What a friend we have in Jesus

We often like to speak, in Christian circles, about the God who descends, who comes down, who is somehow nearest to those on the bottom, those who find themselves on the wrong side of the score. The words roll off our churchy tongues almost too easily. Friend of sinners . . . Blessed are the poor, those who mourn . . . A bruised reed he will not break . . . Man of sorrows, familiar with suffering . . . I have not come for the healthy but for the sick . . . The list could go on and on. We are well-acquainted with the idea that Jesus seemed far more comfortable with the losers than he did with the winners.

I wonder if we really appreciate what this means. I wonder if we ever really grasp the significance of the way in which God conducted himself when he showed up as Jesus. 

I suspect that some of us implicitly think that these attributes are kind of like the charitable side of God. Because we know, of course, that God is very, very big and very, very powerful and that God is the sovereign ruler over all that is. We know that God has a rather weighty list of tasks—universe supervision, the dispensation of blessings, supplying his creatures with suitably awesome evidence of his majesty in creation, providing the foundations for morality and aesthetics—to name just a few. And on top of all this impressive stuff, God also cares for the weak and the poor! How very good of God, we think.