope,in a word, from God. This is the real danger from which Christ delivers us. If this be removed, it is immaterial whether bodily death remain or not; or rather, bodily death is used to help out our complete deliverance, as a symptom of the disease sometimes promotes the cure. Christ has tasted death for every man, and out of each mans cup has sucked the poison, so that now, as we in turn drink it, it is but a sleeping draught. There was a chemistry in His love and perfect obedience which drew the poison to His lips; and, absorbing into His own system all the virulence of it, by the immortal vigour of His own constitution, He overcame its effects, and rose again triumphing over its lethargic potency.1 [Note: M. Dods.]

A doctor in one of the London hospitals found a child-patient dying of diphtheria, and sucked away the suffocating film from the throat, with fatal consequences to himself. Was he justified? There are many side issues to this problem, but they do not alter the main question. To answer it we must put ourselves on the spot at the given moment, and see the two human beings face to face with the emergency; the child gasping for breath, the doctor conscious that he holds in his hands a possible means of retaining the life that has almost escaped. He uses it. Can this be called renouncement? Surely not. It is an action love-prompted, generous, beautiful. He does not act thus in order to give away his own life, but to save the childs; not to lose, but to win something not otherwise to be won.1 [Note: M. C. Albright, The Common Heritage, 77]

The Good Shepherd

Literature

Alford (H.), Quebec Chapel Sermons, vi. 226.

Arnold (T. K.), Sermons, 1.

Bickersteth (C.), The Gospel of Incarnate Love, 163.

Butler (W. J.), Sermons for Working Men, 235.

De Koven (J.), Sermons, 19.

Hamilton (J.), Faith in God, 127.

Hill (J.), Waymarks, 23.

Holland (H. S.), Vital Values, 141.

Learmount (J.), In Gods Orchard, 218.

Liddon (H. P.), Easter in St. Pauls, 312.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: John ix.xiv., 34.

Manning (H. E.), Sermons, iii. 1.

Manning (H. E.), The Teaching of Christ, 123.

Newman (J. H.), Parochial and Plain Sermons, viii. 230.

Palmer (J. R.), Burden-Bearing, 115.

Price (A. C.), Fifty Sermons, vii. 161, viii. 209.

Ritchie (A.), Sermons from St. Ignatius Pulpit, 173.

Ritchie (D. L.), Peace the Umpire, 20.

Robertson (F. W.), Sermons, ii. 251.

Ross (J. M. E.), The Self-Portraiture of Jesus, 110.

Russell (A.), The Light that Lighteth every Man, 115.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, li. (1905) No. 2919.

Wilson (S.), Lenten Shadows and Easter Lights, 144.

Christian World Pulpit, lxvii. 305 (Scott Holland); lxxix. 330 (Birch-enough).

Church of England Pulpit, xxxi. 304 (Carr); xl. 209 (Price); lv. 254 (Swithinbank); lxiii. 277 (Silvester).

Church of Ireland Gazette, May 28, 1909, p. 525 (Dean of St. Patricks).

Churchmans Pulpit: Second Sunday after Easter: viii. 44 (Taylor), 46 (Jones), 49 (Manning), 52 (Newman), 55 (Gurney), 57 (Alford), 59 (Price), 61 (Meyer).

Homiletic Review, xlix. 302 (Jennings).

Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible

the good: Joh 10:14, Psa 23:1, Psa 80:1, Isa 40:11, Eze 34:12, Eze 34:23, Eze 37:24, Mic 5:4, Zec 13:7, Heb 13:20, 1Pe 2:25, 1Pe 5:4

giveth: Gen 31:39, Gen 31:40, 1Sa 17:34, 1Sa 17:35, 2Sa 24:17, Isa 53:6, Eph 5:2, Tit 2:14, 1Pe 2:24

Reciprocal: Gen 33:3 – passed Num 11:12 – Carry them Num 27:16 – set a man 2Sa 5:2 – feed 1Ch 21:17 – let thine Psa 78:52 – like a Son 1:7 – thou feedest Eze 34:31 – ye my Mat 18:12 – if Mat 27:50 – yielded Joh 8:18 – one Joh 10:2 – the shepherd Joh 10:15 – and I Joh 10:16 – one shepherd Joh 15:13 – General Joh 19:30 – and he Joh 21:16 – my sheep 2Co 12:15 – will Gal 1:4 – gave Gal 2:20 – who 1Th 5:10 – died Rev 7:17 – feed

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

THE GOOD SHEPHERD

I am the Good Shepherd.

