I Am The One Jesus Loves

This is part four of the October devotion series. If you missed the previous three, you can catch them here. Week one: Do You Know God Loves You?, week two: Does God Really Love Me?, and week three: Internalizing God’s Love for All People.

Years ago, this story from a book I’ve referred to oh, so many times, impacted and stuck with me. It’s from Philip Yancey’s pictorial version of, What’s So Amazing About Grace? 

These days, I’m regularly practicing just soaking in the point of this short story. I pray you do too.

At a seminar, Brennan Manning referred to Jesus’ closest friend on earth, the disciple named John, identified in the Gospels as ”the one Jesus loved.” 

Manning said, “If John were to be asked, ‘What is your primary identity in life?’ he would not reply, ‘I am a disciple, an apostle, an evangelist, an author of one of the four Gospels,’ but rather, ‘I am the one Jesus loves.’”

What would it mean, I ask myself, if I too came to the place where I saw my primary identity in life as “the one Jesus loves”? How differently would I view myself at the end of the day?

Sociologists have a theory of the looking-glass self: you become what the most important person in your life (wife, father, boss, etc.) thinks you are. How would my life change if I truly believed the Bible’s astounding words about God’s love for me, if I looked in the mirror and saw what God sees?”  (What’s So Amazing About Grace? by Philip Yancey)

I am the one Jesus loves.

You are.