John 10:3-5 To him the porter opens; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calls his own sheep by name, and leads them out.… I. THE PERSONAL LOVE OF CHRIST. The parable is designed to correct the belief that while God has a real care of the Church He can have no personal recognition of its individual members. There could not be a greater mistake. 1. For the relation God holds to objects of knowledge is different in all respects from that which is held by us. Our general terms, man, tree, etc., are names of single specimens extended to species, and comes to stand for millions of men, etc., we never can know. But God does not generalize in this manner. His knowledge of wholes is real and complete as being a distinct knowledge of particulars. Whatever particulars exist were known by Him as being thought before they became fact. Holding in His thought the eternal archetypes of species, He also thought each individual in its particular type as dominated by the common archetype. This on God's part is inevitable; for the sun can no more shine on the world without touching every atom than God can know or love whole bodies of saints without knowing or loving individuals. Being a perfect mind and not a mere spark of intelligence like us, He cannot fall into our imperfections when we strain ourselves to set up generals to piece out and hide our ignorance. 2. One of the great uses of the Incarnation was to humanize God that we might believe in His personal love. In Christ was visible one of us and was attentive to every personal want of the world. When a lone woman came up in a crowd to steal as it were some healing power He would not let her off in that impersonal, unrecognizing way. He even hunts up the youth He has healed of his blindness and opens up to him the secrets of His Messiahship. He tasted death for every man. He calls us friends because He is on the private footing of personal confidence, and promises a friendship so personal that it shall be a cipher of mutual understanding, giving us a white stone and in the stone a new name which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it. 3. Every particular work of this Gospel shows how personal it is. What is communion that is not fellowship with particular souls? We speak of the Holy Spirit as falling on communities, but He reaches the general body only through individuals, save that there is an effect of mutual excitement, which is secondary, and comes from their sense of what is revealed in each other and under the power of the Spirit in each. So with everything included in salvation, in the renewing, fashioning, guidance, discipline, and final crowning in glory; so that a Christian is finally saved not as someone led forth in the flock, but as the Master's dear Simon, James, Martha, whose name is so recorded in the Lamb's Book of Life. 4. It is in this view that the Church in baptizing her children takes with a beautiful propriety the "Christian name," in which Christ recognizes the child's discipleship. II. THE PERSONAL LEAD OF CHRIST. 1. Here is the glory of Christ as a Saviour that He goes always before, never behind, His flock. He begins with infancy that He may show a grace for childhood. He is made under the Law and fulfils all righteousness, that He may sanctify the law to us and make it honourable. He goes before us in temptations that we may bear them after Him. He taught us forgiveness by forgiving His enemies. He bore His cross and commands us to bear it after Him. And then He went before us in the bursting of the grave, and ascended as our Forerunner whom we are to follow even there. 2. This spirit entered into those whom He gave to lead the flock. They followed Him in the regeneration and took it upon them as their Master's law to require nothing in which they were not forward themselves. "Follow me as I follow Christ." We have seen it differently — teachers that lay heavy burdens on men's shoulders, feeding themselves out of charities extorted from the poor; philanthropists publishing great swelling words of equality and tapering off in virtues they neither practise nor like. All such drive a flock.Applications: 1. Men make a great mistake when they regard Christian life as a legal and constrained service. This image represents the freedom of the disciple. He is led by a personal influence and answers to the name by which he is called. No Christian is to go to his duty because he must, but only because his heart is in it, for his heart is in his Master's love, and he follows Him gladly. 2. We discover what to think of that class who aspire to be specially faithful but are principally strenuous in putting forward and laying, burdens on others, and slide over their own deficiency in the very things they insist on, by extolling the modesty which does not profess to be an example to others. How much more faithful and modest should we be if we judged only as we practiced, and fortified our words by our example! 3. Consider what is true of any disciple who is straying from Christ that his Shepherd still cares for him, and calls him personally. (H. Bushnell, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. |
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