Joh 10:11

When our Blessed Lord called Himself the Good Shepherd, and spoke of His loving care for His sheep, those who heard Him felt the full force of the beautiful and original allegory. He spoke to men who came of a shepherd race. He appealed to those who knew what a shepherds life was. A more fitting illustration could not have been chosen, and time has only shown how fully and universally the allegory has been appreciated.

I. The Shepherd leads.How many troubles would be avoided, how much suffering and misery spared, if the sheep of Christs flock would only follow Him closely, and with the confidence shown by those sheep for their guardian. But alas! how many professing Christians are like the sheep which have but little confidence in the shepherd, and only follow him with fear and hesitation. The Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, is ever present to lead us, and if we follow, nothing doubting, when we come to the river of death which lies before us all in the shadows of the future, we shall then feel no fear, no hesitation, but follow eagerly till the eternal fold is reached.

II. The Shepherd knows.You should, in the next place, try to realise what is meant by the Good Shepherd knowing His sheep. In this country sheep are marked, and a shepherd can thus distinguish his own sheep, but in the East he always learns to know his flock without the aid of marks. Christ, the Good Shepherd, knows each one of His flock, but not by name alone. The character, the weaknesses, and virtues of each one are well known to Him. We cannot stray away from the right path without the watchful Shepherd knowing full well; but there are no trials and temptations through which He will not gladly and lovingly help us; no joys and sorrows with which He will not sympathise. Every true follower of Christ can say, in the words of the Psalmist, The Lord is my Shepherd, therefore can I lack nothing. Thy rod and Thy staff comfort me. In all times of trouble (and who is there who has not or will not have times of trouble?), in all times of temptation and suffering, this thought of the Good Shepherds knowledge of our affliction should rise up to bring comfort and peace,

III. The Shepherd seeks.As you follow the Good Shepherd you will often find that, in some weak moment, you have been tempted to take your eyes off Him and wander aside after some worldly pleasure, tempted, perhaps, by some other wanderer who has strayed away from the right path. But then for our great comfort comes the thought that the Good Shepherd will never leave one of His flock thus wandering without making every effort to bring back the wanderer. No sheep from the flock of this Shepherd ever went astray that was not sought for, and how many, thank God, have been brought back!

Rev. W. S. Randall.

Illustration

One bitter January night the inhabitants of the old town of Sleswick were thrown into the greatest distress and terror. A hostile army was marching down upon them, and new and fearful reports of the conduct of the lawless soldiery were hourly reaching the place. In one large commodious cottage dwelt an aged grandmother with her granddaughter and her grandson. While all hearts quaked with fear, this aged woman passed her time in crying out to her Saviour that He would build up a wall of defence round about them, quoting the words of an ancient hymn. Her grandson asked why she prayed for a thing so entirely impossible as that God should build a wall about their house that should hide it; but she explained that her meaning only was that God should protect them. At midnight the dreaded tramp of the soldiers was heard as the enemy came pouring in at every avenue, filling the houses to overflowing. But whilst the most fearful sounds were heard on every side, not even a knock came to their door, at which they were greatly surprised. The morning light made the matter clear, for just beyond the house the drifted snow had reared such a massive wall that it was impossible to get over it to them. There, said the old woman triumphantly, do you not see, my child, that God could raise up a wall around us? This Christian woman knew what it was to have a perfect trust in the Good Shepherd.

