The Lord next presents Himself in the beautiful character of the good Shepherd; a most affecting and expressive proof of His lowly love, when we think who He is, and what we are.
“I am the good Shepherd. The good Shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep. [But] 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; and the hireling fleeth because he is a hireling, and no care hath he for the sheep.” (Vers. 11-13.)
This indeed is love; not that we loved Him, but that He loved us, and died in propitiation for our sins. The giving up of life, in any case, for others would have been the fullest manifestation of love: how much more in His to whom the sheep belonged, who had been from of old promised to stand and feed in the strength of Jehovah, in the majesty of the name of Jehovah his God Greatness to the ends of the earth is a little thing compared with the good Shepherd's laying down His life for the sheep. It is the same Messiah; but how incalculably greater the testimony to His love in thus dying, than in reigning ever so gloriously, however suitable and due to Himself as well as to God's glory, and blessed for man when the kingdom comes!
Another phase of human pretension in divine things next appears, not thieves and robbers, as before, but the “hireling,” the man who meddles with the sheep, without higher motive than his own pelf or greed. “The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,” as sung one of our own poets, and not untruly; but here the Lord first describes not their trials, but his character who claims what is not his own but Christ's, and so deserts them openly in the hour of danger. He “beholdeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth.” It is the adversary, by whatever means or instruments he may work. Then follows the peril they incur, and the actual injury done. “And the wolf snatched them, and scattereth, because he is a hireling, and no care hath he for the sheep.” As divine love wrought in God's purpose and will, so in Christ's death; nor is there anything good or acceptable where love is not the motive. It is the true and only right spring of service; even as the Lord intimated to the servant, now fully restored and reinstated, after his denial of Himself, “Feed my lambs—my sheep.” Not that He does not propose rewards the most glorious to encourage the servant who is already in the path of Christ, and apt to be cast down by its difficulties; but love alone is recognized as that which constrains him to serve. Christ was the perfection of self-sacrificing love; and it is Satan who, as the wolf, seizes and scatters what is so precious to Him, through the selfishness of such as abandon the sheep in their greatest peril, the mercenary having no care for the sheep. The character of man and Satan is as plain as that of Christ, which last comes out in other traits in the next verses. From Him self was wholly absent, love only was there.
(Footnote that has no corresponding marker: This clause ὁ δὲ μισθωτὸς φεύγει is not given in à(A is somewhat uncertain) B D L some cursives, ancient versions, &c., but a dozen uncials of inferior age and weight, with most cursives and some of the old versions insert as in Text. Rec.)
“I am the good Shepherd, and know mine, and mine know me, even as the Father knoweth me, and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep.” (Vers. 14, 15.)
Here it is in the mutual knowledge of the Shepherd and the sheep that His goodness is shown, and this, wondrous to say, after the pattern of the Father's knowledge of the Son, and the Son's of the Father. It is a knowledge after a divine sort, and as true in His absence as in His presence. It was not such sheltering care as the Messiah might and will extend to His people, however tender; for He too shall feed His flock like a shepherd, He shall gather the lambs with His arms, and carry them in His bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young. But there had never been such transparent intimacy as between Him while on earth and His Father; and after this pattern, and none other, was it to be between Him on high and the sheep here below. This mutuality of knowledge disappears almost entirely in the Authorized Version through the unhappy full stop between verses 14, 15, and the consequent mistranslation of the earlier clause of verse 15.
The Lord returns to His laying down His life for the sheep. Nor can we wonder; for as He could give no greater proof of love, so there is nothing which is so strengthening, as well as humbling, to our souls, nothing that so glorifies God, and no other turning-point for the blessing of the universe. At this point, however, it is the good Shepherd's love for the sheep.
Here the Lord can speak distinctly for the first time of other objects of His love. He might come minister of the circumcision for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But His love could not be so circumscribed, when His death opens the floodgates. The mention of His death leads Him to speak of what was quite outside Israel. “And other sheep I have which were not of this fold” —not of the Jewish people within their enclosure of law and ordinance...,” them also I must lead, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one flock, one Shepherd.” (Ver. 16.)
