iii. I am the Good Shepherd

Preacher: Alan Cameron

Verses: John 10:11

Of all the ‘I am’ sayings of Jesus, ‘I Am the Good Shepherd’ is perhaps the most loved of all.  More often than not we use the word good in an offhand manner – ‘he is a good person’, ‘we had good time’.  I’m reminded of the film ‘As Good As It Gets’ when a far from good cranky script writer played by Jack Nicholson pays a long suffering waitress the ultimate compliment, “You make me want to be a better man”. 

Unlike English, Greek has two words for good.  The first speaks of moral goodness.  But as someone has observed, it is possible to be ‘morally repulsive’.  Some people are so upright and uptight that others are repelled rather than attracted by their ‘goodness’.  The second refers to authenticity – beautiful, winsome, lovely, attractive.  Jesus is the Good Shepherd in both senses of the word, not simply a good shepherd, one of many in a similar class, but the good shepherd unique, one and only.  Compared to Jesus we who are shepherds in a lesser sense, under shepherds if you will, scarcely seem to be that at all.  Who of us could call ourselves a good shepherd, let alone the good shepherd?  Yet intuitively we know Jesus to be both and we love him for it.