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE DIVINE SHEPHERD

I am the Good Shepherd. Is it not a Self-revelation which comes as a necessary corollary to that interpretation of the Divine relations to mankind which finds expression in the 23rd Psalm and elsewhere in the writings of the Old Testament? If once we accept such a conception of God; if once such a creed takes full possession of our hearts and minds, we are impelled by it to a sure and certain hope of such a Self-manifestation as we have in Jesus Christ.

I. The Divine Shepherd!God is not only the Guide and Mainstay of great bodies of menof nations and churches, of generations and kingdoms; He is the Guardian and Friend of each individual life. We are all known by Him with a knowledge that is perfect. Nothing is hidden from Himno temptation, no anxiety, no strain, no failure, no sin, no repentance. His is the hand that has faithfully upheld us and brought us safely through the dangers and troubles which have sorely beset us. Those strange coincidences, which we could not understand at the time, have been realised in the light of subsequent knowledge to have been His loving counsels for our welfare. It has been His ministry that has provided with such sufficiency for our wants. We are all the sheep of His pasture. He is, as has been beautifully said of Him, that Eternal Tenderness which bends over usinfinitely lower though we be in natureand knows the name of each and the trials of each, and thinks for each with a separate solicitude, and gave Itself for each with a Sacrifice as special and a Love as personal as if in the whole worlds wilderness there were none other than that one.

II. He is our eternal Shepherd of infinite perfection.He calls us by name. We may go to Him and thankfully walk in His footsteps and rejoice in the comfort and strength of His protection. We may be certain that there is, and can be, no lowliness, no obscurity, no poverty, no desolation, no suffering, no unmerited reproach which His goodness and mercy do not follow day by day and hour by hour. We are confident that nothing that we now are or ever have beenno vice, no depravity, no crime, no dishonourneed continue to separate us from Him. He is ever ready to receive us back, to welcome us once more into the shelter of the fold. Rejoice with me, for I have found My sheep which was lost. We are none of us, even the worst and the vilest, beyond the blessing of His care. Because of His Cross and Passion, because of that supreme victory in which the suffering of death issued, because He is stronger than the strong and in His own Person has overthrown death and Satan, because He has ascended on high and led captivity captive, He can beHe isthe Shepherd of us all. In a deeper sense than was ever revealed even to the inspired Psalmist, He will be our Guide along the paths of righteousnessthe straitened way that leadeth unto lifeour unseen but ever-present Companion on that last tremendous journey through the valley of the shadow of deaththe valley which leads to the Paradise of God. Whenever we will, He feeds us, from His own sacred table, with the spiritual food of His most precious Body and Blood. Aye, and when all here is over and done with, when our time comes sooner or later, expectedly or unexpectedly

To-day, or may be not to-day,

To-night, or not to-night

He will receive us, through the wondrous efficacy of His own Self-sacrifice and triumph, into the house of the Lord.

Rev. the Hon. W. E. Bowen.

Illustration

The figure of the Good Shepherd was one which the young Church was glad to depict. It has often been pointed out that the earliest delineations of our Saviour place Him before us, not with the signs and evidences of suffering upon Him, not with worn visage and tired body, but in all the strength and vigour of unwearied manhood. The Ecce Homo of these Christians was unmarked by horror and outrage. Neither the paintings in the Catacombs nor the sculptures in the ancient Christian sarcophagi reveal a single representation of the Passion of our Lord. It was a later generation that ventured to introduce the Crucifixion into the sacred circle of subjects suitable for Christian art. And sometimes we are asked, indeed urged, to go back to this older type of representation as better, wiser, truer, healthier. It is an invitation which at first makes a strong appeal to us. But none the less we cannot consent to respond to it. An adequate picture of the human Christ will not exclude those deep lines of suffering which came through His voluntary Self-abasement.

