‘When he hath found it’ – the lost sheep – ‘he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing.’ That is what the cross of Calvary is: it is the shoulders of Christ. Even the Saviour could not forgive anyone unless he came to suffer and die for them. God is holy and just. His holy nature is pledged to punish sin, and therefore, if God the Son desires to forgive and pardon a people for himself, he must come and he must take the punishment of their sin for them. Although the parable picture Christ as doing all this for one single sheep, the truth is that he has need to give his life for every one of his sheep. ‘I will go,’ he said to God the Father, ‘and I will do something which will amount to my picking up that person, that man, that woman, putting him on my own shoulders and bearing him, carrying him safely home.’ How do I get to heaven on the shoulders of Jesus Christ? I cannot earn a place in heaven. I cannot get there by myself. I'm too sinful. I'm guilty of so much, but I go on his shoulders. He carries me safely home. He secures righteousness for me.
Some poets have depicted the shepherd in this parable in quite extravagant and sometimes haunting and wonderful language. There's a whole body of poetry set about this parable, how the shepherd comes from heaven and goes out into the night wastes, bearing every kind of pain and difficulty to struggle to reach the sheep and to rescue it. It depicts the terrible mission of Jesus Christ, the most terrible mission imaginable when he came from heaven to earth to suffer and die. It was just like that, going out to rescue a lost sheep.
When I come up on the shoulders of Jesus Christ, having my sins taken for me on Calvary's cross, I am not only safe and carried and born home to heaven, but I am up there in a high place on his shoulders. He's not only borne me in the sense that he's died for me, he lifts me up in the sense that he gives me new life, a new nature, a new family to belong with to the family of heaven, a new value, a new walk, a new destiny. Heaven picks up the lost sheep, cares for it and lays it upon his shoulders. I'm now saved, converted, elevated, forgiven, a child of God.
He does it entirely at his own cost. How did the sheep get brought home? It was probably exhausted, hungry, perhaps injured, close to death, and the shepherd had to pick it up, put it on his shoulders, and carry it back home. This is the heart of the gospel. Salvation is achieved entirely by the Lord Jesus. Conversion is the cancelling out of all the sins which we have committed. It is also a complete change of heart, and an infusion of spiritual life into the soul. We can't do any of those things for ourselves. I cannot curb my sin, hardly even the most obvious outward forms of it. Christ must take the guilt and punishment of my sin himself. The Lord came down out of heaven and he was nailed to the cross of Calvary for this express purpose: so that God the Father could place on him on his holy soul the guilt of the sin of all those who would be converted and pour out the most terrible punishment. Not because God the Father is full of vengeance, but because this was the only way sin could be washed away.