Loving Jesus Style

Hebrews 4:15–16 (NIV) For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. Devotion: Under the old covenant, few dared to enter God's throne room. Once a year the high priest passed behind the curtain into the Most Holy Place, carrying blood and trembling lest he be struck down. The mercy seat was near, but the people stood far off. The writer to the Hebrews tells us that everything has changed. God has not become any less holy. What has changed is that we now have a better High Priest. Jesus, the eternal Son, took to himself a true body. He knew hunger in the wilderness, weariness at the well, sorrow at Lazarus's tomb, and anguish in Gethsemane. The Greek word behind "empathize" means literally to suffer with...

Scripture: James 1:5 (NIV) If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. Devotion: Ask Without Shame There's a particular shame in not knowing what to do. You can feel it in your chest when a crisis lands, and you have no idea how to respond—when grief, a hard decision, or a relationship gone sideways leaves you standing there with no wisdom of your own to offer. Most of us would rather look competent than admit we're lost. James assumes we'll be lost, and tells us exactly where to go. This verse doesn't arrive out of nowhere. James has just told his scattered, suffering readers to "consider it pure joy" when they face trials, because the testing of their faith produces perseverance, and perseverance, allowed to finish its work, makes them mature and complete (vv. 2–4). It's a staggering command. And James seems to know it will leave people asking: but how? How do...

  Scripture: Romans 13:13-14 (NIV) Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh. Devotion: There's a particular honesty that comes with daylight. Things done in the dark — words spoken in a drunken haze, appetites indulged where no one's watching, grudges nursed in secret — rarely survive the sun's exposure. Paul knows this, and he uses it to press his readers to decide. Paul has just said, in the verse before this one, that "the night is nearly over; the day is almost here" (v. 12). The point isn't a vague call to "be your best self." It's that the new day has already dawned in Christ's resurrection, and believers are told to dress—and live—like people who know it. Acting in line with the coming day, before it...

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:14-15 (NIV) For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. Devotion: Every life runs on some engine of motivation — fear, ambition, the need to be needed, the fear of being forgotten. Paul names his own engine plainly, and it isn't any of these. "Compels" translates the Greek synechei — a word with real physical weight. It's used elsewhere in the New Testament for a crowd pressing in on Jesus from every side (Luke 8:45), for a fever gripping a sick man (Luke 4:38), for a traveler hemmed in on a narrow road with no way to turn aside (Luke 19:43). Paul isn't describing a gentle nudge of sentiment. He's describing something that has closed in on him from every direction and left him nowhere else to go. For Paul, Christ's love isn't a fe...

Scripture: Proverbs 21:21 (NIV) Whoever pursues righteousness and love finds life, prosperity, and honor. Devotion: We spend our lives chasing something. Security, applause, comfort, the next promotion — the approval that always seems to sit just out of reach. Solomon, who chased more than most men ever will and found most of it hollow (see Ecclesiastes), leaves us this quiet, almost startling promise: The verb matters here. "Pursues" translates the Hebrew radaph — the word for a hunter tracking game, an army chasing down a fleeing enemy. It's not a leisurely stroll toward virtue; it's the language of someone who has decided righteousness is worth running after with everything they have. Proverbs never imagines goodness as something that simply happens to a person. It's chased. And notice what's chased: not righteousness alone, but righteousness paired with chesed — the rich Hebrew word variously translated "kindness," "steadfast l...

Scripture: 1 Peter 2:9-10 (NIV) But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Devotion: There's a peculiar ache in not belonging — in wondering if you're anyone at all to anyone who matters. Peter writes to scattered, suffering Christians who knew that ache well: exiles, strangers, easy to overlook. And into that ache he speaks one of the most breathtaking descriptions of the church anywhere in Scripture. Every phrase here is borrowed. Peter is lifting language God once used for Israel at Sinai (Exodus 19:5–6) and for the redeemed remnant in Isaiah, and laying it, without apology, on ordinary believers — fishermen and slaves and homemakers scattered across Asia Minor. This isn't a downgrade of Israe...