(THIRD OUTLINE)

THE IDEAL SHEPHERD

There are three parables in this chapter. In the first six verses there is the parable of the Shepherd. To the fold mentioned in Joh 10:1 many flocks would be brought at night. Then their own Shepherd would come in the morning and lead away his flock to pasture. Then in Joh 10:7 begins the parable of the Door. This was the Door of the day enclosure, where the sheep could go in and out and find food. In Joh 10:11 there is the parable of the beautiful or ideal Shepherd. Here evening has come, and as the shepherds are leading back their flocks to the fold for the night, the wolf darts forth; but the Good Shepherd flees not like the hireling, but lays down His life for the sheep.

Let us notice three things the beautiful Shepherd is here said to do for His sheep.

I. He knows them.The words are even more striking in the Revised Version: I know Mine own, and Mine own know Me, even as the Father knoweth Me, and I know the Father (Joh 10:14-15). Christ knows His sheep with the same loving knowledge that the Father knows Him, and He knows the Father. The weakest, the feeblest, the very sickliest lamb in the flock the beautiful Shepherd loves and knows. Not one is overlooked, or forgotten, or omitted.

II. He dies for them.I lay down My life for the sheep. The prophet had foretold thisAwake, O sword, against My Shepherd (Zec 13:7).

One came by with wounded Side,

And for the sheep the Shepherd died.

III. He gathers them.Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold (i.e. not Jews): them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice; and they shall become one flock, one Shepherd (Joh 10:16).

IV. The Lord is my Shepherd.Can you say, My? Everything depends on that. If you can say, The Lord is my Shepherd, then all is yoursthe quiet rest by the still waters, the restoring, the leading, the presence in the valley, the rod and the staff to comfort, the prepared table, the ointment for the head, the cup running over, goodness and mercy all the days of your life, and a home beyond the grave; all this is yours if you can say My.

Rev. F. Harper.

Illustration

Garabaldi and some of his army were marching through the mountains, and as they drew near to where they intended to spend the night they met a shepherd wandering alone. He was taken to the General, and his account of himself was that he was walking across the hill in search of a lost lamb. Garibaldi heard his story, and then called on his men to scatter and seek for the lost. They separated and sought, but without success; and as night closed in the soldiers returned tired and dispirited, without the lamb. They slept well that night; and when the morning call roused them from rest they opened amazed eyes to see a great figure looming through the white mists and advancing towards them. They marvelled, and their wonder was none the less when the new-comer proved to be their General carrying a little lamb in his strong arms. They had slept, but Garibaldi had sought all night, and at dawn he found that which was lost.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

1

Good shepherd giveth ‘his life. Smith’s Bible Dictionary says the following which will explain why a shepherd would run the risk of losing his life in defending the sheep: “The office of the eastern shepherd, as described in the Bible, was attended with much hardship, and even danger. He was exposed to the extremes of heat and cold, Gen 31:40. . . . He had to encounter the attacks of wild beasts, occasionally of the larger species, such as lions, wolves, panthers, and bears, 1Sa 17:34; Isa 31:4; Jer 5:6; Amo 3:12; nor was he free from the risk of robbers or predatory [destructive] hordes.”

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Joh 10:11. I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep. The aspect of the preamble here changes: in the following verses, until the 16th, there is no mention of the fold or of the door, but of the shepherd only and his relation to the flock. The word rendered good occurs but seldom in this Gospel: it differs from the word ordinarily so translated (which however John uses still less frequently) in that it is never used to express the idea of kindness, but always signifies what is (outwardly or inwardly) beautiful, noble, excellent of its kind. Both words may be used to denote moral excellence, and with but slight difference of meaning. Here then the epithet has no reference to kindness but to excellence as a Shepherd. Is there a shepherd whose work is not only faithful but all fair, without spot or defect, such a Shepherd of the flock is the Lord Jesus. The highest point which the Shepherds faithfulness can reach is His laying down His life for the sheep: when the wolf assaults the flock, the Good Shepherd repels him, although He die in the attempt. Strictly taken these words are general, and may be said of every noble shepherd; but, connected with the first clause, they in effect declare what is done by Jesus Himself. Our Lords hearers at the time would understand no more than this, that at the peril of His life He would defend His flock; but it is impossible to read chap. Joh 11:51 without seeing in the words a reference to the truth declared in chap. Joh 3:14-15, Joh 12:32,the atoning death of the Redeemer which brings life to the world.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

