“I am the good shepherd;
I know My sheep,
and My sheep know Me.
My sheep hear My voice,
I know them, and they follow Me.
And I give them eternal life,
and they shall never perish,
and no one shall snatch them out of My hand.”
/Jn 10:14, 27–28/
The Good Shepherd
Good and evil – two words, two concepts, two experiences that we encounter in our lives every day.
Since the conscious turning away from God, or, as it is otherwise called, the fall into sin, the human being has, within the space of his existence, opened the possibility for uncontrollable evil to operate. Until then, as we read in the story of creation, everything that God created was good.
Good and evil. These two ethical categories have become so intertwined that it often becomes difficult for a person to disentangle them – evil from good and good from evil. It is difficult, and at times even impossible, to find the dividing line, because the human being himself has become a mixture, or rather a confusion, of evil and good. As long as a person lives in the space of the world’s existence, as long as he breathes in and out, he is placed in the midst of the struggle between evil and good.
Unraveling our reflections on the theme of good and evil further, we are confronted with a question – what then is good and what is evil. The Greek sophist philosophers, whose views have influenced the history of the development of legal and also social thought, and whose philosophical influence is still felt today, held that what is evil and what is good is determined by the citizens themselves, living in community, and by the state they have created.«A person often usurps spiritual power in his own strength, forgetting that power and strength belong to God alone. The human being has been given only God’s authority to serve others»
But if we seek the answer in the Christian Holy Scriptures, in what Jesus says in the New Testament about what is good, then the answer reads as follows: “No one is good except God alone.” This makes us think of the good in this way – if God is good, then it means that He is the source of good, and if He is the source of good, then everything that God does is good. And in this way we raise the concept of good from an ethical category to another level, which can be called spiritual. As for evil, it can be said that everything that is not God, and everything that is not in God, is evil.
Against the backdrop of this assertion, Jesus’ words about Himself: “I am the good shepherd,” illuminate for us two important messages. First, about ourselves – that we find ourselves in an environment in which we cannot separate ourselves from evil on our own, and we need someone who guides us throughout life in this environment of existence, saturated with good and evil. Second, what Jesus says illuminates for us an understanding of Him – that He has come into this world to become this someone who will guide us spiritually.
Each word in Jesus’ assertion “I am the good shepherd” has a deeply reaching and overflowing meaning. In literature this expression is called a metaphor. It is a literary instrument that helps to say what is otherwise unsayable. A metaphor is usually used in cases where a phenomenon is to be characterized more deeply and fully, in this case to characterize more deeply and fully Jesus’ spiritual guidance.
Bible scholars point out that Jesus’ words “I am” can be perceived as coded language that reaches back from the New Testament into the Old Testament, all the way to the event when Moses, hearing God’s voice in the burning thornbush on Mount Horeb, asked Him: “What is Your name?” God answered him from the thornbush: “I am that I am.”
By repeating these words “I am,” Jesus identifies Himself with God. With the words “I am the good shepherd” He makes it understood that the historical moment has come when the transfer of God’s authority to Him has taken place. This means that henceforth all human religious needs and all human spiritual longings will be fulfilled in Jesus Christ. And through the metaphor of the good shepherd it is revealed to us what good guidance means for us, human beings, who are social creatures, who live and move about in relationships with others – both those who are led and those who lead others. And in these multilayered labyrinths of relationships, so that we do not go astray, so that we do not fall into the traps of evil, we need spiritual guidance. Jesus offers us His guidance, saying: “I am the good shepherd.”
The prophet Isaiah sketches the special guiding character of the good shepherd, highlighting his sensitivity, care and love, saying: “Like a shepherd He will tend His flock. He will take the lambs in His arms and carry them in His bosom, and will guard the ewes.”«The one who loves will hold the flock in his heart. He will be interested not only in the outcome of the work, but in the needs of each member of the community»
Through the metaphor of the shepherd and shepherding, Jesus is revealed as the good leader, the good guide. In Greek the word καλώς (“kalos”) is much more comprehensive than the Latvian “good.” It contains the meanings of “noble, morally pure, beautiful, good, attractive, one who makes all things new.” The many meanings of the word καλώς point to Jesus as a person and to the character of His guidance. From this we can conclude that Jesus is a perfect spiritual guide. The Bible scholar William Barclay compares a good shepherd to a good doctor. When people talk about a good doctor, Barclay writes, they do not think only of the outcome of their recovery. It is important to the patient that the doctor is compassionate and kind, that he is understanding and knowledgeable and that he can be trusted. All these qualities of a doctor named by Barclay can also be applied to Jesus Christ as the good shepherd. Only, unlike a doctor, Jesus possesses two further attributes that are not inherent in a human being. These are spiritual strength and spiritual power. A person often usurps spiritual power in his own strength, forgetting that power and strength belong to God alone. The human being has been given only God’s authority to serve others, which it is especially important for leaders and guides to remember. The handing over of this authority is archetypally depicted in the Bible in Jesus’ conversation with Peter by the Sea of Tiberias after Jesus’ resurrection, when Jesus says to him: “Feed My sheep!”
