To be Loved by the Father
“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” 1 John 3:1, NIV
What does it mean to be the beloved of the Father?
The Spirit whispered this question to me after taking a deeper look into the apostle John’s relationship with Jesus.
At the Lord’s Supper, we read that John leaned against Jesus’s bosom. (John 13:23) Following the resurrection, John was referred to as “the one Jesus loved” or “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” (John 20:2; 21:7 & 20)
But that had not always been the case.
From the Gospel accounts we recognize that John was one of Jesus’s inner group, the fishermen-turned-disciples, those that Jesus the Teacher had chosen to be His closest friends. Between the writings of John and Peter, only John mentions Jesus’s speaking of the twelve as friends: “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends…” (John 15:15) John knew what it was to be a friend of the Savior!
Several days prior to Jesus’s arrest and betrayal, Peter, James and John had seen Jesus in His glory on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17); they had been privileged to be with Him as He raised Jairus’s daughter from the dead (Luke 8:51). On the night of Jesus’s betrayal, they would be with Jesus in the garden, where He would pray until His sweat became like drops of blood (Matt. 26:37). And they would fall asleep, failing their dearest friend in His darkest hour…
Is it possible that Jesus chose the most impetuous, impatient and arrogant disciples to be the Inner Three? John and his brother wanted to call down fire from heaven on the Samaritans who refused to let Jesus travel through their region! (Luke 9:54) They attempted to stop another who cast out demons in Jesus’s Name. (Mark 9:38) As Jesus pressed toward the cross, the brothers had the audacity to ask Him to make them His right- and left-hand men, offending the other disciples. (Mark 10:37ff) No wonder Jesus gave them the name “Sons of Thunder”! (Mark 3:17)
John and his brother were ambitious, argumentative, and inconsiderate of their fellow disciples. They were accustomed to leaders and friends who excluded others and “lorded” it over their subordinates!
And yet, John, the younger brother of James, wrote more about love than any other Gospel writer.
So how did a “Son of Thunder” become the “beloved disciple”? At what point did John move from becoming a friend of Jesus to the beloved of Jesus?
John knew what it was like to be Jesus’s friend, but he had not yet learned to be a son of his Father. While Christ still walked this earth, it seems that John was living out of an identity of an orphan rather than that of a beloved son. John was still striving for Jesus’s acceptance and for approval and status with people.
It seems that it was only after the resurrection when John realized that Jesus truly was the Son of God; when he rejected the identity the world tried to place on him—the orphan spirit that says, “I have to prove myself, I have to do this on my own!” But when John continued to lean into the Word made incarnate, when he received the baptism of the Holy Spirit to transform and make him new, when John received his true identity of a son belonging to the Father…
…then and only then could John become “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”
Sylvia Gunter writes, “Living from an orphan heart skews our perspective and keeps us from seeing who we really are. It also stops us from seeing who our heavenly Father truly is.”**
Could it be that at the root of disunity in the Body of Christ is an identity that operates out of an orphan spirit?
What if you and I could live from the place of being the “beloved of the Father”? What if it is through leaning into Jesus’s heart, as revealed to us in the Holy Scriptures—and rejecting the identity that the world, the flesh and our wounds want to put on us—that we are transformed into being a beloved son or daughter?
I need to be the beloved of the Father—a daughter—before I can be a lover of and worker with Jesus. I need to learn how to be a daughter in order to be Jesus’s friend. I need to understand in what ways I am not living out of my identity as a daughter. I need to be transformed from living out of an identity of an orphan to living from the position of a child of the King. Only then can I help to preserve the unity that Christ already afforded the Church through His death on the cross!
Will you join me today in pressing into the heart of the Father to discover our true identity in Him?
For Jesus’ Sake,
Chris & Julie
King Jesus, please lead us to the heart of our Father. Help us to recognize the ways in which we have not received our true identity. Show us the Way to reject lies about You and Your love for us, so we may receive what You say without any hesitation or doubt. Take us deeper into the Truth of Your Word that sets us free. In Jesus’s Mighty Name we pray, Amen.
**from Safe in the Father’s Heart by Sylvia Gunter, p. 22