In the beginning, God said, “let us make man in our image.” What this means is that we are a manifestation of who God is. Since God is a God of perfect relationship between the three persons, He therefore made us a people of relationships. We were made to commune with others, but most importantly with God. This is why we confess in the Apostle’s Creed, “I believe…the Communion of Saints.”
We were not meant to be alone. For as in the beginning when God created man, He then spoke, “It is not good that man should be alone.” Now I realize that that statement was specifically for the creation of woman. Nevertheless, it does imply that, even if one is not married, we are still meant to have communion with other people. We were created by God to be creatures with social lives.
Loneliness pierced one to the very depths of the soul. Christ felt deep loneliness on the cross when He was crucified. If you look at all the things that Christ did and said both before and on the cross, He never once mentioned anything about His physical suffering. Until, under the full punishment of our sins that He took upon Himself, He could no longer see the love of His Father, whom He dearly loved. In other words, the loneliness that Christ felt on the cross was so great, that no physical pain could ever come close to what He felt at that moment. In fact, it was so great that He finally spoke these words, “My God, My God, Why hast thou forsaken me?” If Christ, who was both God and sinless man, (entirely man) couldn’t stand being alone, how much more than us?
This ought to be of great comfort to us. Never will we have to suffer the terrifying loneliness that He suffered. Never will we be alone. Never ought we to be afraid that we are social outcasts. And the best part of all this is that Christ knows loneliness, more than we will ever know; and since He knows loneliness and what it is like, we will never be alone. He can and will provide for all that we need in this life.
Patrick Streyle
Young Calvinists 