The image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd is comforting, but hearing the story of how he laid down his life – what it took to purchase our salvation – should stop us in our tracks. The love he showed between Passover and Easter anchors our hope and allows us to say, “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Jesus had a name for those who followed him, his “little flock.” He called himself their Good Shepherd, and he loved them. “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them,” the parable about his mission began. “Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?” When he finds it, Jesus says, he’s filled with joy. Lamb on his shoulders, he heads home to rejoice with his friends that what was lost is found.
But Jesus’ next statement doesn’t seem to follow: “I tell you that, in the same way, there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”
Did the sheep sin? Did it repent? It didn’t even come back on its own. It becomes obvious pretty quickly that this isn’t really a story about sheep. It’s a story about the character of the Good Shepherd who rejoices when the lost are found and will lay his whole life down to see that accomplished.
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep …. 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… For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again.
– John 10:11, 14-15, 17
The lamb at the table
On the night before Jesus died, he presided over a Passover meal with his disciples, one he’d carefully orchestrated himself. The Gospels don’t tell us if Jesus began in the usual way, explaining the captivity of God’s people in Israel and how they suffered. But when it came time for the unleavened bread, instead of following the script, holding it up, and saying, “This is the bread of our affliction,” Jesus broke it and said, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” Now his affliction would bring our hope.
Four cups of wine would have been served during Passover, each one symbolizing a promise from Exodus 6:6:
Sanctification: “I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.”
Deliverance: “I will rescue you from bondage.”
Redemption: “I will redeem you with an outstretched arm.”
Praise: “I will take you as My people.”
But Jesus says something entirely different about the cup he raises. “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.”
The blood of the lamb on doorposts saved God’s people from death. This is what the Passover recollects and celebrates by feasting on lamb. But on this night, there was no lamb on their table, because the Lamb himself was at the table. And it was his blood that would save his people forever after.
And that salvation was drawing near.
“Why is this night unlike any other night?” the youngest person at the table would traditionally ask each Passover, setting up the presider to tell the story of God rescuing them from bondage in Egypt. But on this night, the answer would be different from any Passover they’d ever celebrated.
The cup of suffering
At the start of Jesus’ ministry, he willingly faced temptation in the desert after 40 days of fasting. Weakened from hunger, he went to battle with the devil and thwarted that enemy with God’s Word. Scripture says the devil then left Jesus, “until an opportune time.”
This night was that time.
“The hand of my betrayer is with mine on the table,” Jesus said in the middle of the meal. John’s Gospel tells us Satan entered Judas then (13:27, Psalm 41:9).
This night, the Passover meal was never finished. They ate no lamb. The cup of praise was never drunk. Confused, arguing over who was greatest, and eventually exhausted, Jesus’ disciples followed him to a grove at the foot of the Mount of Olives to pray. It was a place they knew well, where they’d prayed before. But, as he began to pray, something alarming happened.
“My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” Jesus tells Peter, James, and John. “Stay here and keep watch with me.”
What’s happening? Their king is staggering. He walks a few steps from his closest friends and falls to the ground, face in the dirt (Matthew 26:39). “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
What cup? What would make him stagger and fall, make those with him believe they saw him sweating drops of blood? Jeremiah prophesied about this cup of God’s wrath on his enemies that would make them “stagger and go mad.” Ezekiel, too, said it was full of “drunkenness and sorrow, the cup of ruin and desolation.” The cup was filled with the wrath of God on sin.
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
– 2 Corinthians 5:21
Jesus knew about the terrible consequences of sin, but he’d never sinned. He knew he would suffer and die to buy his people out of sin’s possession by taking that sin on himself. But he had never experienced God’s wrath.
Bible scholar William L. Lane, in his commentary on Mark, describes the reason for this sudden change in Jesus’ demeanor:
The dreadful sorrow and anxiety out of which the prayer for the passing of the cup springs is not an expression of fear before some dark destiny. It is not a shrinking from the prospect of physical suffering. It is, rather, the horror of one who lived wholly with the Father and came to be with the Father before his betrayal, but found hell, rather than heaven, opened before him …
The Father’s comfort was gone.
Why now? Why does Jesus begin to experience God’s wrath, our punishment, at this seemingly unexpected time? Couldn’t it have waited until the cross? There’s a simple answer: No. Once he was nailed to the cross, he couldn’t have changed his mind. It would’ve been too late. Now he could. He could have refused the cup that was bringing him terror and forfeited our salvation.
