I. There is no difficulty in the general interpretation of the language of the text. Christ has a personal knowledge of His disciples of the most complete and intimate kind, calling each by name, treating him as an individual, according to the nature he possesses and the actual circumstances of his life. What, without exaggeration, may be called a personal friendship, is established between the Lord and each of His disciples. By how few is this truth realised and fully accepted as true for himself, in his own daily life! You can understand how He might name your name in condescension, or in pity, or in reproof; but how He should name your name in pure warmhearted love in love to you, to your own very self, as cherishing a real, heartfelt, personal attachment to you, that altogether baffles your comprehension, because you feel that there is nothing in you which is deeply suitable to His love. But He loves the goodness that is begun in you. In one word, He loves the ideal "you," and resolves by His own grace to make it in due time the real "you."
II. The calling and the leading are always united. He calls that He may lead. He utters the name that he, that she, who answers to it may, at the thrilling word, arise and follow Him whithersoever He goeth. There are some who wait for the calling, who listen eagerly for the sound of the name, and who would be more than satisfied to hear it spoken in kindness by the Shepherd every day, but who are far from having any corresponding readiness to accept the leading of the Shepherd. "He calleth His own sheep by name, and leadeth them out" out, of course, from the whole natural sinful life, from all its darkness and misery, into the light and joy of acceptance; out of infantine feebleness into manly strength; out of narrow views into wider; out of mistakes and disappointments into wiser ways and better fortunes; out of besetting sin into waiting duty; sometimes out of safety into perils which lie on the way to a higher safety; and so on and on in a movement which cannot cease until at length, in His own time and way, it will be out of earth into heaven.
A. Raleigh, The Little Sanctuary,p. 44.