[I am sick as a dog today. stopped up, cold, runny nose, some stomach pains and nausea earlier. I’ve just been still in the chair surfing the internet for a while. It’s hard to think.]
v.8 Jesus isn’t talking about the prophets, but about false prophets and false teachers. The wild thing is, the converse of His statement is “if you listened to them, you are not my sheep”
Jesus contrasts Himself to the previous anti-shepherds by saying that He came for the sheep to have life abundantly. It seems like it would be easy to see from the previous chapter that the Pharisees are not on the side of having abundant life, but on the side of having abundant requirements, regulations, and judgments. I talked to a guy recently that is struggling to do the things “Jesus expects” and to do the things his pastor tells him to do. He is weighed down with burdens like the Pharisees would assign. ‘Do this activity this way. Don’t do this. This is wrong. This is good.’
Jesus was alive, and lived a lot talking about what the Kingdom of God was and what the Father is like. If I teach my son how to ride a bike by telling him all of the places he shouldn’t ride his bike and all of the ways he should not sit on his bike and all of the improper ways of holding the handle bars, he will never learn how to ride a bike. He will certainly be an expert on how to not ride a bike incorrectly! But he won’t be able to ride it 4 feet! When I taught my oldest son how to ride a bike, I assured him of this: “You will fall and it will hurt, but you can’t give up. I will take care of you and your booboos will get better, and you will become a better bike rider.” It was all true, and now he rides like the wind (and sometimes I wish I could get a little fear back into him!)
That’s how I think of Jesus giving us abundant life. He doesn’t train the sheep in how to avoid the wolf, or carry on telling the sheep how evil and hungry the wolf is. He just takes care of them and has them follow Him. How much of life is taken care of in that one little lesson?!
Follow the voice of the shepherd.
Here is to living life free in the Son, and trusting that the sheep of Christ will hear is voice and not be distracted by the sound of the [zealboy phrase edited out]
Oooohh that’s so good. I like that Jesus so much better than the one in my head who uses obligation and rules like vines to keep my faith small and useless. I can’t, however, seem to exist in this freedom for more than a few days before I go searching out my shackles again, however…
And your paranthetical edit made me laugh.
You know, this is more important than the church has yet realized. He doesn’t tell us how to live. He Is Life. And through the Spirit we are conformed into His image. Alive in Him is what we Are, not what we Do.
And yet the public image of the church today is zealots blasting everyone whose behavior we disapprove of, often with good Biblical back-up. But, if its not about rules for us, where did we get the idea we can condemn “them” to hell for their acts? We are setting ourselves up for a backlash which could be very severe by allowing the voice of Christianity to be condemnation of others instead of introduction to the Shepard who IS. Great post, I love it. peace