[AI translation] This is one of Jesus' most common, best-known statements about himself: "I am the good Shepherd" (John 10:11). Christian art has also attempted to portray the ineffable person of the Savior in the figure of the Shepherd. We are certainly familiar with such works. The likenesses of Jesus are usually images that reflect some aspect of inexpressible heavenly truths. In the image of the Good Shepherd, too, the light of the glorious person of the Saviour Jesus shines through, but this image not only radiates the person of Christ, but at the same time dims the glory of His divine person, and makes it almost bearable to our earthly, human eyes. We would be blinded if the Lord stood before us as He is, and so He is forced to reveal Himself to us clothed in such images. When He says that He is the Good Shepherd, He is projecting before us in this image a ray of His immeasurable and inexpressibly rich Person. Which one? Let us see! Let us see it as He Himself breaks the picture down into its details!(1) At the beginning of the parable He says: "I am the door" (Jn 10,9a). Doesn't this contradict the other statement He goes on to make, that He is the Shepherd? In fact, it is not even another image, but a detailing and explanation of the previous one, the shepherd metaphor. For in the place where the Lord lived, the shepherd kept his flock in a fold at night, which had only a fence but no door. The Shepherd himself was the door, in such a way that he lay down in the doorway; whether one wished to go in or out, he could only do so through him, with his knowledge and permission.
Jesus was well acquainted with this custom of the shepherds of the East, and it is precisely because He is the Good Shepherd that He says, "I am the door". Where does this door lead? To where salvation is: 'if anyone enters through me, he will be saved'. (v.9b) So He is the door of salvation, the door of heaven, the door of eternal life: the door of God's house of the Father's Father. Jesus emphasizes that He is the door. He is not a door, one of many doors, through which one can enter into God's grace, into His kingdom, into salvation, but it is precisely that there is no other door but through Him. Whoever does not enter through Christ, through Christ, will never enter salvation. Of course, he who will not enter by the door will not find God and happy reconciliation with Him. There is no other entrance to the Father but through Jesus Christ, through His death and resurrection, through filial faith in Him.
But Christ is a door through whom there is entrance! The door of the Father's heart. In Christ the whole riches of divine grace are truly opened.
I was reading the other day about the conversion of a Unitarian. He describes how one evening, while his wife was at prayer meeting, he began to feel very ill. The sickness did not stop after his wife came home. He tossed and turned sleeplessly all night. He got up early in the morning and locked himself in his study. He became more and more miserable until he finally got down on his knees and began to pray for God to forgive him of his sins, but he did not want to say for Jesus Christ, because, being a Unitarian, he did not believe in Christ's redemption. So he tried to get to God not through the door! He struggled for a long time, he begged again, "God, forgive me my sins!" but there was no answer. At last, in utter despair, he cried out, "O God, for Jesus Christ's sake, for His merit, forgive me my sins!" and suddenly the "door" opened, and peace poured out!
He says to thee now, "I am the door: if any man enter in by me, he shall be saved!" Can you see Jesus as without Whom you are lost?! Or can you imagine that without Him you can be righteous, pious, religious, live without Him, and die in peace without Him?! So are you a believer in Jesus, or do you just believe in a higher power? Are you a believer in Jesus or just a believer in God? A Muslim is a God-believer, a fetish worshipper is a God-believer! So one can be a God-believer without Jesus. But here, in this parable, the emphasis is precisely on the fact that one can be a believer in God without belonging to his own, to the saved, to the saved - because Jesus alone is the door, and only he who enters through Him is saved!
The good Shepherd is the door. He is a door that also offers protection to those in the ark. If you are already His sheep in His fold, you can see Him as a closed door that protects you, keeping out many of the dangers to which you would otherwise be exposed. Jesus so places Himself between His own and the dangers that lie in wait for them, that He keeps from us all that could be our ruin. Behind this door, there can be no harm, no danger! What He lets through, let it come boldly: the sheep can be sure that if there were any danger hidden from them, the good Shepherd would not let it come upon them! Without His knowledge and will, nothing can befall His sheep. Nothing can come from outside that does not come through Him, for He is the door! If He let through sickness, for example, or affliction, or tribulation, or even death, it was only so that His sheep might "have life and have it to multiply" (John 10:10c) Are you behind the door, under the watchful eye of the good Shepherd? If you are, then receive all the troubles and miseries of life that come upon you, so that they do not come upon you as a sneaky way to your destruction, but came through the "door" and came so that you might have life and be filled!
