The Gospel in Loneliness
Written by Thomas Schnaars, Read by Alex Stoehr
This is the Gospel for Life Series
As a church we gathered for the weekend to grow together and dive into the gospel, discussion what it is and how it influences every part of our lives. Our prayer is that these podcasts will be encouraging and help us allow the gospel flow into every corner of our life. Today we are talking about the Gospel in the midst of Loneliness.
One of the most painful things that our heart can go through is loneliness. We may lie awake at night, wishing someone would be next to us. Maybe that someone would be back.
When we watch Netflix by ourselves and laugh at a funny scene and then feel deeply alone, because nobody is there to share it.
When we have a dream about a lost loved one and we wake up and realize that they are gone, and wish that we would live the dream, not reality.
When we read an amazing passage in scripture and we have to go on social media to share it with people, because... well, because nobody is around.
What we long for in these moments, what this yearning is about, is the presence of someone who knows us deeply. This is part of being made in God’s image, that we want to be known for who we truly are. God says in Hosea 6:6: “I desire knowledge of God...” In other words, God desires deeply to be known. And so do we.
The more painful it is when this longing seems to never be fulfilled. “How long will I have to wait for the person, God?” “Why did I lose my spouse, or my child, so early in life?” Such questions are rising in the pain of a lonely heart.
The gospel speaks in powerful ways to loneliness.
Consider that Jesus was with the Father in all eternity, before he left Him to come and lay down his life for us. The depth of love and knowledge they shared with one another can’t be measured by our small minds! Yet, it was this very relationship that Jesus and the Father were willing to sacrifice, if only for a while.
Jesus had never been accustomed to loneliness before. Yet, when he walked the earth, he frequently left people in order to be with his Father in prayer. How much his heart must have yearned to fully embrace his place with his Father again!
And even his disciples all left him when he needed them most. In the hour of his great- est trial, in the garden of Gethsemane, even though he asked them to stay with him and pray, they fell asleep, leaving him completely alone in horrendous fear and terror, as he struggled to accept the cross that was waiting for him.
And on that very cross Jesus hung, and we read in scripture that he carried the curse for us, which means that for the first and only time in Jesus’ life, the Father’s loving smile turned away from him, because that was part of sin’s consequence, which Jesus carried for us all.
Loneliness is one of the root symptoms of sin. Adam and Eve, once sin had entered their beings, covered themselves up with leafs in order to hide a part of themselves from one another. Even though the act was physical, the root was a fear of exposing their souls to one another.
Therefore, loneliness seems ever present, even though we might not always be aware of it. We hide parts of our being from one another, and this makes it very hard to be ful- ly known.
The more we hide from one another, the more lonely we get, in fact. And that’s why the gospel speaks to the core of loneliness. God did not hide himself from us, but in Jesus Christ made himself fully known. He revealed his very heart toward humanity, and his deep desire to save us. He displayed the most perfect image of his glory, his beauty and majesty, yes his very nature when he gave his son. God, in Jesus, exposed himself completely and was vulnerable to the point of being murdered by a humanity that would rather hide than to be fully known.
Our way out of loneliness is therefore the gospel.
You have to face it, the reason that you feel lonely is not that you do not have that sig- nificant other, or that lost spouse, or that perfect roommate. The reason you are lonely is that you have not allowed the people that already are in your life to fully know you. That’s one of the biggest reasons. So being vulnerable is the way out of loneliness.
When you allow those things that nobody knows about you to become visible to a chosen few, because Christ showed us that this is what God chose to do, then you might experience the transforming power of the gospel in new ways.
If you pursuit God in prayer, laying all your dreams and fears and your innermost being on the altar of his perfect love, you will experience the nature of God, who raised his exposed Son from the dead and brought him back into intimate union in heaven once again.
Your loneliness, because of Christ, can be crucified. And levels of intimacy, which you have never known, can rise from the grave of isolation.
You may never get that husband or wife. You may never have that certain person that you think would fix your loneliness. But you have the God of the gospel, who has made the way for true intimacy in vulnerability. And you have his body around you, waiting to be embraced, waiting to see you, fully exposed as who you truly are, and embracing you with the love of the savior who exposed himself for our salvation.
