John 10:11 Who is the Good Shepherd?

Most Christians are familiar with the 23^rd Psalm.  Many can quote it by heart.

The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.

‘Want’, of course, here is old English and means ‘to lack or be without’. 

Some might paraphrase this as, Because the Lord is my Shepherd, I have everything I need.

Astute Bible students notice that the word Lord here is capitalized.  Lord

That means that it refers to the personal name of God, sometimes given as Jehovah or Yahweh.  Its pronunciation has always been a bit of mystery.  Maybe because Jewish people were afraid of taking it in vain, as in the Ten Commandments, they made a point of never saying it.  I don’t know.

So why is all this important?

Because in the New Testament, Jesus says a few things about being a shepherd Himself.

John 10:11.  “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.

In the context, Jesus is talking about the religious leaders of His time, and He is contrasting how He takes care of the sheep, meaning, God’s people, compared to the religious leaders.

Yet, in other places in the book of John, Jesus makes a lot of amazing, absolute claims that would suggest that He had more in mind here.

In John 6:35, He is the Bread of Life.  In John 8:12, He is the Light of the world.  In John 11:25, He is the Resurrection and the Life.  In John 14:6, He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  In John 15:1,5, He is the Vine, the true Vine.  And here He is the Good Shepherd.

In each case, the word I is emphasized.  I, me, I am the Good Shepherd.  In Greek, the pronoun I is one word with the verb.  When you add it separately, you are emphasizing it.  It would be like saying, if you want a good shepherd, you have to come to Me.  The word Good is also emphasized.  It reads literally, I, me, I am the Shepherd, the good One.

So, yes, on the one hand, He is talking about the religious leaders there, but when you look at all the other I AM statements, it strongly suggests that Jesus intended to us to think of the 23^rd Psalm here as well.  If Jesus is the Shepherd, the good One, then what does that say about the Lord in Psalm 23?  Or, more, what does this say about Jesus?

We tend to think of Jesus only as the One who died for our sins and rose again.  But if He is Bread, Light, the Way, the Truth, the Life, the Resurrection, the Vine, and the Shepherd, the good one, then we need to think again and more about all that Jesus is.  Dying and rising again are past events.  We need to think more of how we relate to Him now.