I’m still chewing on this topic of being loved alone. In the previous post, we talked about how life-changing it would be for our children if they actually had time alone with us, to know they had our full love and attention for a time.
But this longing certainly isn’t only in children. Don’t we all long for this? Auden’s words still ring true:
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
But is it what we cannot have? Sometimes it feels that way, even for those of us who walk with God.
We know God loves us. Jesus love me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. But how does He loves us? All in a big bunch with everyone else? Eyes darting this way and that, trying to keep us all straight? Sometimes even the words of John 3:16, though sacred and powerful, can seem so big, so general: “For God so loved the world….”
But what about me? I know He loves the world. But, being bundled up in the almost 7 billion people on the planet somehow makes me feel kinda ordinary.
But the truth is that that which we crave, which Auden says we cannot have, can be ours in Jesus Christ.
My friend Joy was the one who pointed this out to me. She wrote a post about it last year. In short: Jesus tells his disciples this, in John 15:9. “ As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.”
Jesus loves us with the same love that God the Father has for Jesus. What kind of love is that? A one and only love. Jesus loves each of us with a one-and-only love. In other words? He loves us alone.
That is why to walk with Jesus is the greatest and most romantic and blessed adventure on earth. I have experienced God providing for me in the most intimate of ways, in miraculous ways. He’s provided silly things like a bathing suit when I was broke. He provided the car I’d secretly thought would be perfect for our family–and it didn’t cost us a dime. God has provided in ways that show He knows every secret part of my heart, and He cares. He has provided for me emotionally, relationally, for the years when I felt worthless and heartbroken, when I felt ugly and rejected. God has shown me, over and over and over that He loves me with a one-and-only love.
That is why I blog. That is why I teach and preach and shout from the rooftops: Get to know this God of the Bible! This God of the universe wants to love you, and love you alone. He wants to shower you with a one-and-only love. Let Him. Please, let Him.
In Christ alone, we are loved alone. It makes all the difference in the world.
3 thoughts on “To Be Loved Alone: Like Jesus”
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One the related aspects of this that we have pondered recently is why does God love us. Does he love us because of who he is or for who we are? The former seems to secures a high view of a broadly loving God, but sometimes feels a little shallow and diluted. Don’t we all crave to be loved for who we really are, our unique persona rather than just being loved because we contain human DNA? Do I really want a love that is so blind that it doesn’t derive any of its affections from me and my characteristics? Or is this selfish desire and one should humbly seek to find satisfaction from love that is completely orthogonal to oneself. Or is God’s love a combination, loving each individual with their unique characteristics in a uniquely motivated way, but loving the attributes of each person because he created those attributes?
Hey kari-
Crazy that you followed the “loved alone” in parenting up by “by Jesus” because I purposely got on here tonight to post this quote that I’ve been thinking of ever since your last post. Now, I know the author I’m about to quote is a bit controversial- but I happen to enjoy a lot of what he has to say. He seems to say things that I’ve thought a lot- this being one of them:
“…the greatest desire of man is to be known and loved anyway.”
-Donald Miller, Searching for God Knows What
and it’s so true. And that’s how Jesus loves us. Wholly, completely, totally. Despite our sins past, present, future.
He caught a woman in the very act of adultery and did he punish or beat her? Did he give her a look of disgust at her sin? Did he send her away to be banished out of the gate due to her sin? No. His disgust was reserved, not for this woman who committed the sin of adultery, but for the men who sought to condemn her for it. He loved her knowing full well of what she had been doing moments prior. I don’t know how to love like that. But oh, for grace.
Are you sure you’re reading Mr. Auden correctly? When we writes, “to be loved alone,” surely that means to be loved singularly, in other words, to be exalted above your fellows. Auden is referring here to the innate egotism of humanity, the wish to be singled out for greatness.
To put it bluntly: Jesus does not love you alone. His is universal love. As in, He loves everyone. Not just you. This is (one of) the flaw(s) of humanity: the wish to be loved alone. Presumably, it is not a flaw in which Jesus indulges us.