But sometimes it happens otherwise. Instead of serving others as a leader authorized by God, a person usurps spiritual power. Such a leader or guide will no longer be able to present the work of Christ through his work and ministry. In the biblical tradition such a leader or shepherd is called a hired shepherd. As opposed to the good shepherd, he is the bad shepherd.
How to tell these two shepherds apart? To know them and tell them apart is important. Very important indeed! As important as living!
There is one special mark by which they can be recognized. The good shepherd is one who gives, who sacrifices himself for others, but the bad shepherd, on the contrary, is one who only takes. And if he does give something to someone, then only for the reason of receiving it back tenfold. Such a shepherd will not sacrifice himself for service, but will leave heaps of victims behind him.
I dare to assert that if a community is led by a hired shepherd, then it is even worse than if there were no shepherd at all. Usually the bad shepherd creates the illusion that he can be relied upon. He has good speech, good manners, he knows how to create an environment, an atmosphere, he is able to persuade, he knows how to say in the right place and at the right time what others most expect from him. Often he is dazzling. He lacks only one thing, and that is the most important of all – he has not given himself as a sacrifice for service, or, in other words, he has not devoted himself to his cause. For such a shepherd, his own benefit and income will be more important than the sheep. Jesus warns that a hired shepherd is indifferent to the sheep. As is said in the Old Testament, in the book of Ezekiel, such shepherds “shear the sheep and live off them, but do not love them.”
Against the backdrop of this conclusion, the question that Jesus puts to Peter in their conversation, before He says: “Feed My sheep!,” seems to become clearer. He asks him: “Do you love Me?”
A leader or guide who loves God will also love people. The disciple John, truly loving Jesus, develops this thought further, saying: “If we love one another, then God dwells in us and His love has become perfect.”
If a shepherd has no love for the sheep, or, to put it otherwise, if a guide entrusted with leading a community has no love for the members of the community, then the souls of the community’s members are endangered, because the human being, by God’s design, has been created for love. This is revealed to us by the already mentioned disciple John in the gospel, saying: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that no one who believes in Him should perish, but have eternal life.”
The one who loves will hold the flock in his heart. He will be interested not only in the outcome of the work, but in the needs of each member of the community, which is metaphorically depicted by the text of Isaiah already mentioned above: “He will take the lambs in His arms and carry them in His bosom, and will guard the ewes.” Such a shepherd, who loves, will know the soul of each one in his flock.
Is this within a human being’s power? However much he might strive to be good, a human being will nevertheless not succeed in being the good shepherd, for one reason – because only God is good. What then is to be done? Whether to resist this assertion, perhaps to try to find some justification that there is, after all, something in the human being that serves to make him the good shepherd.
To everyone who would wish to take upon himself, to some degree, the authority of the good shepherd, Jesus firmly and confidently replies: “I am the good shepherd, I know My sheep.” This makes us think that we still lack a certain ability that Jesus has – to know our fellow human beings as deeply and thoroughly as Jesus knows them.
To know one’s sheep is a very important dimension of guidance. In Greek the word used here is γiνωσκω (“ginosko”), which not only means to know outwardly, but also includes the close relationship between the shepherd and the one shepherded. Jesus possesses the ability to know the heart and thoughts of every person and to be together with everyone who knows Him.
Jesus, as the Son of God, became flesh and lived among us in order to take on human experience. He came in human form in order to live out a human life from birth to death, in its full amplitude, experiencing absolutely everything that a human being is able to experience – joy and sorrow, suffering and humiliation, fame and friendship, and betrayal. Jesus knows people and, as our spiritual guide, is able to feel with us, and is able to be spiritually as close as no human being can be, not even the best friend. He knows His sheep, He has experience in His relationships with them, and the sheep know Him. Jesus says: “My sheep hear My voice.”
A Christian community, which ideally ought to be like the standard for any community, has been formed in just this way – by calling us all together. The Son of God, knowing each of us deeply and individually, is interested in each one personally, loving each one individually and all together, has called us to follow Him as a shepherd who leads his flock, going ahead Himself and showing the way. Therefore we can safely say that the Christian church, which is made up of various Christian communities, is rooted in Christ’s love for us. And by this mark the church ought to be recognized. So it ought to be, on the condition that no hired shepherd has stepped in between the flock and the good shepherd.
It may be that to the modern person this archetype of spiritual guidance, in which the shepherding metaphor is used, will not seem a particularly successful application, because there are, after all, many more understandable, more contemporary theories of guidance. Yet I dare to assert that none of these new theories can claim to be a clearer model of spiritual guidance than that reflected by the metaphor of the good shepherd.
The metaphor of the good shepherd has yet another perspective, which those theories of guidance that are built without reckoning with spiritual reality will never mention. Jesus expresses it in these words:“And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall be able to snatch them out of My hand.”
There are many other theories of guidance that are oriented toward a human being’s temporal living and toward a temporal understanding of what is good and what is evil. Only the theory of the good shepherd’s guidance, in which God is named as the only good one, is able to guide us beyond the bounds of this earthly life. Rudīte Losāne
Image: “The Good Shepherd finding the Lost Sheep”. Author: Jeremy Sams