Jesus Understands Your Loneliness

Think of when you’ve been far away from your dearest ones in a lonely, perhaps even desolate, place. Speaking to them by phone may have been sweet, but it was not the same as being with them. This is a poor analogy, but it makes the point. As the apostle Paul said, there is nothing like being face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12). Jesus would have experienced a “homesickness” for the presence of his Father far more profound and painful than anything we’ve experienced.

Alone in the World

Now, imagine what living in this world was like for him. Jesus was without sin (Hebrews 4:15). We might think this sounds like a pleasant problem to have. I doubt it was only pleasant. I suspect it tormented him. If Lot experienced daily torment while living in Sodom because of the “lawless deeds that he saw and heard” (2 Peter 2:8), how much worse was it for sinless Jesus constantly surrounded by sinners and demonic powers, rarely if ever able to fully escape their defiling presence?

And imagine what Jesus’s childhood must have been like. Do you remember what it felt like to want friends? Jesus was truly human and would have longed for human friendship too. But lacking the sin nature everyone else had, and having a divine nature no one else had, he would have been a very odd person. Holiness makes sinners want to flee. Jesus would have stuck out morally like a sore thumb, never quite being understood, frequently despised and rejected, even within his own family.