“I am the Good Shepherd,” the Lord Jesus proclaimed in John 10:11. I have often pondered: what is the definition of a “good shepherd”? Since the Lord describes Himself with such a title, how would He define the concept of a good shepherd? What are the key features that identify this Shepherd with this title? It is clearly possible to be a shepherd, but how does one attain to the distinction of being called “good”? Thankfully, the Lord garnishes this appetizing passage regarding His role as the Good Shepherd with His perspective on shepherding God’s flocks. And the first lesson we learn is that the Good Shepherd loves the sheep.
The principle that the Lord loves His sheep is extracted directly from His statement, “The Good Shepherd gives His life for the sheep” (Jn. 10:11a). The Lord uses the adjective “good” for it expresses the idea of a genuine, spontaneous, voluntary, and internally driven benevolence. His first and foremost principle is embodied by the selflessness of the shepherd. He did not lay down His life for the protection of reputation; rather, He completely abandoned self out of love for the sheep. When God the Father described His love, He moved John to pen the universally recognized verse, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son…” (Jn. 3:16). He gave His most prized and adored possession. Divine love equals sacrifice of one’s self; sacrifice of one’s self equals love for the object. Thus, in John 10, we may safely interchange the meaning of “…lays down His life for the sheep” (i.e. self sacrifice) with “…loves the sheep.”
Based on His perfect sacrifice, the Lord lays down His foremost principle on shepherding: the Good Shepherd loves the sheep. While seeming to state the obvious, a danger still remains: elders performing the duties of the shepherd without possessing the heart of the shepherd. The Good Shepherd has known of this propensity all along and simply desires from under-shepherds what He desires from all men: confession and brokenness of an impaired heart that surrenders to His healing balm.
From His lips falls an additional corollary to His main principle of loving the sheep. The Lord immediately distinguishes Himself from the hired hand. The hireling does not have the adjective “good” attached to his rank. Instead, the Lord pointedly draws a contrast: “But a hireling who is not the shepherd…sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them” (Jn. 10:12). The greatest atrocity, according to any shepherd, occurs when the enemy “scatters” the sheep in an effort to isolate the weak for prey. This profoundly bothers the Lord Jesus, who reflects the genuine love of a shepherd for the sheep and directly states that He is nothing like the hired hand. When He sees the wolf coming, the Good Shepherd runs to the danger rather than in the opposite direction.
Such was the case with the prototypical shepherd, David. Early in his career, when a terrorizing enemy of the Israeli army heckled the troops, David raced out to oppose him. As Goliath then roared toward him, our shepherd boy “hurried and ran…to meet the Philistine” (1 Sam. 17:48). This is expressly like our Lord Jesus—when sin and death thundered upon mankind through the terrorizing chants of Satan, Christ then rose up and rushed toward the Enemy for our defense and secured victory over our “Goliath.” Glory be to our Good Shepherd for His triumph is hand-crafted out of the solid oak of His love.
As love motivates our Shepherd to engage the Enemy on our behalf, so must it be for the under-shepherds of today. We can no longer fail to love the sheep. With love as our foundation, we must lay our lives down on the battlefield opposing the “wolves” of our day. Today, the ravenous enemy comes in the form of longstanding bitterness, unending stubbornness, resistance to brokenness, and erroneous appetites for lustful wantonness. How long will these wolves decimate the under-shepherds and the flocks under their care? We must be a generation of elders who surrender to His precepts and thus turn the tide for generations to come.