jim8318

You meet your friend for lunch and tell him the news.

"Did you hear? Our company just got bought by Humongous Corporation!"

"Is that good or bad?"

"Well, I'm not sure yet. The CEO told us that he really valued all of us and that he was one of us. He said he would help make our work even better. But I wasn't convinced he was telling us the whole story."

"So you think he might be a wolf in sheep's clothing?"

Wolf? Sheep's clothing? What? Is this some kind of Disney cartoon?

Actually this expression goes back to a famous speech given by Jesus and recorded in the Bible. The speech is called "the sermon on the mount" because Jesus gave it to a big crowd on a high hill.

You can read this speech in the book of Matthew chapters 5-7. Toward the end of it, he said this:

"Be on the watch for the false prophets that come to you in sheep’s covering, but inside they are ravenous wolves." (Matthew 7:15)

A false prophet would be someone claiming to be sent by God with a special message but who really is not. This kind of person would pretend to be good, like a peaceful animal, but on the inside, underneath the "false front", he is really bad and wants to hurt people. He is like a wolf who, if he could, would try to look like a sheep so he could sneak right into the flock without scaring them away, and then turn around and have them all for dinner!

In the same way, Jesus said, the false prophet wants to exploit or mislead others. Jesus said to watch out for that kind of person and explained how to do that in verses 16-20.

So what was your friend saying about the CEO? He was wondering if maybe this CEO was just pretending to help the employees but would later turn around and exploit them. Watch out, he might be a wolf in a sheepskin suit!