But he didn’t.
Jesus offered his life willingly; no one was taking it from him. And, had he only begun to experience it on the cross, it might not be his will keeping him there. This is the most generous act in the history of the world. Jesus chose to die for us, and, in this moment, he had to choose it again.
“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Though he’d say it later, from the cross, it was starting now. Three times he asks God to take this cup away.
Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.
– Luke 22:42
Think of Isaac looking for a lamb as Abraham lays him on the altar (Genesis 22). Scripture tells us God intervened and provided that substitute for Abraham’s beloved son. But now there was no substitute for Jesus, because the Beloved Son of God would be our substitute.
Now our Good Shepherd would become the lamb.
Taking on the sin of the world is a horror none of us can fathom. “If just the taste and glimpse of these sufferings in the garden were enough to throw the eternal Son of God into shock and nearly kill him in the anticipation of them, what was the actual full experience of the sufferings on the cross really like?” asks author and pastor Tim Keller.*
Soon we would know, because Satan had entered his betrayer, Judas had just arrived.
The Shepherd in darkness
Judas Iscariot didn’t come with Jesus and the disciples to prayer. Instead, he’d wound up the hill in the dark, among a cohort of Roman soldiers and leaders from the temple with lanterns, torches, and weapons in hand. When they reached the garden, they paused. Maybe this was not the kind of criminal they expected to find?
Jesus spoke.
“Who are you seeking?” he asked.
“Jesus of Nazareth,” they answered.
“I am he,” Jesus said.
The soldiers drew back (strange words from this “criminal” – was this a trap?), and the leaders from the temple fell to the ground. Was it the power of God’s name Jesus had just spoken?
“Every day I was with you in the temple courts,” he said, “and you did not lay a hand on me. But this is your hour – when darkness reigns.”
Jesus gave himself into their hands. And silently he went away, like a sheep to the slaughter.
And just as Zechariah had prophesied (and Jesus had warned), his little flock scattered and fled.
“I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.”
His friends all dispersed, and after a series of trials that violated both Roman and Jewish law, he was led to his death.
Jesus suffered on the cross and died alone, without the comfort of friend or Father.
The joy set before Him
Why did Jesus endure Gethsemane and the cross? What was he trying to tell his disciples the night he died and all the other times before that when they didn’t understand at all?
Hebrews 12:2 offers an answer: “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising its shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”
But what was the joy? How can we unpack this verse to discover the motivation of our Good Shepherd? We know he loves us, and this is where many Easter sermons stop. It is enough, but it’s incomplete.
Jesus had a favorite verse (really two verses from Leviticus and Deuteronomy), and he called them the greatest commandments. Love God; love people. Everything Jesus did during his ministry and on the days of his suffering and death were motivated by love. John 13:1 tells us he loved his own “to the end.” Scholars say this word “end” doesn’t only represent time. It means “to the utmost” of possibility and time. He would love them always, and his love for them transcended the limits of the possibilities of love. And surely he demonstrated this when he stretched out his arms and breathed his last.
But we can’t forget his desire to return to the Father and his willingness to obey him, even when it required facing hell head-on. “Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.” Jesus longed for this. But better than saving his own and returning to God was the grand purpose of all of this, the purpose God had orchestrated from the beginning: “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.”
Because of Christ’s sufferings, we are reconciled to God!
“It is finished” on the cross, though weak in strength, announced a triumph. The satisfaction for God’s wrath on our sin was complete. The price of our redemption paid. The broken relationship between God and man healed. And true life made possible for all who would come, even for the ones who wander off and require the Good Shepherd’s rescue.
The joy set before Jesus was the fulfillment of Jesus’ deep desire “that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:21).
This is the great reconciliation, the restoration of communion between God and humanity, and humans with each other, through the Good Shepherd’s sacrifice. In laying down his life, Jesus didn’t simply pay a debt. He created a new reality in which full life in the presence of the Father is possible.
The suffering was the cost of joy. The Good Shepherd endured separation from the Father, so that we might never be separated from him again. The one who leaves the 99 to find the one also calls himself the door of the sheep. And he opens it to all who will come.
Praise God and the Lamb for this sacrifice that now saves us!
Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
– Hebrews 13:20-21
*Keller attributes the quote to Jonathan Edwards in Edwards’ sermon, Christ’s Agony, but Keller’s words are a paraphrase.