In these verses our Saviour evidently proves himself to be the true Shepherd of his church, by the marks and signs, by the properties and characters, of a good shepherd; which were eminently found with him; namely, to know all his flock, to take care of them, and to lay down his life for them.

1. Jesus Christ, the great shepherd of his church, hath an exact and distinct knowledge of all his flock: I know my sheep, with a three-fold knowledge, with a knowledge of intelligence and observation: he knows them so as to observe and take notice of them, with a knowledge of care and protection; he knows them so as to defend and keep them. Thus Christ knows his sheep, and is also known of them; that is, he is believed on, beloved, and obeyed by them.

2. He lays down his life for his flock. And for this doth he eminently deserve the title of the good shepherd. (As for his power, he is stiled the great shepherd.) A good shepherd indeed, who not only gives life to his sheep, but gives his own life by way of ransom for his sheep! This example of Christ, the great and good shepherd, in laying down his life for his sheep, teacheth all subordinate and inferior shepherds, to prefer the good of their flock, even before their own lives.

Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament

Joh 10:11-15. I am the good shepherd Jesus, having represented himself as the door of the sheep, and intimated the regards which ought to be maintained to him as such, particularly by those that professed to be teachers of others, now changes the similitude, and represents himself, by way of eminence, the good shepherd, namely, the person frequently foretold in Scripture under that character, (see the margin,) and the proprietor of the sheep. The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep win expose himself to any danger for their safety, because they are his own property; but he that is a hireling Who attends the sheep merely for hire, who is employed as a servant, and paid for his pains; whose own the sheep are not Who has neither profit nor loss by them, and proposes nothing to himself but his own gain; seeth the wolf Or some other savage beast; coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth Deserts them; because, instead of loving them, he loves himself, and therefore will not expose himself to any danger on their account; in consequence of which, the beast of prey, meeting with no resistance, catcheth, and scattereth the sheep Seizes on some and disperses the rest; the two ways of hurting the flock of Christ. The wolf signifies an enemy who by force or fraud attacks the Christians faith, liberty, or life. Observe, reader, it is not the bare receiving hire, which denominates a man a hireling, (for the labourer is worthy of his hire, Jesus Christ himself being judge: yea, and the Lord hath ordained that they who preach the gospel should live by the gospel,) but the loving hire; the loving the hire more than the work; the working for the sake of the hire. He is a hireling who would not work were it not for the hire; to whom this is the great, if not only, motive of working. O God! if a man who works only for hire is such a wretch, a mere thief and a robber; what is he who continually takes the hire, and yet does not work at all! The hireling fleeth, because he is a hireling Because he loves the hire, not the sheep; and takes the work upon him merely for the wages he is to receive. From what our Lord here says, it plainly appears to be the duty of every minister of the gospel, intrusted with the care of a flock, to reside ordinarily among them. For, if approaching danger to himself, or them, is no excuse for his fleeing away and leaving them, far less will interest, or pleasure, or any lesser matter, be an excuse for such unfaithfulness. I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep With a tender regard and special care. Being the good shepherd, and the owner of the sheep, I pay such earnest and constant attention to my flock, and take such care of it, that I not only know every particular sheep, but I know every thing relating to each. I know the circumstance, wherein they are placed, am well acquainted with their wants, and can judge what aids they stand in need of. Besides, I love them all with an ardent affection, and approve of their obedience to me, because, though it is imperfect, it is sincere. And am known of mine With a holy confidence and affection. As I know, love, and approve my sheep, so I am known and beloved of them in return, for they have just apprehensions of my dignity and character; in particular, they know that I am their Shepherd and Saviour, sent from God, and that I am able to feed them with knowledge, and to deliver them from the punishment of sin, and to bestow on them everlasting life. As the Father knoweth me, &c. That is, I know my sheep, and am known of mine, even as the Father knoweth me, and I know the Father; for so the passage ought to be rendered, and construed in connection with the foregoing verse; as if he had said, The mutual knowledge subsisting between me and my sheep, is like that which subsists between the Father and me. It is a knowledge which implies an inexpressible union. See Joh 17:21-22. And I lay down my life for the sheep He speaks of the present time: for his whole life was only a going unto death. I show the greatness of the love which I bear to my sheep by dying for them, which no hireling did, or ever will do.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Vv. 11-13. I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd gives his life for his sheep. 12. But the hireling, who is not a shepherd and to whom the sheep do not belong, sees the wolf coming and abandons the sheep and flees; and the wolf snatches them and scatters the flock. 13. But the hireling flees because he is a hireling and does not care for the sheep.

