Christ contrasts Himself as the Good Shepherd with the Hireling. Christ dies to save His sheep that He knows and loves, while the Hireling runs away when the sheep are endangered.
Thus, Jesus both embraces the Old Testament metaphor of God as Shepherd of His people, and widens it to be more breathtaking and more glorious than it first appeared in the Psalms and in Ezekiel.
It enraged the wicked scoffers that Jesus would claim the work of God as Shepherd, indeed, claim to be God incarnate in flesh.
Worse still, Jesus declared He would give His sheep everlasting life, and they would never perish, and that He would die in order to save them.
Jesus made an additional, outrageous claim regarding His duty as the Good Shepherd: He would find and save His other sheep, that weren't of the fold of Israel, and would bring them all into one fold, with one Shepherd!
What, the Good Shepherd is not just for Israel? The Good Shepherd will find and collect and save lost sheep outside of Israel?
This was a shocking revelation to the wicked scoffers as well as to Christ's disciples.
How dare Jesus bring dirty Gentiles into OUR fold! How dare He promise to bring them into ONE fold, without any segregation or acknowledgement that we are specially privileged above those outcast Gentiles!
Israel thought that it DESERVED a Shepherd, because Israel alone was the Lord's people. Gentiles had no such claim, but now Jesus was giving away their exclusive heritage and right.
Old Testament references to God as Shepherd appeared to be limited to the lost sheep of Israel alone, but now the Lord Jesus declared, no, I have Gentile sheep given to Me, and I will save them also!
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John Pittman Hey was born in 1961 in Jackson, Mississippi, to Godly parents who from the beginning raised him in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. With child-like faith he came to Christ on his fourth birthday at his mother's knee. He received his education at church...
