The Shepherd and Guardian of our Souls

For you were all like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls ( I Peter 2:25).

We cannot see ourselves as we are; we cannot see what we will be in the future.  If we could truly see who we are at this moment, we would undoubtedly lose hope that we could be any different.  If we could see what God has planned for us in the future, we would despair of "making it come true," for what God has in mind for us is nothing we can achieve by our own efforts.

God does not ask us to improve ourselves; he is not interested in horses that can jump better or further, as C.S. Lewis points out in Mere Christianity.  He is interested in changing us into an altogether new kind of creature, one that we cannot now imagine.

Most of who we now are has been handed down to us from others; we are conscious of and in control of only a small part of our personalities.  We are either too timid or too forward, too sensitive or too insensitive, and so on.  Even if we are capable at this moment of recognizing our own flaws, it sometimes takes years of therapy and "working at it" to change ourselves.

Fortunately, God's plan is much better.  He only asks us to recognize that we are essentially flawed, that we fail to get it right most of the time.  As Paul says in Romans 7, "the very thing I determine in my mind to do is the very thing I fail to do, and the very thing I determine not to do is what I end up doing after all." 

Recognizing that we are sinners, that we are flawed at the core, is at first a cause for grief:  unhappy man that I am, who will redeem me from this body of death? (Rom. 7:24).  But for those who know Jesus Christ, the grief turns immediately to joy.  God has provided a way out through the death of Jesus, who has crucified our old man and has given us a new creation, in His image and likeness.  We are no longer like horses that need to be trained, but more like winged creatures who can fly (Lewis' images).

Peter says that Jesus is the "Shepherd and Guardian of our souls."  I love that image, for it frees us from having to gaze at our navals until we reach perfection.  Rather, gazing at Him who shepherds and guards us, we "are transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory" (2 Cor. 3:18).  If we can bring our flawed personalities to Jesus, He can do in us and for us what we cannot even imagine. We need to trust ourselves to His guardianship, like dumb sheep who can neither defend themselves nor find pasture for their souls.