Heaven is Other People
Jesus, the relational genius, seemed to actually enjoy people!
God’s grace, friends!
Classes have started at Bushnell, and I am in the thick of helping my students understand how to read a syllabus. Pray for me. This week continues our series I have called Jesus, the relational genius. If you missed last week’s devotional on the boundaries of Jesus, it may be a good starting point as it lays the groundwork for what we are discussing today. The big idea is that we should look to Jesus not only for the life he gives us through his death but also for the life he offers us through how he actually lived his life! For this week’s devotional, I challenge you to consider the fact that Jesus genuinely enjoyed people. And, Lord willing, so should we. (Indeed, hard for my fellow introverts).
So, here is to the task of relearning the art of enjoying people, just as Jesus would.
Many well-intentioned Christians have said before that “more important than Jesus liking you is that Jesus loves you.” At the heart of this well-worn quip is an element of truth, to be sure. In a like-obsessed world where one is likely to base their own self-identity and security on whether someone has provided a thumbs-up on Facebook, hearted my Instagram post, or retweeted my pithy Tweet, it is tantalizingly easy to locate one’s self-worth and value on whether we perceive ourselves being likable. God does love us. And that is far deeper than a like, for sure.
But this leaves a lingering impression— for far too many—that God doesn’t really enjoy us. He loves us, sure, but does he actually like us? The Reformed friends among have jokingly (and at times seriously) referred to the “frowning providence of God”—that cold notion that in his foreknowledge and election, we’ve been chosen by the mercy of God. But God isn’t really all that happy about it. Or happy with us, for that matter. For many Christians, the well-placed desire to emphasize the love of God has caused us to lose touch with one of the most critical parts of the life of Jesus one could ever ponder and consider.
God actually likes you. And he actually likes being with you.
This is a hallmark of the way Jesus engaged in relationships with others in the first century. Jesus was (and is) a relational genius. Not only does he die on the cross for our sins. But he also lives his life to show us how we can and should live our lives. And if the entire universe is the result of the loving relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, then learning to pay attention to the relationships of Jesus would be wise. We have much to learn from how he spent time with people.
And, if the New Testament is as trustworthy as we believe it is, then Jesus apparently enjoyed being with people a great deal. One of the more intriguing New Testament monographs I’ve read in the last few years is a full-length examination of the emotions of Jesus as portrayed in the gospel of John, a book by Stephen Voorwinde entitled Jesus’ Emotions in the Fourth Gospel.1 John’s Jesus is deeply emotional. Of the four Gospel stories, none depict the emotions of Jesus more than the fourth gospel. Of the 59 explicit references to the emotional life of Jesus in the gospels, in fact, no less than 28 are located in John.2
Nowhere is this on more display than in the story of the raising from the dead of Jesus’ friend Lazarus in John 11. Having discovered that his friend has deceased, Jesus slowly travels to the town of Bethany, where Lazarus and his family live. But the set-up for what happens is integral to the story. Up until this point in John’s gospel, it turns out, there has been but one singularly recorded emotion of Jesus in the entire account. Jesus had been angry (or, ‘zealous,’ in 2:17) over the fact that the Temple had been unjustly used for commercial exploitation rather than the worship of God.3 As New Testament scholar Mark Stibbe has noted, up until this point of the story of the death of Lazarus, “Jesus has not been portrayed as a man with obvious weaknesses, needs, and emotions.”4 Then, Lazarus dies. Once he does, every part of the mood and emotional structure in and around Jesus shifts. All in one chapter.
Emotions come flooding out. In a singular chapter of John 11, Jesus rejoices (v. 15), is troubled (v. 33), weeps (v. 35), and is deeply moved (v. 33, 38).5 In one single story, Voorwinde writes, it is as though all of Jesus’ emotions are being “lumped together” as a kind of symphony of feelings.6 Furthermore, up until the Lazarus account, the only times that love is mentioned in John’s gospel, it is the Father’s love (see 3:16, 19; 5:20, 8:42, and 10:17); not Jesus’. For the very first time in John’s account, however, the explicit love of Jesus is mentioned. A love, John records, for Lazarus and his two sisters:
Now, Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. (Jn. 11:5)
The author of the fourth Gospel is up to something. It’s as though John has quietly been holding the cards of Jesus’ emotion for eleven chapters to try and make a point. What is it that brings the onslaught of Jesus’ emotions? More than exploitative Temple practices. More than his cousin’s death. More than a wedding.
