Apple of God’s Eye

“I write to you, children, because you know the Father.” 1 John 2:14

The Apostle John is known as the Apostle of love, and in his first epistle he mentions love many times. He is known distinctively as the one Jesus loved. We should learn his secrets, then, should we not? Just as we should learn about David, “a man after God’s own heart” (Acts 13:22), and Moses who was God’s friend (Exodus 33:11). But let us back up a minute. We only know John as Jesus’ beloved because John says so. The title appears in no other Gospel account. That’s interesting, is it not? 

I think this reveals something very important. John was not calling attention to himself by labeling himself, “the disciple Jesus loved”, six times in his letter. I think this declares how overwhelmed he was that the Lord loved him, that he was made special by that love, that he was utterly, permanently transformed by it. 

We too can call ourselves any label we want. We can just believe what people say about us, or we can believe what God says about us. It is so sad when many accept what a little voice in our head says sometimes, that we are a failure, worthless, so uncreative, a disaster in the making. I remember what my sister said of the street children she and her friends were tutoring. They had to teach THEIR parents first to encourage their children, NOT put them down, and belittle them, destroying their self-esteem. All the tutoring in the world was useless if the children believed they could not learn, that they were ‘tanga’, stupid. 

What does God say about us? We were made in His image and likeness (Genesis 1:26), which means we have intrinsic worth, inherently valuable and we are precious to our Father. If we know this to be true, it will animate everything we do, and say and think. We will be confident, and not insecure. We are the apple of His eye (Zechariah 2:8), and he who touches us, insults us, hurts us, hurts God’s favored son or daughter. Do we believe this? If we do not, we should continue to search the Bible for what God thinks of us. Then we should, like John, label ourselves with the titles God gives us.