You are my Beloved, with Whom I am Well Please
The centrality of our belovedness has been on my heart lately. It’s something I thought about early on in counseling, but the Lord seems to be reminding me of the essentialness of our belovedness as we seek to heal and grow.
Reading through the Gospel of Matthew, I have started to see how Jesus’ ministry can be framed by his belovedness. We see Jesus’ belovedness bestowed on him, then tried, and finally blessed to invite others into their belovedness.
Journey with me into the belovedness of Jesus.
Belovedness Declared
When Jesus stepped into the waters of the Jordan to be baptized, He wasn’t confessing his sin- He was identifying with us in our humanity, in our need. He was choosing solidarity over separation. He entered our story so that we could enter His.
Immediately after this experience, the heavens opened, and the Father’s voice broke through:
“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
(Matthew 3:17)
Before Jesus did anything- before a sermon was preached, a miracle performed, or a cross carried- He was named the Beloved. That identity was the foundation of everything that followed.
Henri Nouwen, in his book, Life of the Beloved, reflects on this moment as the heart of our own story:
“You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests. It certainly is not easy to hear that voice in a world filled with voices that shout: ‘You are no good, you are ugly; you are worthless; you are a nobody—unless you can demonstrate the opposite.’”
Nouwen highlights how deeply our core identity impacts our daily life. We live surrounded by competing voices, each demanding that we prove our worth.
“These negative voices are so loud and so persistent that it is easy to believe them. That’s the great trap. It is the trap of self-rejection. Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity or power can, indeed, present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much greater temptation to self rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions.”
We see the self rejection painted across the walls of the houses we live in, the relationships we struggle with, and in our temptations of where to find true life.
How often can we trace our critical, self righteous, contemptuous feelings towards others back to the ways we have rejected ourselves? We reject others because we have already rejected ourselves. We self protect and put up walls, because we have internalized the truth that we are not worthy of belovedness.
When I haven't accepted myself as the beloved, or the parts I’m afraid of, I can more easily criticize others because their apparent failures allow me to avoid noticing my own.
I avoid vulnerability because being vulnerable reminds me of my own shame and inadequacies- that I am not beloved- and so I am more likely to judge and critique others to maintain distance and self protection.
In this way, Jesus bore our sorrows and carried our griefs. He entered into our temptations to be with us and speak our belovedness over us the way His Father spoke over him, in order to usher us into new life.
Belovedness Tempted
There is more power in our belovedness than we realized. When we look at the temptations of Jesus, we can see that the temptations were centered on identity.
“Turn these stones to bread.”
The temptation was to meet His own needs apart from the Father—to not trust God’s timing or provision.“Throw yourself down.”
The temptation was to prove Himself—to force the Father’s hand and demand recognition.“Bow down to me.”
The temptation was to find glory apart from the Father’s way—to choose a shortcut to power without the path of suffering.
Each temptation was a whisper: “If you really are the Son of God…”
But Jesus didn’t have to prove His belovedness. He just had to live from it.
That’s the invitation for us- to trust the Father’s voice over us even in discomfort, even in delay, even in the desert. To rest in the identity that has already been declared.
Living as the Beloved
The Kingdom Jesus proclaimed was one of restoration. Healing people back to their true humanity. Back to their belovedness.
“And He went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.”
(Matthew 4:23)
Belovedness is all over the Sermon on the Mount. When Jesus called His followers “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world,” He wasn’t describing something they had to become or something they had to do; He was naming what they already were.
Our very being—rooted in belovedness—is what brings flavor and illumination to the world. Our presence, shaped by grace, reveals the Imago Dei in others.
Becoming What We Already Are
Nouwen writes that to become the beloved—to live into what’s already true—we can practice three habits regularly:
Discern the world’s schemes.
Notice the ways the world manipulates through control, fear, and comparison.This includes our family systems. Our family systems are the air we breathe, the water we swim- and so we won’t easily identify the voices spoken over us unless we give ourselves time to pause and name them. In the past and in the present.
Seek blessing and community
Surround yourself with people and practices that remind you of your belovedness.
We live in a culture that easily curses but rarely blesses. Can we reclaim the sacred act of blessing others and asking for a blessings yourself?Practice gratitude.
Gratitude opens our eyes to God’s hand at work in our lives. It trains our hearts to see grace, not scarcity.
Gratitude reinforces the truth that we are cared for, noticed, and loved.
Beloved to Beloved
When we settle into belovedness, we can extend mercy freely. Love flows outward, because we finally believe it flows toward us.
Being rooted in belovedness allows us to see others as beloved too. Our acts of giving, service, or compassion then become ways of affirming the belovedness in others- as mutual sharing of divine love.
Not only does belovedness realign how we relate to others, but it also reframes how we approach the circumstance we face.
“When joy and pain are both opportunities to say ‘yes’ to our divine childhood, then they are more alike than they are different… When feeling lonely and feeling at home both hold a call to discover more fully who the God is whose children we are, these feelings are more united than they are distinct.”
Every joy and every struggle becomes an invitation to hear again that deep, gentle voice:
“You are my beloved. On you my favor rests.”
Heartache and suffering are not things to be feared or avoided when they become invitations to discover our identity as the beloved. Likewise, the joys of life can be received with open, grateful hands when they are not burdened with being the sole source of our happiness, but are instead seen as further reminders of our belovedness- moments that call us to turn in gratitude toward our Father.
This is the simple, beautiful goal of life—to rest more deeply in that truth, to live from it, and to let it heal the world through us.