The Good Shepherd

The Good Shepherd
By Jenny Komenda

“I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own.”
John 10:14

“What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.”
Luke 15:3-5

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Criticized for associating with sinners, the Savior told three parables about the joy of recovering lost things to teach about heavenly accounting and the worth of souls. In the Parable of the Lost Sheep, the Shepherd sought one single lost lamb, not giving up the search “until he finds it.” This is because that Good Shepherd is “not willing that any should perish” (2 Peter 3:9).

J. Reuben Clark taught that Jesus Christ watches over us “with the tenderness of the Infinite. His love and his care are eternal.” And because Christ’s mission is rooted in His infinite love for each of us, nothing we can do will ever take us beyond His reach. Of the Parable of the Lost Sheep, the great 19th century English preacher Charles Spurgeon explained, “If you look into that shepherd’s face, there is no trace of anger there. He does not say, ‘Oh, that I should be worried with this silly sheep thus going astray!’ No thought is there but that of anxious love. It is all love, and nothing else but love, before he finds and until he finds it.”

Once the Good Shepherd has found His lost lamb, it is not with anger or anxiety or weariness or exasperation that He retrieves it. Instead, “he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing.” So it is with Jesus Christ, the Shepherd of our souls, though we ever may be ‘prone to wander’. Isaiah prophesied, “Like a shepherd He will tend to His flock. He will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them close to His heart, and gently lead the nursing ewes” (Isaiah 40:11). The Good Shepherd shows extra care for the most vulnerable members of His flock.

He recognizes when we are lost or sick or tired and struggling to keep up. In those moments, as Dale G. Renlund taught, “Like the true shepherd He is, He seeks us and finds us to offer relief and hope.” With a ‘gracious lift’, He picks us up and carries the weight of our sins, our sorrows, our troubles. He fully bears our whole self up. As Rev. Spurgeon put it, “He takes us just as we are, and instead of driving us back by his law, he carries us home by his love. Instead of urging us to go home, he becomes the great burden-bearer of his redeemed, and bears them on his shoulders.”