Love Like Jesus: 7 Day Easter DevotionalSample

In today’s social media-driven culture, we’re used to name-dropping, endorsing, tagging, and self-promotion. I once heard an influencer boldly declare from the stage, “It’s not about who you know, it’s about who knows you.”

But if you know Jesus and Jesus knows you, it doesn’t matter how well-known or unknown you are to the rest of the world. You can rest in His intimate and unconditional love. He is enough. We see this time and time again in Jesus, in the way He reached out to those shoved aside by power-mongers and in the way He taught His disciples to do the same, serving meals to the hungry, offering hospitality to the foreigner, visiting the sick and imprisoned. Jesus was stretching His followers’ understanding of what God’s kingdom of love looked like, even going so far as to teach: “When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (Luke 14:13–14).

Safe and secure in His Father’s love for Him, Jesus ignores pride’s seductive whisper and pursues the marginalized. He welcomes little children—those who had nothing to offer Him—and grows downright angry with His disciples when they try to send them away. He welcomes the sinners and eats with tax collectors. He reaches out to the widows and the prostitutes. He invites ordinary fishermen to become His honored students. He reveals His identity to a lonely and abandoned Samaritan woman.

Time after time, Jesus eschews the powerful and influential to seek out the lowly and downtrodden. Instead of going up to Jerusalem to seek the priests’ approval or to build a coalition with the powerful, Jesus hangs out with the sinners, the tax collectors, the sick, and the weak.

He loves the “least of these” and elevates them to a place of honor again and again. He calls His disciples to likewise serve those who cannot repay and to do good to those who cannot return the favor, not for public praise, but for their heavenly Father’s eyes and approval only.

Challenge: Are you ever tempted to show more love or generosity toward those who can reciprocate? This week, seek out one person who can’t repay you (whether a child in your neighborhood, a widow in your congregation, or a homeless person on the street), and love them lavishly, privately, without expectation of being seen or known by anyone but Jesus.