Jesus refers to himself as the ‘good’ shepherd. But our word ‘good’ doesn’t really catch the full meaning of the word John has written here… 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 emphasise the strange, compelling power of his love.
Tom Wright, John for Everyone - Part 1, p154.