The first picture was all resplendent with the fresh tints of the morning; the second depicted the life and activity of the flock during the course of the day; the third seems to place us at the moment when the shadows of the night are spreading, and when the sheep, brought back to the common inclosure by the shepherd, are suddenly exposed to the attack of the wolf which at evening lies in wait on their path. Jesus here appears again in His character as shepherd. But this third allegory is not confounded with the first. The governing element in the first was the contrast between the shepherd and the thief; in this one which we are about to study, it is the antithesis of the good shepherd and the hireling guardian. The salient feature is not, as in the first picture, the legitimacy of the Messianic mission, but the disinterested love which is the moving cause of it. It is this sentiment which makes Christ not only the shepherd, but the good shepherd.

The word , beautiful, designates with the Greeks goodness, as the highest moral beauty. The sequel will show in what this beauty consists. This word explains the article , the: He who perfectly realizes this sublime type. Then Jesus indicates the first trait of the character of this shepherd. It is love carried to the point of complete abnegation, even to the entire sacrifice of oneself. Some (Meyer, Luthardt) find in the expression (literally: to put his life) the idea of a pledge given: Jesus pledges His life as a ransom for ours. But this idea of a ransom is foreign to the imagery of the shepherd and the sheep, and still more to that of the wolf under which the enemy is represented.

This expression may be compared with that which we find in Joh 13:4 : , to lay aside his garments. The idea is that of laying down His life. Comp. Huther on 1Jn 3:16. Keil, however, alleges against this second sense the words , on behalf of the sheep. We must therefore give to the sense of: to place at the disposal of another, to surrender, to sacrifice; comp. Joh 13:37. In Joh 10:12, we must not add the article and translate, as Ostervald, Arnaud, Crampon do: who is not the shepherd. Jesus means: who is not a shepherd, who has the place of a hireling. It is not the owner of the flock who acts thus, but a hired servant to whom the owner has intrusted it. Whom did Jesus mean to designate by this person? No one, say some interpreters in reply, particularly Hengstenberg and Weiss: there is here an imaginary figure intended to make prominent by means of the contrast, that of the good shepherd. But in that case it would be strange for it to be described throughout two entire verses as the counterpart of that of the good shepherd, and as quite as real as the latter. Most of the interpreters think that this person repreents the Pharisees. But they would be presented here in too different a light from that in which they were depicted in the two preceding similitudes.

