Identity Before Explanation

There are passages in Scripture that become more profound not because they grow more complicated, but because they become more familiar. The Christian life has a way of changing what we notice. Early on, our attention is often captured by the things we have never seen before. We are drawn to difficult doctrines, hidden connections, and theological questions that seem to open entirely new worlds. There is a goodness to that kind of discovery. Loving God has always involved the mind. But given enough years of walking with Him, something else begins to happen. The deepest moments of formation are often not found in discovering a new truth but in returning to an old one and realizing we have not yet exhausted its ability to change us.

Daniel 10 has become one of those passages for me. It is filled with remarkable details that naturally capture our attention. There is the appearance of the heavenly messenger, the glimpse into the unseen conflict surrounding God’s purposes, the repeated strengthening of Daniel, and the extraordinary vision that follows. Yet the longer I have sat with this chapter, the less fascinated I have become with what makes it unusual and the more attentive I have become to what makes it deeply human.

Daniel is exhausted. He has spent three weeks mourning, praying, and seeking understanding. The vision he has received has settled heavy upon him, and nothing about the chapter suggests that he has arrived at some place of emotional certainty. If anything, the opposite is true. By the time the messenger speaks, Daniel has no strength left. He struggles to stand. He struggles to speak. He has reached the limits of what he can carry on his own.

Then the messenger says something that seems almost too simple.

“Daniel, man greatly loved...”

It is worth sitting with those words for a little while because they are surprisingly easy to read past. We naturally assume they function as a greeting, almost as though the messenger is simply being kind before moving on to the important part of the conversation. I don’t think that is what is happening at all. Scripture is far too careful with its words for that. The affirmation is not incidental to the conversation. It’s critical to the conversation.

This is all lead-in to a question that has stayed with me for quite some time now.

Why remind Daniel that he is loved?

Not, why does God love Daniel? The whole story of Scripture answers that question. But, why does the messenger choose to say it when he does?

Daniel has walked with God for decades. He is hardly a novice in the faith. It seems difficult to imagine that these words are intended to teach him something he has never known before. They sound much more like a reminder than a revelation.

I believe this is a clue. Because one of the greatest challenges of spiritual formation is not simply believing what is true. It is continuing to believe that it is true when life becomes difficult.

Almost no one would argue this. When we are tested, when life seems to be following a different script than the one we’ve previously worked out, all we believe begins to be tested. Our behavior often changes, revealing what’s been seeping internally, maybe for years. My experience leading a church through COVID convinced me of many things, not the least of which is this reality. We can file into churches for decades, appearing much more mature as disciples than we actually are. This is easy to do because the environment is so comfortable. It asks little more of us than to sit, drink our coffee, and listen. We have become so scared of losing what we have as the literal body of Christ that we have lost what we have been called to. I think this is why we have so much trouble interpreting difficulty. I mean actual difficulty.

It is entirely possible to believe that God is faithful while quietly interpreting every disappointment as evidence that He has somehow withdrawn. It is possible to believe we are forgiven while continuing to relate to ourselves primarily through shame. It is possible to believe we are loved by God while allowing success, failure, rejection, and achievement to become the louder voice shaping our identity. None of those tensions necessarily reveal a failure of our theology. More often, they reveal the slow, unfinished work of our formation. We know the truth, but we haven’t learned to live it.

This is one of the reasons I have become increasingly convinced that discipleship, following Jesus well, has as much to do with remembering as it does with learning. The Bible is filled with reminders. Israel is continually called to remember the Lord who brought them out of Egypt. The Psalms rehearse God’s faithfulness over and over. Peter tells the churches that one of his primary responsibilities is simply to remind them of things they already know (2 Peter 1:12). That is a fascinating statement. An apostle understands that his ministry is not merely to reveal new things but to help God’s people return to the oldest, most foundational things.

What I am saying here is that maybe we have underestimated the importance of remembering.

We live in a culture that celebrates novelty. We are drawn toward what is new, innovative, and previously undiscovered. Even our spiritual lives can begin to take on that shape. We move from sermon to sermon, podcast to podcast, conference to conference, assuming that maturity is waiting just beyond the next insight, the next book slung out there by a pastor and his church’s budget. But the Bible seems very comfortable returning to the same foundational truths again and again. Not because they have run out of things to say, but because they understand something about the human heart. The truths most capable of changing us are often the ones we are most tempted to leave behind in search of something more interesting. Ask any pastor about the Sundays they dread the most. They will tell you, Easter and Christmas. “Why?” you ask. Because they are reminders. They force us to say the same thing that’s been said for generations, and that’s just not what draws a crowd these days.

So, why is it so important for Daniel to hear these words before he hears anything else?