2) Another characteristic of a good Shepherd is that he knows his own. (Jn 10,3)
It is said that a true shepherd knows his own sheep so well that he can choose one lamb from among a thousand strangers. It is also possible that he gives his sheep certain names, and thus calls them by name. But what is this compared to what is written here about the good Shepherd?! What Jesus himself says about himself?! In recent weeks I have been most impressed by this thought: Jesus knows me, especially by name! Not only does it mean that we are not mere numbers before Him, that we are not a mass measured and evaluated by the number of pieces, but that we have a name and He knows us individually by name, - but it is something quite breathtakingly great! In the last few weeks, while reading an astronomy book, this phrase "God is great" began to grow in me in a very frightening reality! Let me just give you a few facts from the wider world. In the so-called Milky Way - of which a few hundred stars are visible to the naked eye - astronomers calculate that there are more than 100,000 million stars. So that's about 60 stars for every person, adult or child on Earth, and each star is thousands of times bigger than our Earth. This vast world is only in our own Milky Way, but there are countless other Milky Ways scattered throughout space. How awesome in such a perspective is this verse. Our Lord is great and very mighty, and his wisdom has no limit." (Psalm 147:4-5) And only a tiny part of the Milky Way is our solar system, the solar system of which our Earth is one of the smallest members! And now what a tiny worm of this Earth is man, whom the Word says is known to the mighty God who creates and sustains the universe, the good Shepherd, to whom be all authority in heaven and earth: he calls him by name! Even that he calls the stars by their names, as the psalm below says, is somehow conceivable, they are, after all, giant pieces of the universe - but that he knows man, for example, a widow quietly passing by in a city of millions, a smudged child crying in a tiny village, he calls him by his name: that he not only notices him, but also cares for him personally, can only be acknowledged with great shock and humiliation. I can understand if an astronomer who peers through the light years with his telescope is an unbeliever, but I can understand even more if an astronomer, and an astronomer at that, falls to his knees before the mighty God! The Lord Who "ordains the number of the stars, and calls them all by name", this Lord "calls His sheep by name", because He knows His own! He says so - the Good Shepherd, and I believe Him, and I am very happy, confident and at peace with that belief!
3) You see, this dear good Shepherd not only knows His own, but loves them. And his love is such as only such a great God can love! He Himself expresses it briefly: 'The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep' (Jn10.11b) In this short passage that I have read, there are five consecutive references to laying down his life for the sheep. The good Shepherd loves you that much! But why? What does he want with us? Why does he need us? For he knows, that is, he knows what a worthless, useless, ungrateful, vile creature man is! Well, then: it is not our excellence, our goodness, our beauty, that has captivated Him, that He wants to make us His own, but the other way round: our poverty, our misery, our imperfection, our helplessness - our sin! That is why He wants to be our Shepherd! Our sins have inspired Him to be a "good Shepherd"! He is a Shepherd who goes after the lost hundredth! He leaves the ninety-nine and will not rest until He finds the lost one!
If there are any of the hundreds here now who feel good and satisfied with themselves; or if there are any here now who are very dissatisfied with themselves, who feel very miserable and impossible, if there are any here who know that their whole life so far has been a wasted, ruined life: let them know that the good Shepherd has been waiting for them, for Him, even to this day. He has been looking for him until now to tell him: "You are mine, one of those for whom I gave my life! This broken, mocked, blood-scarred Shepherd, who passed out of the world with a cry of the most painful desolation: he dies not in vain, not of necessity, not because he must, because he cannot help it, but because he wishes to die in filial obedience! Voluntarily! He dies as a man of duty! He undertook the Father's commission by hanging there forlornly on the cross! His death is not a cruel fate, but a voluntary sacrifice. He himself says: "The Father loves me because I lay down my life that I might take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. This commandment I have received from my Father." (Jn 10,17-18) But this is precisely the will of the Father, to help all people through this one-time voluntary sacrifice! That is why the shepherd of the lost must descend to the deepest depths! The sacrifice is for the sheep! So it is precisely because the sheep are lost, quite seriously lost, lost to the very depths of death and damnation: that is why the good Shepherd determined to go after his own to the very depths of death, to the very depths of damnation! To seek his own, to deliver and bring them back, he went to death and descended into hell! So the good Shepherd seeks you! Has the Good Shepherd found you yet, who gives his life for the sheep?!
This is an important and urgent question for us, because our Saviour also said, "And when the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit in the throne of his glory. And all the nations shall be gathered together before him, and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats." (Mt 25,31-32) The glorious One who will separate the sheep from the goats is the same One who now tells us, "I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd gives his life for the sheep!"
Amen
Date: 28 January 1951.
Lesson
Jn 10,1-21