It is not, as in the English Bible and others, following the Vulgate, “one fold,” but “one flock.” God owns no such thing now as a fold. It is exclusively Jewish; and the idea came in among Christians through the Judaizing of the church, while the truth of the church, when seen, makes such a thought or word, as applied to itself, intolerable. The truth is, as we have heard, that the Lord was to put forth all His own, He going before them, and the sheep following. So it was with the Jewish fold. But other sheep He had which were not of it. “Them also I must lead; and they shall hear my voice.” It was to be from among the Gentiles; and the believers there hear His voice, believe the gospel. But they form no new enclosure, fenced in by law, like the fold of Israel. The liberty of Christ is of the essence of Christianity, not only life and pardon, but freedom as well as food. For if Christ be all, what lack can there be? The Jewish sheep have been led out, the Gentile sheep are gathered, and both compose one flock, as truly as there is one Shepherd.
One cause that has done as much as anything to dull the saints to the perception of the truth here is the fact of so many denominational enclosures in which they find themselves. It seems hard to say that such a state of things, built up by Reformers and others of peculiar energy since the Reformation, is unauthorized. But what saith the scripture, our only standard? “One flock, one Shepherd.” How painful to find one so prejudiced as to say, “Many folds, but one flock “! But this is to pervert the word of God, which admits of no fold now, rather than to expound it.
Another element which has wrought powerfully in favor of “one fold” is the mischievous confusion of the church with Israel, Zion, &c., which runs through not only common theology but even the headings of the Authorized Version, and constantly therefore is before all eyes. Hence, if we are now so identified with the ancient people of God, that we are warranted to interpret all that is said of them in the Old Testament as our present portion, one cannot be surprised that this should tend to a similar result in the New.
But Christ's death has an aspect towards His Father of the deepest delight and complacency, besides being the basis of redemption and of Christianity. “On this account the Father loveth me, because I lay down my life that I may take it again. No one taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it again: this commandment I received from my Father.” (Vers. 17, 18.) The Lord does not add here “for the sheep,” nor should we limit His death to ourselves. He lets us see the value His own laying down His life had in itself. It was a fresh motive for the Father's love; and no wonder, if it were only as the unfathomable depth to which His own devotedness could go down. But in deed none but the Father knows what He found in it of love, confidence in Him, self-abandonment, and moral excellence in every way, crowned by the personal dignity of Him who, standing in ineffably near relationship to the Father himself, was thus pleased to die. Hence it could not but be that the Son would take His life again, not now in connection with the earth and man living on it, but risen from the dead, and so the power and pattern of Christianity.
In this profound humiliation, to which the Lord submitted in grace, there is the utmost care to guard against the least suspicion that could lower His glory as the Son and God. It is not, as in Matthew (where He is viewed as the rejected Messiah, but Son of man, not merely the destined head of all nations and tribes and tongues, but in command of the holy angels, His angels): He had only to call on His Father, who would furnish Him more than twelve legions of angels. And what would have availed all Rome's legions against those heavenly beings, mighty in strength, that do His word? But how then, He blessedly adds, could the scriptures, be fulfilled that thus it must be? Divine person though He was, He had come to die; the Life Eternal which was with the Father before there was either man or earth, He had deigned to become man, that He might thus lay down His life and take it again. But here He speaks not more in lowly love than as consciously God: “No one taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it again: this commandment I received from my Father.” On the one hand there is the calm assertion of the right as well as power to lay down His life and to take it again; and as none but the Creator could do the latter, so no creature is entitled to do the former. None but God has power and title to do both, and the Word, without of course ceasing to be divine (which indeed could not be), became flesh that He might thus die and rise. On the other hand, even in this, which might have been justly deemed the most strictly personal of all acts, He abides the obedient man, and would do only the will of His Father. He had come to do the will of God. This is perfection, and found in Jesus alone. Well may we adore Him with the Father who gave Him! He is worthy.