​Jesus Loves Perfectly

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You likely know many stories of God’s people longing for this relationship as be restored and botching attempts to maintain a loving relationship with God in the meantime. Think of Cain and Abel, Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers. Think of Moses and Joshua, David and Solomon, Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the many priests and kings who tried to lead God’s people into a perfect relationship with God.

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One failed attempt after another. One dashed hope after another. Who would come to rescue Gods people from their sin? Who would restore humankind's relationship with God?

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The question hangs in the alt, unanswered for one generation after another. 

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And then Jesus enters the scene. After His public baptism, at the very beginning of Jesus public ministry on earth, the Spirit of God led Him into the wilderness for forty days of fasting, prayer, and obedience training. Throughout Scripture, God's servants often faced this kind of extensive testing and preparation before public ministry. Consider Moses fasting forty days and nights before receiving the law or Elijah’s forty day journey to the mountain of God before encountering Him in the whisper. But mostly, this wilderness experience would have called to the original hearer's mind the Israelites forty-year wandering: they were in the wilderness because of their disobedience, and they failed test after test. 

The tempter challenged Jesus to turn bread into stones, to jump off the temple, and to skip the pain and rejection he would endure by just bowing to him and worship.  Jesus was famished, week from hunger, heat, and thirst, and lonely from isolation. Yet at his most vulnerable point, Jesus declared his continuous trust in his heavenly father, ending with an exclamation of love for Him: 

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Be gone, Satan! For it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve. Matthew 4:10. 

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The hell of hunger and loneliness would not affect Jesus, love and loyalty, and trust in Hi father‘s provision.

Jesus perfectly fulfilled, the father’s purpose for his wilderness testing, because where God’s people failed to obey God time after time, Jesus demonstrated perfect trust and obedience every time.

And he did it all for love.

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With that private victory in the wilderness, Jesus launched his public ministry. He had won the first in a series of battles against the enemy of our souls, and he was establishing God‘s kingdom so that everyone.—-young and old, poor and rich, sick and healthy, Jewish and pagan, would be welcomed in.  

Precious Jesus, thank you for the great love with which you have loved me. I confess my fears and uncertainty. Reveal to me your perfect love for me in Christ Jesus. Amen.  
 

Devotions from:  Uncovering the Love of Jesus: A Lent Devotional by Asheritah Ciuciu

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