The Good Shepherd

Jim ButlerJohn 10:1–21

John 10:1–21 presents Christ under two complementary images — the door and the Good Shepherd — images that together exclude every other ground of salvation and every other claimant to spiritual authority. The Pharisees of John 9 stand as the type of all false shepherds who steal, kill, and destroy; Christ alone enters through the proper door, knows his sheep by name, and lays down his life as a willing substitute in their place. The doctrine of substitutionary atonement is the hinge of the passage: the sheep deserve to die, and the Shepherd dies in their stead, not as a moral example or martyr but as the divinely appointed substitute. The sermon calls the unconverted to come through this door in faith and the converted to rejoice in the intimate, abundant life that union with the Good Shepherd secures.