I am the good shepherd.
A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
Jesus manifested his perfect goodness in his loving compassion for his sheep. In doing so he differentiated himself from hirelings, who were not shepherds, and whose sheep were not their own. They were always divided between their duties toward the sheep and their own needs. Since their own needs were the reason why they worked in the first place, since they worked for pay, there was an automatic limit in their concern for the sheep. Concern for themselves would always win out when the two came into conflict. Only Jesus stood in need of nothing and was therefore able to give everything. He was not in competition with reality but came precisely as the source of life in order to bestow his life on his creatures.
A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
It sounds a little hard for us to imagine that a shepherd would care so much about such creatures as to lay down his own life for them. But this, in the case of Jesus, was precisely the nature of the shepherd's heart. As the Father poured his own life out into Jesus so Jesus in poured that life out on the world. He manifested the way in which the Father loved him by loving us in a similarly and magnificently complete fashion.
The Father does not bestow His love on the Son as a reward for the death He suffered in our behalf; but He loves Him, as beholding in the Begotten His own essence, whence proceeded such love for mankind.- Theophylact
Jesus did not lay down his lives for minerals, plants, or animals of creation except perhaps in a secondary sense (see Romans 8:21). Rather, he laid down his life for creatures who were not only known by him but also capable of knowing and loving him. His love for them was meant to awaken their own love for him. In laying down his life for his flock he did not do so merely so that the flock could continue as before having narrowly averted some danger. He did it precisely so that his relationship to the flock as shepherd could be amplified. This relationship of sheep and shepherd was actually the whole point. And it was for this reason that Jesus refused to allow any wolves, even the devil or death itself, to stand in the way. In revealing his love so completely he was drawing the sheep to a deeper understanding of himself, and in doing so, inviting them to be transformed into his own image.
Beloved, we are God's children now;
what we shall be has not yet been revealed.
We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him,
for we shall see him as he is.
No comments:
Post a Comment