Love Born Of Love

He renews my strength. He guides me along right paths, bringing honor to his name.

Psalm 23:3

As the Good Shepherd, Jesus is ever aware of the weaknesses and needs of his flock. Without the shepherd, sheep would be at a loss to protect themselves or to find pasture or to stay on safe paths. When a flock of sheep comes safely into the sheep pen at day’s end, it is a tribute to the shepherding.

God has woven this beautiful promise, framed in the metaphor of sheep and shepherd, throughout his Word. It speaks volumes about the tenderness of his love for us, and the devotion that his love engenders in his sheep.

How is a sheep trained to follow its shepherd’s voice? Why does a sheep stay on the path its shepherd leads it on? Because the sheep knows that its shepherd, not the sheep pen or the pastures or the still waters, is his home.

The love that produces love—the shepherd’s love for his sheep that creates an answering love in the sheep—is the glue that holds the vulnerable sheep on the right path.

“This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins” (1 John 4:10).

Here is the miracle of that love born of love. It takes a bunch of sheep and forms them into a flock. All the sheep of a flock are held to the path by their devotion to the same shepherd. Jesus said it this way: “There will be one flock with one shepherd” (John 10:16). His love is so magnetic that it draws diverse sheep and makes them one flock.

To live in the fullness of his promise, we need to be attached to the Shepherd in the bonds of unity “so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12-13, NIV).

Lord, teach me and fill me with your love for your sheep.

Every converted person becomes “in Christ” at the same time Christ enters into the believer. If I am in Christ and you are in Christ, and if He is in us, then we experience a profound unity in Christ.

R. C. Sproul(1939–), American theologian, author, and pastor