John 10:14-15 “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me–just as the Father knows me and I know the Father–and I lay down my life for the sheep.”

Jesus knows his sheep, but not because he read some textbook like The Habits and Handling of Sheep. I assume that my doctor studied anatomy in school. From the moment I first stepped into his examining room, I suppose you could say he knew me like he knew every other patient. He understood the structures and systems that make my body work. But only after he saw me a few times could he say that he knew me, an individual person with individual health conditions. Actually, based on my last visit, he still doesn’t know me very well, if the things from my file he couldn’t remember are any indication.

Jesus knows us like we know our family, only better: “just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.” Though separate persons in their own right, Jesus and his Father are one in a way that defies all human understanding or explanation. If you have seen or known Jesus, then you see and know his Father as well. Jesus is God, and the Father is God, and yet together there is still only one God. That’s more than we can fit inside our little brains. But we can conclude, then, that Jesus knows his Father and his Father knows him unlike any two human beings know each other–whether spouses or siblings or identical twins.

This is also how Jesus knows you and me. He knows the content of our entire lives from one end to the other–even the things still to come. He knows our thoughts and feelings as though they were his very own. He knows our hearts, and he understand the reasons for our inner conflicts and inconsistencies better than we understand them ourselves. He knows every sin, how weak our repentance, how shallow our faith, how easily we fall.

He knows. And still, “I lay down my life for the sheep.” He never regarded saving me, suffering torture and cross for my sins, a waste of his time. It is how he takes care of me. It is how he takes care of all of us. He dies to save us.

This is the Good Shepherd we know. I have been a religious “professional” for over thirty years. I have spent more time intensely studying Jesus than I have spent studying anything else, including my wife or family. There is a vast body of information about him of which I am completely ignorant. I have no clue. Much of what I do know, I don’t understand.

But like the little children I can sing, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” I know he isn’t the cosmic police, radar gun in hand, hiding in a sin-trap, waiting to catch me going over the limit so he can pull me over and write me a ticket. He isn’t heaven’s bill collector, calling me up to harass me because I am late on paying my debt. He isn’t a spiritual trainer, shouting in my ear to push a little harder and work a little longer if I want to see results. He is my Good Shepherd. He is the Good Shepherd. He knows me, yet laid his life down to save me anyway. And that is what makes him so dear.