It is the death of a friend that brings forth the emotions of the incarnate God.
In one single chapter, all of the emotions of Jesus come rushing out. John is making a point we should take very seriously. Jesus has lost a friend he dearly loves, enjoys, and even likes. It should be difficult for us not to see Jesus in a new light. Jesus did not merely love his friend Lazarus. His emotions speak to another reality. This was his friend, a companion, a joy to be around, a gift, and a treasured brother. Jesus loved Lazarus. He clearly enjoyed him at his core.
As my fellow introverts will admit, learning to enjoy and delight in people is a virtue developed over time of intentionality, challenge, and perseverance. “Hell is other people,” once famously penned by existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. For too many of us, our schedules are a witness to this. Without Jesus, many of us are inclined to think about others as such. But the way of Jesus does not seek only to teach us to love people with some frowning, white-knuckle, begrudging love. No. Jesus enjoys being with people. Shouldn’t we?
I remember preparing a Good Friday sermon years ago in John’s gospel and being struck at how many times Jesus is recorded as “reclining at a table” with people and enjoying a meal. I counted four times—each of which comes as Jesus prepares to go to the cross to meet his death (see Jn. 2:1-11, 12:1-3, 13:23-25, and 21:19-24). Two things struck me about these social occasions. First, Jesus did not see his path toward the cross as an excuse not to enjoy the gift of friendship with people he liked being with. The path to the cross was one paved with meals of delight. But, secondly, how little time I had in my crowded schedule at the time to simply sit around and “recline” with people. I had too much to do. The busyness of life at that season did not permit any unstructured time to just be with people I enjoyed being with.
This may be a hard devotional to read. It is true: loving someone does not necessarily require that we enjoy someone. Sometimes, true love requires an insistent commitment of mercy, generosity, and forgiveness, even when our feelings betray us. But that should not be every relationship we have. Jesus invites us—as the relational Jesus—to embrace the gift of enjoyment of people. For Sartre, hell was other people.
But for Jesus, other people were a glimmer of the heaven to which he was leading us. And this is liberating. It means we can learn to start reclining at tables a great deal more.
Thanks for reading. You can always find me wasting time on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Or check out my podcast with Dr. Nijay Gupta at Slow Theology. If you found this content helpful to your journey, yay! Consider enjoying my most recent book The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War for our Wants, which was released with Zondervan in February of 2024. Within, I explore the topic of human desire from the perspective of Scripture, theology, and experience—with particular interest to how we can be formed into the image of Christ through our desires. In short, it’s about why our cultural mandate to “you do you” is so profoundly unhelpful to the follower of Jesus. You can support my work by reading it! And sharing about your experience. Click on the image below to get yourself a copy.
Stephen Voorwinde, Jesus’ Emotions in the Fourth Gospel, The Library of New Testament Studies (New York, NY: T&T Clark, 2005).
Voorwinde, 3.
Others have pointed to the emotion of ‘tiredness’ in 4:7, but this seems to be a physical comment rather than an emotional comment.
Mark Stibbe, “A Tomb with a View: John 11.1–44 in Narrative-Critical Perspective,” New Testament Studies 40, no. 1 (1994): 44.
Voorwinde, Jesus’ Emotions in the Fourth Gospel, 139.
Voorwinde, 140.
I think that John, being the disciple “Whom Jesus loved “. Would have a keen perspective on the emotions of Jesus!
I loved reading this. I have previously noticed the emotional dimension in John but had never compared Jesus's emotional expressions as detailed in John to those in the other Gospels.
As an aside, Luke has also seemed a rather emotional Gospel to me, but more due to other people's reactions to Jesus. However, I may just have this impression from little things like his inclusion of Mary's perspective, which has been incredibly meaningful to me as a woman and a mother. (So maybe I just connect better with Luke's Gospel?)