The Comfort of God’s Individual Care

Last summer I stood with the waves of the Mediterranean Sea splashing on my feet, and I picked up stones—not just any stones; I grabbed a sack full of shiny white ones.

Our church had sent us on a mission trip to Turkey, but we made a quick stop in Greece beforehand, spending a few days seeing the ruins in places where Paul preached the gospel. The afternoon before heading to Turkey, the country that now hosts the cities of the seven churches in the book of Revelation, our team played at the beach under the sun in one-hundred-degree weather while I collected stones.

I grabbed the white ones because they reminded me of one of my favorite verses from the book of Revelation—a somewhat obscure, cryptic line that Jesus said to the church in the ancient city of Pergamum. “To the one who conquers,” Jesus says, “I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it” (Rev. 2:17).

Many people wrongly personalize every promise from God, reading the Bible as if it were written for each of us alone. They lose sight of the fact that God saves a people, builds a family, and nourishes a body. But then I read a promise like Revelation 2:17 and remember the personal care God has for each of his children. He gives a white stone to each believer with a personal name, a name that no one knows except God and that believer.

There’s something tremendously encouraging about knowing that after God has done everything necessary to save a people for himself; after defeating sin, death, and evil; after answering the groans of all creation—and doing all this while upholding the universe by the word of his power—God still takes an individual interest in each of his children, sharing a special gift and name just between them. What a blessing to know that God has so much endless grace that no amount of personal care for one of his children will diminish the care he has for all his other children.

This kind of personal interest and care for individual believers shows up in so many places in the Bible. I think of Paul saying that the Son of God “loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). We might be willing to say Jesus died for sinners, but we would probably hesitate before saying that the Son of God gave himself for me. It would almost seem arrogant to make his death so personal. But yet so the verse reads.

Consider too what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12, the passage where he speaks of the thorn in his flesh. Before he speaks of the thorn, he mentions being caught up in the “third heaven” and hearing “things that cannot be told, which man may not utter” (2 Cor. 12:2, 4). The third heaven is probably not as strange as it first sounds. In Hebrew thinking, the first heaven is the sky where birds fly, the second heaven holds the stars, which we call outer space, and the third heaven is where God dwells. In the midst of all the pain of his ministry, all his persecution, all his anxiety for the churches, and all the pain of the thorn in his flesh—whatever that thorn was—Paul met with God. And God met with Paul. And in their meeting, Paul heard things so wonderful he didn’t feel free to repeat them, lest we think too highly of him, which is probably why he writes about it in the third person.

Reflecting on these unutterable utterances, John Calvin acknowledges that someone might wonder why God would share words with Paul if he can’t utter them to others. But the point, Calvin says, is that they were for him alone—and that was the point. Here’s Calvin in his own words:

Someone, however, will reply, that what Paul heard was, consequently, needless and useless, for what purpose did it serve to hear, what was to be buried in perpetual silence? I answer, that this took place for the sake of Paul himself, for one who had such arduous difficulties awaiting him, enough to break a thousand hearts, required to be strengthened by special means, that he might not give way, but might persevere undaunted. Let us consider for a little, how many adversaries his doctrine had, and of what sort they were; and farther, with what a variety of artifices it was assailed, and then we shall wonder no longer, why he heard more than it was lawful for him to utter. (John Calvin, commentary on 2 Corinthians)

That special word from the Lord for Paul was not “needless and useless” but needful and useful. Just as the white stone and special name that God will have for all his children will one day be useful and needful.

I know aspects of our culture reek of individualism. We are so concerned with ourselves, we hardly see that so many promises from God are for all of the people of God, all of the body of Christ, and all of the family of God. But the white stone and the personal nickname from God remind me of the good news that, in Christ, God doesn’t just love me. If God will give me my own personal nickname, he must like me, too.