Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.”—John 10:14-15
I had such a wonderful experience of intimacy with Jesus, starting around maybe my second or third year in Christ, and I felt like I was really special to God. But of course Paul implies that Jesus loved and gave Himself for all of us (cf. Gal 2:20). We’re all special to God.
So one day in prayer I asked God how He could love me so much and yet love everyone else so much too. What I felt He showed me seems pretty biblical: God is so big that He can love each of us with more love than anybody else could love us with their best love. That is, God’s capacity to love is infinite. So there’s no competition for it. Anyone who wants to press close to Him can be intimate with Him.
In John 13:23, the beloved disciple (ὃν ἠγάπα ὁ Ἰησοῦς, “the one Jesus loved”) is “reclining on his chest” (ἐν τῷ κόλπῳ). At a banquet, the person reclining to one’s right was ranged a bit further down on the banquet couch, in front, so that their head was positioned near one’s chest. The position immediately to a host’s right was a special place of honor. But what is more remarkable is that the description appears in one other passage in John’s Gospel, and that is John 1:18: Jesus, God the Son, is “the one who is in the Father’s bosom” (εἰς τὸν κόλπον).
In Christ, we are in intimate relationship with the Father through the Spirit (John 14:23). He’s given us all perfect access to Him. And so He welcomes us all into that intimate, love relationship with the Father and the Son that they have with each other (John 10:3-4, 14-15; 15:9; 17:21-23; cf. also Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, in 11:3, 5, 36). We can be as intimate with God as we desire. We can be like the beloved disciple!
