John 10:11-18, 27-30
Misericordias Domini
May 5, 2025
Aaron A. Koch
Preached at the Gottesdienst Conference
Redeemer Lutheran Church
Fort Wayne, Indiana
In the name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit
The Lord Jesus says in the Gospel, “I know My sheep.” Does that bring you comfort or discomfort, “I know My sheep”? If you know yourself–if you’re honest about how easily greed or jealousy can well up within you, how often you have turned to your own way and to the same foolish sins, how quickly you can give in to fear or despair or grumbling–then Jesus’ words may not at first sound particularly comforting. He knows all about you, all the things you’d be horrified for other people to find out, all the cringe-inducing memories. “I know My sheep.”
However, as unsettling as it might be, it is a very good thing that your Shepherd knows you completely. For He is not like a political consultant doing opposition research on you so that He can broadcast your defects, or an intelligence operative who has inside information that he can use as leverage to make you do what he wants. No, He is like the lifelong friend who knows all your foibles and tendencies and triggers, who stands with you even in the ugly times to lift you up from the pit, who calls you out to something better.

The fact that Jesus knows you is precisely what saves you. He’s not just talking here about having the facts on you. It’s much more personal, knowing you in a way that takes you in and embraces you. That’s why Jesus’ words are comforting good news–for what our Lord knows, He can heal. What He grasps and takes hold of, He can subdue and redeem. What He embraces and takes in, He can suffer to death and purify and renew in His own body.
You do not have a Shepherd who knows you only intellectually, at arm’s length, while never actually feeling and enduring and bearing what you go through. And the Lord doesn’t have mere information about your heartache and your stress and your depression and your fears, all the while keeping a safe distance. Rather, in Jesus you have a Shepherd who commits Himself to you entirely in His incarnation–the Shepherd who is the Lamb–who shares in your flesh and blood, who receives your humanity into Himself, who understands and takes in everything you are. In Jesus you have One who can sympathize with your weaknesses, who was tempted in all points just as you are. And though He Himself is without sin, He endured your sin and experienced your suffering and underwent your judgment and your death to deliver you from it all on the cross. It is precisely in knowing you that Jesus is your Good Shepherd. It is in knowing you that He lays down His life. The sins that mortify you moved the Good Shepherd to be mortified for you. “The Good Shepherd gives His life for the sheep.”
Though the Lord truly knows you, He doesn’t draw back or turn away or run from you. Instead He sticks with you as your truest Friend. That is what makes Him the Good Shepherd, the Good Pastor. He doesn’t flee when the wolf comes. Instead when the predators close in–sin and death and the devil–He steps in between you and them. He suffers the ravaging for you, dragging them all down to hell and destroying them, to protect you and save you as His own flock–"My sheep," Jesus says. He lays down His life in order to take it up again, so that you may have life in Him and have it abundantly.
Those who are shepherds in the church of course have a pattern here. Pastors also are given to know their sheep. The hireling knows the job description but doesn’t truly know or care for the sheep. They’re just a means to an end for him; and so he offers no real protection against the wolf. Christ’s undershepherds, though, are called to know both their theology and their people, and to bring both of those things to bear as they minister to the sheep. The faithful shepherd does not run from hardship, much less from the annoyances and the weaknesses of the sheep. Rather, he is given to embrace the flock, and he steps in to guard them from wolfish false teaching. He leads them with the living voice and the living words of the Chief Shepherd.
For the Lord says, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” By the grace of God, the sheep recognize Jesus; they perk up and listen to Him and begin to follow in His steps, being dead to sins and living unto righteousness. We are drawn to the sound of Jesus’ voice, aren’t we, His words of life and counsel and wisdom. In the midst of all the other voices out there clamoring for your attention, enticing you to follow their version of spirituality, only the one-of-a-kind voice of the Good Shepherd rings true and beautiful in your ears, kalos. There’s nothing else like it, is there–the absolving pronouncement of Jesus, “I forgive you all your sins,” the preaching of our Lord’s goodness and mercy that pursues you and rescues you and heals you. It is the voice of Him who does not flee when the going gets tough, who is not scared off by what He knows about you or by the predators who have abused you and made you feel polluted. It is the sound of the One who still seeks you out and gathers you to Himself, who restores your soul and leads you in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.
That is how Jesus is known by His own. You know Him by His voice, by His Word. And embracing Him who is the Word, you are brought back into fellowship with the Father. Note what Jesus says here, “As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep.” Do you hear that? Jesus extends His perfect union with the Father to you. He knows and embraces all that you are so that you might know and embrace all that He is and share fully in the fellowship of God’s love. To put it simply, by this working of Christ’s Spirit, you have been drawn into the very life of God Himself, the Blessed Holy Trinity. “I know My sheep, and am known by My own.”
Let these words of Jesus, then, bring you comfort. For in Scripture, the worst, most horrific thing you could hear from the Lord is “I do not know you.” But in fact He does know you, precisely so that He might be merciful to you. The Good Shepherd says to you, “I know you in your baptism, where I marked you with My cross and claimed you as My own. And you know Me here at the altar, where you receive the overflowing richness of My grace in the eating and drinking of My true body and blood. I laid down My life for you, and now I give out My life to you. I have prepared the table before you right in the presence of your enemies–see how they lie conquered beneath My resurrected feet!
“So take heart. I have called you by name. You are mine. I give you eternal life, and you shall never perish. Neither shall anyone snatch you out of My hand.”
In the name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit