How Is It Possible That Jesus Would Delight in Me?
A Two-Part Question
It seems like there are two parts to that question. One is, Is it true? Does Jesus really want to be friends with me? Does he delight in me? And then the other part is, How could that possibly be?
The answer to the first part is really clear in Scripture. He does want to be friends with us. He delights in us. He’s not a Savior who’s come and holds us at a distance. You can see that all over the pages of the New Testament. You see the way that he interacted with and loved the people around him. He was so compassionate. He was so merciful. You can see the way he had his own friends.
Friendship with God
Mike McKinley
What does it mean to be friends with God? Each chapter of this book takes a key insight from John Owen’s Communion with God and clarifies it for modern readers.
There are a number of places in the Gospel accounts where we’re told that Jesus had friends. In John 11, we read about the death of Lazarus and we’re told that Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were his friends. Jesus has all these relationships off the pages of the Gospel. He’s just out there building friends with people. He calls his disciples his friends and says that he has told them what he’s thinking. He’s revealed himself to them. So Jesus, you see, had all these close relationships with people when he was here on Earth.
He was so compassionate towards people like Levi, the tax collector, or Zacchaeus. And so the answer is clearly that Jesus does want to have a relationship with us. He does love us like that. He proved it by his death and his resurrection for us.
One of the glories of Jesus is that he doesn’t need us to be lovely in order to love us.
Now, when you ask the question How can that be? the answer is that it’s all because of Jesus. It’s not because there’s anything good in us. It’s not because Jesus looks at you or me and says, That’s the kind of person I can love.
But actually, one of the glories of Jesus is that he doesn’t need us to be lovely in order to love us. He’s self-sufficient. He is loving enough on his own that he’s able to love people like you and me, even though we don’t deserve it. He wants to be friends with us. He can want to be close to us, even though we’re not always lovely.
Mike McKinley is the author of Friendship with God: A Path to Deeper Fellowship with the Father, Son, and Spirit.
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