For more than a year now Wes and I have been working on a book about choosing friends and what those friends should look like. Draft chapters are posted on Substack as articles and you can read chapter one here: Alypius and the Gladiator (and the friends we choose). That one was published on April 24, 2026. Subsequent chapters can be found by scrolling through the God Running Substack profile activity.
The book contends that if you’re a Jesus follower, the friends you choose should be the most Christlike people you can find. And Christlike people have certain identifying attributes. They have a deep abiding love (called khesed in the Bible), they have faces that shine with the spirit of Jesus, they’re people of gratitude, they won’t let their friends suffer alone, and they’ll hold you accountable. In reality, these are attributes of Jesus himself.
Another way we can describe Jesus is found in 1 Corinthians 13: Jesus is love, therefore Jesus is patient and kind; Jesus does not envy or boast; Jesus is not arrogant or rude. Jesus does not insist on his own way; Jesus is not irritable or resentful; Jesus does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Jesus bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Jesus describes himself as “gentle and lowly in heart.” (Matthew 11:29)
I love all these attributes of Jesus. And sometime during the seven years I wrote the Love Like Jesus book, I started trying to grow into a person who shared these attributes of Jesus.
But,
there’s one attribute I overlooked somehow. And that attribute is the way Jesus was, and is:
Relentless.
While Jesus walked the earth, he was relentless in the way he loved God and loved people, even when he was heavily criticized for loving and befriending sinners. He was relentless in the way he healed people, even when he was criticized for healing on the Sabbath. Jesus relentlessly freed people from demons even when they said he freed people from demons by the power of the prince of demons. Jesus relentlessly shared God’s love and truth even when people tried to throw him off a cliff and even though people tried to stone him. (Matthew 9:10-13, Matthew 12:24, Luke 4:28-30, John 8:56-59)
Jesus relentlessly loved people.
I don’t know how I missed this. Over my lifetime I’ve spent years studying successful leaders and successful people, and the attribute of relentlessness is always present. Jim Collins talks about it in his classic book Good to Great. Michael Jordan, one of the greatest athletes ever, has been described by coaches, teammates, and opponents as relentless. Almost anyone who has succeeded at almost anything at the highest levels is found to have this quality of relentlessness. So, it’s not surprising Jesus had that same attribute when it came to his mission to communicate the love of God to the world, and to seek and save the lost, and to give abundant life, and to give his life as a ransom.
Jesus loved relentlessly right up until the end.
As a follower of Jesus, I need to love like that too.
“Lord have mercy on me and on the dear person reading this right now. Please transform us into the likeness of Your Son Jesus in every way. Help us to love relentlessly the way Jesus loved relentlessly. Pour Your love into us by the Holy Spirit.
“In Jesus’ name we ask this of You.
“Amen.”
Kurt Cameron Bennett best known for his book Love Like Jesus. After attending church and studying the Bible for most of his adult life, he was challenged by a pastor to study Jesus. That led to an obsessive seven-year deep dive. After pouring over Jesus’ every interaction with another human being, he realized he was doing a much better job of studying Jesus’ words than he was following Jesus’ words and example. The honest and fearless revelations of Bennett’s own moral failures affirm he wrote Love Like Jesus for himself as much as for others. He currently lives in Hillsboro, Oregon, just a few miles from his son Gabe, daughter (-in-law) Charise, and grandson Andrew. He has another son Nate and daughter (-in-law) Anastasia who live in Sammamish, Washington. His blog, God Running is a place for anyone who wants to (or even anyone who wants to want to) love Jesus more deeply, follow Jesus more closely, and love people the way Jesus wants us to.
Featured Image by JESUS_is_our_only_HOPE from Pixabay
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