In addition to being the door and the pasture, Christ is our Shepherd. He calls His sheep by name and leads them out of the fold. Then He goes before the sheep, and they follow Him (John 10:2-3). As the Shepherd, Christ leads His sheep out of the fold through Himself as the door and into Himself as the pasture.
In John 10:11 the Lord said, "I am the good Shepherd; the good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep." As the good Shepherd, Christ laid down His soul-life, His human life, to accomplish redemption for His sheep that they may share His divine life, the eternal life. Now He shepherds us inwardly in the way of life as our Shepherd of life. The more we live by Him as our life, the more we enjoy His shepherding. As we are under His shepherding, there will be a life consciousness within us and also an instruction, a guidance, in life. This life consciousness with its instruction and guidance in life is an indication that we are under the Lord's shepherding.
Furthermore, in 10:16 the Lord said He will bring His other sheep, the Gentiles believers, to form them into one flock under one Shepherd. The one flock signifies the one church, the one Body of Christ (Eph. 2:14-16; 3:6), brought forth by life, which the Lord imparted into His members through His death. In nature, the flock is altogether different from the fold. The fold is Judaism, which is of letters and ordinances, whereas the flock is the church, which is of life and Spirit. Christ, our good Shepherd, has brought us out of the fold into the flock in Himself as the pasture that we may enjoy Him as our life and life supply.
To the believers Christ is also the vine in the divine dispensing of the Triune God. In John 15:1 the Lord said, "I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman." This true vine (the Son) with its branches (the believers in the Son) is the organism of the Triune God in God's economy. This organism grows with His riches and expresses His divine life.
The Father as the husbandman is the source, the author, the planner, the planter, the life, the substance, the soil, the water, the air, the sunshine, and everything to the vine. The Son as the vine is the center of God's economy and the embodiment of all the riches of the Father. The Father, by cultivating the Son, works Himself with all His riches into this vine, and eventually the vine expresses the Father through its branches in a corporate way. This is the Father's economy in the universe.
The vine and the branches illustrate adequately the living relationship between the believers and the Lord. Once we believe into the Lord, we become the branches of Christ as the vine and we have Christ as our life and everything. Whatever is in the vine is also in the branches. From the vine and through the vine we receive the supply that we need as our enjoyment. For this reason, we need to abide in the vine. Only when we abide in the vine can the vine be everything to us. Therefore, in 15:4-5 the Lord said, "Abide in Me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine....He who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing." This shows us that our destiny as branches is to abide in the Lord as the vine. We cannot live by ourselves alone; without the Lord's supply we will wither and die. Apart from the Lord we are nothing, we have nothing, and we can do nothing. All that we are, all that we have, and all that we do must be in and by the Lord, who dwells in us. When we thus abide in the Lord and the Lord abides in us so that we enjoy all the supply of His abundant life, we bear much fruit by the overflow of the abundance of the inner life for the expression of the Father's divine life (v. 8).