Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
The Father is the husbandman, Jesus is the vine. The Father is the Shepherd, Jesus is the submissive Lamb of God. I think that to miss Jesus "in the days of his flesh" is to miss our way out of the fall.
We were constituted flesh, removed from our Holy Father due to disobedience, so He who loved us took upon Himself blood and flesh and came here to save. We see the obedient, cooperative Lamb of God in great detail in the Psalms, and Psalm 23 is not an exception, but is rather an exemplar.
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Despite the apparent similarities, I thing that this is mixing metaphors — at least a little. The Father is the Shepherd. But the Lamb of God is not a metaphor of one needing a shepherd, but of the one being sacrificed for sin. We too often try to milk every metaphor, type, and picture for all we can say about it, but it is often going way beyond the point that is being made.
God is the husbandman and Jesus is the vine. True. But the actions of the husbandman are not relative to the vine (Jesus) but to the branches (the believers). That is the extent of the writing and use of this metaphor. It does not make the Husbandman (God) into one who prunes the core of the vine (Jesus). That is not there.
Stopping these metaphors at the thing actually said does not cause us to "miss our way out of the fall." Taking them to a place that the words do not take them creates what? A sense of awe for something that isn't there? I think that Paul acually said in one place (1 Cor 4, I think) that some go beyond what is written. This was not a compliment. Making more out of a metaphor is not necessarily a good thing, even if you think you are encouraged by it. There might be a question as to what it is you are being encouraged toward.
As for Psalm 23, I think that you are trying too hard to make all the things in the revelation be about Christ and about God. But it is also about the relationship and interaction of God with his people. This is a prime example. We learn about God as the good shepherd through the eyes of the man who is shepherded. That man is not Jesus. He is not the Son. He is a man — David. I think that missing this is to miss the meaning of this Psalm. To make it into something else is to create a novel teaching that is going too far (where no man has gone before). And most of the time, going where no one has gone before is not a positive thing.