For ye were as sheep going astray, but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls. 1 Peter 2:25
When the English poet William Ernest Henley was in hospital battling tuberculosis in 1875, he wrote a famous poem named Invictus, a word that means unconquerable. The poem has four stanzas, and the fourth stanza reads like this:’It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.’ Nobody can question the fact that Henley suffered and endured much in his life, including the death of his only daughter when she was five years old. But he could not be more wrong about being the master of his fate and captain of his soul. Was Henley unconquerable? Of course not! Death defeated him when he was 54, and his ashes lie in the same grave as his daughter. Henley made it clear to all who knew him that he did not believe in God, so it is unlikely that he will avoid the second death either. If he was the master of his fate, he directed his fate into total loss; if he was the captain of his soul, he directed it into eternal shipwreck. How different the claim of every Christian, poet or otherwise, who acknowledges Jesus Christ as the Shepherd and Bishop of his soul!
This would be a good point to quote Psalm 23: ‘The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want’. The entire Psalm touches our hearts as David speaks of the wonderful reality of being a member of the flock of the Good Shepherd. We appreciate, just as David did, the value of the word ‘my’, the reality that the relationship between the Shepherd and the sheep is personal. Oops! Didn’t Rome’s former big cheese Francis declare that it’s impossible for anyone to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? I guess the poor old pope never read Psalm 23. But every true believer appreciates that personal relationship, and all that it means for us to be under the guidance, control, and provision of the Shepherd of our souls.
The Greek word that is translated ‘bishop’ in our text and in other places in the epistles is episkopos. At the time of Peter’s writing of this epistle, this word carried the meaning of a guardian, including the guardian of treaties that were made by a state. What better guardian could we have than the Lord Jesus? No foe could ever defeat Him nor any enemy ever outmanoeuvre Him. No peril exists for us that He is incapable of handling. Now, that is comforting! So is the reality that the treaty established between God and men rests secure in His hands. The One Who established peace through the blood of His cross is the One Who maintains that peace, as its eternal Guardian.
These are precious titles for our Lord: the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls! – Jim MacIntosh