I believe the messenger is not merely preparing Daniel to receive the information. He is preparing him to interpret it. Everything that follows in the conversation will be received through the lens of these first words. Daniel will hear about conflict, delay, kingdoms, and the future. But if you’ll allow me to venture into my imagination here, I believe none of those realities landed harder than the affirmation that God loves him, specifically him, specifically in that moment. Before heaven expands Daniel’s understanding of the world around him, it quietly steadies his understanding of who he is. This brings a strong conviction on me as a father. I have not done this well for my sons. I plan on changing this under the care of God’s grace.

I focus on this affirmation because every one of us interprets life from somewhere, and experience tells me that for most of us, that somewhere is most often negative. The question is never whether we are interpreting our experiences. The question is what story is doing the interpreting. Is it fear? Is it shame? Is it disappointment? Is it the quiet need to prove ourselves? Or is it the settled confidence that whatever else may be true today, we remain deeply loved by the God who knows us completely? When we’ve stepped into failure, this can be a hard ladder to locate.

The remarkable thing about Daniel is not that these words remove his questions. They don’t. The chapter remains full of mystery. The future remains uncertain. The vision revealed in chapters eleven and twelve is anything but comforting. But, and this is very, very important, the foundation beneath Daniel has been quietly reinforced before he is asked to carry any of it. There are too many of us carrying too heavy of a load without this understanding. We are loved by God. This is no ordinary thing. When we believe it, really believe it, it can sustain us through the unimaginable.

Maybe the messenger wasn’t simply reminding Daniel that he was loved. Maybe he was protecting Daniel from interpreting everything else apart from that love.

I would call this one of the quiet mercies of God.

When life becomes confusing, we don’t stop interpreting it. We simply begin interpreting it through whatever voice is loudest. This breaks my heart for the generations who follow me. Due to their devices, there are many, many loud voices. And those voices have no regard for their souls. Due to the full assault on our psyche by the glut of smut out there, we are far more susceptible to fear, shame, disappointment, exhaustion or the quiet suspicion that God is somehow a hoax than any other generation before us. Those voices are persuasive precisely because they beat God to the punch, offering quick interpretations in place of long thought and deep development.

Daniel didn’t know why twenty-one days had passed. He still had no explanation for what had been happening beyond his sight. The future the messenger would unfold was hardly comforting. None of that changed when he heard the words, “Daniel, man greatly loved.”

What changed was the place from which he would now receive everything else. This is one of the slower and most important aspects of spiritual maturity.

Over time, we come to learn that God’s love is not just another truth to believe. It becomes the place from which every other truth is interpreted. Joy is received differently. Suffering is carried differently. Waiting is endured differently. Even correction sounds different when it comes from someone whose love no longer has to be earned. I can feel my heart wanting more acceptance even as I write this today. We never outgrow this need. It is a place in us with an insatiable appetite. God knows this about us, and he meets our needs in ways we can’t understand and often don’t trust. Even still, he is committed. He even reminded his own son one day at a river before it all became very public and very difficult. This is my son. I love him. And, I am pleased with him.

Leave a comment

This kind of acceptance-based formation doesn’t happen all at once. It rarely arrives in a single sermon, a good book, or even a season of profound spiritual growth. It is the slow work of the Spirit, patiently turning us back to the deepest realities of the Gospel until they become more believable than the fears, disappointments, and accusations that so easily compete for our attention. When we see this kind of settledness in a person, it catches us off guard. That’s just how rare it is.

Maybe that is why the messenger begins where he does.

Not because Daniel has forgotten he was loved. But because before Daniel could really understand what God was doing, he needed to remember what had always been true.

And the same may be true for you too.

There are seasons when the most important thing God does is not answer every question we bring to Him. Sometimes He patiently calls us back to the foundation beneath those questions, reminding us that before we are confused, before we are waiting, before we are weary, and before we are even afraid, we are loved.

Daniel must have left this encounter knowing something he could not have known twenty-one days earlier. The world is far more contested than it appears. There are purposes of God unfolding beyond human sight, and there are also real forces actively resisting those purposes. We don’t talk much about that anymore. It feels too supernatural for our modern sensibilities, and perhaps too uncomfortable for the tidy versions of Christianity many of us grew up in. But Daniel 10 refuses to let us reduce the Christian life to positive thinking, good habits, or better theology. Something much larger is taking place. From someone who has been to the edge and back, I can confirm this with absolute certainty.

Next time, we’ll step into that tension together. We’ll explore what Daniel 10 reveals about the unseen conflict surrounding the purposes of God, and why understanding that reality may change the way we think about discouragement, delay, temptation, and the long work of becoming the people God is forming us to be.

Until then, I encourage you to keep returning to the deepest truths of the Gospel, trusting that they still have more to teach you than you previously thought. You are loved. He does not abandon. And what he has for you, although difficult and frightening, you are absolutely built for.