1 John 4:9-10; 19
“This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. We love because he first loved us.”
Cambridge Dictionary has named ‘parasocial’ as the Word of the Year for 2025 (other dictionaries choose their own words). The word is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as ‘involving or relating to a connection that someone feels between themselves and a famous person they do not know, a character in a book, film, TV series, etc, or an artificial intelligence’. People who form these parasocial bonds feel that they can trust the person they focus on, forming a sense of loyalty to them and yet it is only one-sided as the person has no knowledge of them in return.
People who don’t believe in Jesus dying as their ‘atoning sacrifice’, might think that Christians have a parasocial connection to God. However, when we trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as our personal Saviour, it is not a parasocial connection but it is a true relationship as it is two-way. Indeed, God first loved us and He waits for us to return that love. When we do come to faith in Him, then just as Jesus told His disciples, “‘If you love me, keep my commands.” (John 14:15), we need to show that love and that our relationship with God is real.
