What I love most about Jesus is the deeply personal, highly individual way He relates to people around Him—the openness, genuine interest, and respect He shows in every interaction.
I am especially moved by His willingness to seek out a single person or allow Himself to be found by one. And by the fact that He was ready to invest time and energy in a personal conversation, not only in preaching to crowds—a striking contrast to our tendency to invest ourselves where it “matters,” where the impact is visible and where we can impress others.
“This was Christ’s method. His work was largely made up of personal interviews. He had a faithful regard for the one-soul audience. Through that one soul the message was often extended to thousands.”[1]
A powerful example appears in John 3:16, one of the best-known verses in the Bible: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Although these words have become a universal declaration of divine love, they were first spoken in the context of an intimate conversation, under the cover of night. The listener was Nicodemus, an influential yet fearful man. Afraid of being despised by others, he chose to seek Jesus in secret, and Jesus received him with the same kindness He would have shown him in broad daylight.
The One who came to seek what was lost
Jesus spent time with those on the margins—with people who carried little worth in the eyes of society, if they were not outright despised, such as tax collectors or the scorned Samaritan woman. He knew the secrets of their lives, just as He knows ours, yet that never prevented Him from offering them His attention and presence.
His attitude stands in sharp contrast to the spirit of the modern world, where success often seems measured by the number of followers, views, or the size of one’s audience. But this temptation does not affect only those in the online world—even those of us without remarkable achievements on the internet are inclined to believe that the value of our efforts depends on how many people recognise or validate them.
What strikes me about Jesus is His simplicity. Often, He had only “one view”—one person standing before Him. And yet that encounter changed lives, and His influence reached farther than we can imagine. To Jesus, no one is merely a face lost in the crowd. We are not just numbers in a statistic. He relates to you as though you were the only person on earth[2]. In every place and every age, He sees familiar faces—friends, or potential friends, if only we are willing to answer His call.
It is important to remember that our impact on the world may ultimately rest on individual interactions—an approach worth following, because it was also Christ’s method.
Meeting Him—between community and intimacy
At the same time, Jesus did not avoid the crowds. The Sermon on the Mount, the feeding of the five thousand, and His regular attendance at the synagogue all show that gathering together plays an essential role in the life of faith. Yet His teaching does not remain only at the communal level. A personal encounter with God, through reading Scripture and private prayer, is indispensable to the health of our souls.
There can be no real relationship with Jesus without moments when we are alone with Him. The One who knows us by name is not only a Teacher or a King, but also the best Friend we could ever have. How are you making use of this extraordinary opportunity?
Márk Szallós-Farkas is deeply moved by the fact that Jesus—sought by crowds eager to hear Him and witness His miracles—was just as willing to share the bread of the Word with the humblest soul.
