“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.”
John 10:14-15
Who knows you?
In John’s gospel Jesus says that intimate, personal, loving knowing is at the very heart of his identity as shepherd: Jesus’ knowing of his own and their knowing of him. And this mutual knowing of sheep and shepherd, shepherd and sheep, is, says Jesus, “just as,” “just like” the Father and Son’s knowing of one another from all eternity.
The mutual knowing of Father, Son and Spirit is, to put it simply, the deepest truth of all. It is the foundational and all-encompassing intimacy. It is the affection of which all life is simply a joyful overflow.
If that’s true it should come as no surprise that Jesus does being a shepherd the same way he does being a son. Any concept we might have of Jesus waving his shepherd’s crook at a vast sea of basically identical sheep is plain wrong. Jesus knows his sheep and we, his sheep, know him. We know his heart, his especial and pointed affection for us. In place of a sea of sheep think “he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young” (Isaiah 40:11). Think: “The Lord is my shepherd” (Psalm 23:1).
Who knows you? Your shepherd knows you and you, him.