A cowardly guardian is a different thing from a robber and an assailant. And, if the hireling represents the Pharisees, who will then be typified by the wolf? According to Luthardt, this person is the principle hostile to the kingdom of God, the devil, acting by means of all the adversaries of the Church. But Jesus, in chap. 8, has completely identified Pharisaism with the diabolic principle. He cannot therefore represent the first here as a mere hireling, a cowardly friend, the other as a declared enemy. Lange, in his Life of Jesus, understands by the wolf the Roman power. But it was not really under the blows of the Roman power that Jesus fell. Meyer had at first applied the figure of the wolf to all anti-Messianic power, Pharisaism included; but the result of this was that the hireling fleeing before the wolf was the Pharisees fleeing before the Pharisees! He has accordingly abandoned this explanation in the 5th edition. The wolf represents, according to him, the future hireling shepherds in the midst of the Christian Church. But what could have led Jesus to express at that moment an idea like this, and how could His present hearers have caught a glimpse of this meaning? It seems to me that the figure is explained if we recall to mind, on the one hand, the fact that a is a servant for wages, and, on the other, that there were in the theocracy no other accredited and paid functionaries except the priests and Levites.

These were the ones to whom God had officially entrusted the instruction and moral guidance of His people. But, during the most recent times, the Pharisaic party had so far obtained the mastery over the minds of the people, by turning to their advantage the national pride, that whoever, even among the lawful rulers of the theocracy, did not submit to them, was immediately put under the ban and brought into discredit, as in our own days whoever in the Roman Church dares to cope with the spirit of Jesuitism. There were many, undoubtedly, in Israel who would have willingly maintained the truth of God. We have as a proof of this Joh 12:42, so far as relates to the rulers in general, and Act 6:7, so far as relates to the priests in particular. But, like so many intelligent and pious bishops in the present Catholicism, they in a cowardly manner kept silent. One man alone had the courage to face this formidable conflict with the dominant party, and to expose His life for the maintenance of the divine truth and for the salvation of the sheep. The: Crucify! crucify! was the answer of Pharisaism, cut to the heart by the Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! The wolf represents therefore the principle positively hostile to the kingdom of God and to the Messiah, the Pharisees; and the hireling, the legitimate functionaries who by their station were called to fulfill the task which Jesus accomplished by voluntary self-devotion, the priests and Levites, accredited doctors of the law. The passage Joh 9:16, had already given us a glimpse within the Sanhedrim itself of a party well disposed towards Jesus, but which did not dare openly to oppose the violent threats of the Pharisees against Him. Jesus presents here only the historical factors which have co- operated in the accomplishment of the decree of His death. He has nothing to say of the profound and divine reasons which presided over the decree itself. The word , snatches, applies to the individuals whom the wolf assails (), while the action of , to scatter, extends to the entire flock: , the flock, a word which we must be careful not to reject with the Alexandrian authorities.

Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)

Joh 10:7-10 expand the idea of the gate from Joh 10:1-5, and Joh 10:11-18 develop the idea of the Shepherd from those verses.

Here is another "I am" claim. Jesus is the Good Shepherd in contrast to the bad shepherds just described (Joh 10:8; Joh 10:10 a). Rather than killing the sheep so He might live, as the bad shepherds did, Jesus was willing to sacrifice His life (Gr. psyche, the total self) so the sheep might live. It is this extreme commitment to the welfare of the sheep that qualified Jesus as the Good Shepherd. The titles "Great Shepherd" (Heb 13:20-21) and "Chief Shepherd" (1Pe 5:4) stress different aspects of Jesus’ character as a shepherd. Good shepherding involves protecting, providing, and sacrificing.

"Good" (Gr. kalos) connotes nobility and worth, not merely gentleness. It contrasts Jesus with the unworthy and ignoble shepherds that He proceeded to describe (Joh 10:12-13). Laying down His life is a uniquely Johannine expression that describes a voluntary sacrificial death (cf. Joh 10:17-18; Joh 13:37-38; Joh 15:13; 1Jn 3:16). Likewise the preposition hyper ("for") usually connotes sacrifice (cf. Joh 13:37; Joh 15:13; Luk 22:19; Rom 5:6-8; 1Co 15:3). Most shepherds do not intend to die for their sheep but to live for them; they only die for their sheep accidentally. Yet Jesus came to die for His sheep. Of course, Jesus also came to die for the whole world (Joh 6:51; Joh 11:50-52).

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

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