The Good Shepherd

Open your Bible and read John 10:11-18

Shepherd language has been sentimentalized into felt boards and pastel posters. Strip that off. Sheep are not noble animals. They are defenseless, they wander, and they cannot protect themselves from anything. That is exactly why the image was chosen, and it is not a compliment.

The contrast he draws is with the hired hand, who runs when the wolf shows up, because the sheep are not his. Anyone who has been let down by someone paid to care knows that difference in their bones.

Then read verses seventeen and eighteen slowly. He says nobody takes his life from him. He lays it down of his own accord.

Which means, if the account is accurate, he was not overtaken by events a few weeks later. He walked in knowing. That changes what the cross even is.