The Compelling love of the Good Shepherd

In John 10, we learn about Jesus as the Good Shepherd. NT Wright brings up how the word “Good” doesn’t do justice to the compelling power of Jesus’ love. He says,

All this should make it clear why Jesus refers to himself as the ‘good’ shepherd (verses 11 and 14). But our word ‘good’ doesn’t quite catch the full meaning of the word John has written here. For us, ‘good’ can sound a bit cold or hard, merely moralistic. The word John uses can also mean ‘beautiful’. This doesn’t refer to what Jesus looked like. It’s about the sheer attractiveness of what, as the shepherd, he was doing. When he calls, people want to come. When they realize he has died for them, they want to even more. The point of calling Jesus ‘the good shepherd’ is to emphasize the strange, compelling power of his love.

[Tom Wright, John for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1-10, 153-54 (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004).]