If there was one thing for which Jesus was notorious, it was Love.
Everywhere he went he loved on people, providing more and more and more evidence of what love really looks like. Jesus is love personified. Jesus initiates me over and over. It starts with his moving toward me. And in return, he wants me to move toward him. The more he heals me, the more he wants me to walk with him. At a few stops along Jesus’ ministry, he declared, in effect,
“No more healing. You don’t want me—you want the miracle. But there is no miracle without me” (Matthew 12:38–42).
When we get him, we get the healing.
Remember the story of the ten lepers in Luke 17? After they were healed, one came back. Only one. Just one wanted the One who did the healing, not just the healing.
At a critical point in Jesus’ ministry, the disciples were faced with the choice to follow the rest of the crowds who were turning their backs on Jesus. Peter piped up on behalf of the twelve: “Where would we go? You have the life” (John 6:67–68). The fisher of men had the right idea. Years later, an aged and matured Peter wrote to the churches of the first century:
May grace (God’s favor) and peace (which is perfect well-being, all necessary good, all spiritual prosperity, and freedom from fears and agitating passions and moral conflicts) be multiplied to you in [the full, personal, precise, and correct] knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. For His divine power has bestowed upon us all things that [are requisite and suited] to life and godliness, through the [full, personal] knowledge of Him Who called us by and to His own glory and excellence (virtue). By means of these He has bestowed on us His precious and exceedingly great promises, so that through them you may escape [by flight] from the moral decay (rottenness and corruption) that is in the world because of covetousness (lust and greed), and become sharers (partakers) of the divine nature. 2 Peter 1:2-4
How right Peter was the first time. “Where would we go? You are life.” Sounds to me like the Peter of many years later is offering a taste of something he has stocked up on over his time as Jesus’ friend. Peter feels compelled to share. (Don’t we all when we find something glorious and good?) The old apostle knows, not just in theory but also through life-altering encounters and Life-giving experiences, that the Father is good. Jesus made sure of it and makes sure of it still.
In your time alone with God:
When was the last time you experienced the goodness of the Father, him loving on you?
What in the passage in I Peter do you long to experience the most? What are you NOT experiencing?
What might you be so bold as to ask the Father for? What is a deep desire unfulfilled and do you believe he is good?
