Daniel the Righteous Man Who Was Greatly Beloved
In a study of the Book of Daniel there was one detail that really caught my attention and caused me to have a much greater admiration for Daniel. Daniel is addressed several times by the angel Gabriel with the title of “man greatly beloved,” or “man greatly loved.” In the following passage he is told that he is greatly loved, “At the beginning of your pleas for mercy a word went out, and I have come to tell it to you, for you are greatly loved,” (Dan. 9:23). A check of the most popular bible translations concerning this verse reveals that three other terms are used to describe how Daniel is greatly loved: “you are treasured by God,” “you are highly esteemed,” and “you are precious.” The weight of this greeting to Daniel is on the person from whose mouth these words come from. The angel Gabriel is God’s premier angel, and he has been sent directly by God to present this message to Daniel. Therefore, the person who greatly loves Daniel, who treasures him, and considers him as precious, is God Himself. Let that sink in for a minute! To put this in proper perspective we must consider how many other persons in scripture are addressed in similar fashion–not many! My initial impression was that there can no greater compliment than to hear that God loves me greatly and highly favors me. From the lips of God’s angelic messenger to your ears, you are told, “you are treasured by God.” I believe that every Christian would love nothing more than to hear these words in their lifetime. The only thing that could compare would be to hear these words as you enter into God’s eternal kingdom, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Lord,” (Matt. 25:23).
As I contemplated these words addressed to Daniel, I felt a great amount of envy because I wanted to be like Daniel and be told that God loves me greatly. While that bar may be set too high and out of reach for the believer, such as I, who is working through his sanctification process with much gnashing of teeth as he battles the world, the flesh, and the devil. Regardless, I mined the book of Daniel to discover what set him apart from regular fallen humanity and made him special in the eyes of God. The following is the result of my research presented for my readers. As I mentioned before, the bar set by Daniel is high because he was a person of exceptional integrity, faith, and obedience, but we can strive to do our best to imitate his character.
Daniel’s Qualities of Spiritual Maturity
- Piety- Piety can best be described as a commitment to holy living, doing what is right in God’s eyes, and being devoted to a life of purity. Throughout Daniel’s life this piety makes him admired by his friends and fellow Jews, but it creates conflicts with the religious beliefs of his captors and brought a death sentence against him. He was sentenced to death in the lion’s den for praying to his God when there was a decree against it. Daniel’s commitment to doing what was right in God’s eyes overruled his fear of death displaying the level of his piety.
- Perseverance- Many of the religious heroes of Scripture experienced times of weak faith and times of strong faith. Times when they yielded to temptation and became backslidden. Some of these people started strong and ended badly, or started badly and ended strong, like the Apostle Paul. Daniel’s life is a straight line of steadfastness for a life devoted to holiness. He started well and ended well, with no falls recorded during his lifetime.
- Honorable- Daniel’s piety and integrity was recognized by all those who knew him. His character was so elevated that he was a person known to be honorable, and whose conduct was above reproach. He was placed in the highest levels of the kingdom by two separate kings because of the trust that his conduct had merited.
- Obedient- Rebellion is the distinct opposite of obedience. Daniel lived his life in obedience to his God, his faith, and even to the administration of an opposing kingdom. His piety inspired his desire to obey the commandments of God, and to be obedient to the instructions of those appointed over him because he recognized God’s design in placing him in that position. He obeyed and served the commands of his captors with distinction knowing that his conduct brought glory to God.
- Faithful- Daniel remained faithful to God throughout his ordeal regardless of the hardships that had to endure at times. He never questioned or doubted God. He trusted God in all things and followed the teachings of his faith until his last days. His faith was often tested but regardless of the outcome, his strong faith influenced his belief that God was in control and doing what was according to His will.
- Prayerfulness- In relation to Daniel’s faith was his devotion to prayer. He prayed and sought God for wisdom as he encountered difficulties in his life of captivity. He prayed for himself, for his captors, and for his people. In his prayers, he gave thanks, confessed sin, sought forgiveness, and praised God. Daniel’s prayers are much like King David’s which are contained in the Psalms. Their prayers reveal much concerning their close relationship to God. God loved David greatly and David constantly confessed his love for God. Daniel was told several times that he was greatly loved and favored by God. These expressions of God’s affection for Daniel come soon after he gave a great prayer in chapter 9 for his people due to their great acts of rebellion and disobedience against God. To place this act in proper context; the great sins of the people by their idolatry and breaking of the covenant help us to understand how Daniel’s contrite heart is greatly treasured when measured against the unrepentant hearts of the majority who acted wickedly. Though he remained obedient and faithful, he still felt the great offense against the God that he loved, so he humbled himself and intervened on behalf of his people by seeking repentance and forgiveness. This is why he is told by the angel soon after he began his prayer that God has responded with an answer because he is greatly loved. Then later in verse, (Dan. 10:11-12), he is again told that he is a man greatly beloved and that God had responded to his words because Daniel had set his heart on understanding and humbling himself before God. Daniel’s prayers were exceptional because he humbled himself, repented for his own sins and the sins of others as he considered the harm that they caused the great and holy God. His mind was set to do what was right in God’s eyes.
- Kind-hearted- Daniel had a gentle and loving nature which made people grow fond of him. Those who were appointed to supervise and train Daniel treated him favorably. He was gracious to those over him, and he approached everyone with the proper respect, never showing malice to any. He showed no hostility toward anyone and when he achieved a high level in the king’s court, he never displayed an attitude of arrogance over those that served him.
- Compassion- Daniel’s prayer for his people reveals his compassion for them. He presents the disobedience of the people by their wickedness and rebellion. His prayer includes the many accounts of their unfaithfulness which was the cause for the calamity that God brought down on them. In spite of the people’s sinful actions, Daniel expressed compassion toward them and pleaded to God for their forgiveness. He prayed that the Lord would turn His anger and wrath from them, not because they deserve anything, but because of God’s great compassion.
- God-centered- The entirety of Daniel’s life was centered on God. He loved God, obeyed God, praised God, and sought God through constant prayer as a son seeking comfort, wisdom, and relationship with his father. He was taken at an early age from his family by an army of strangers to a hostile land. He was without his beloved family and father, so he sought comfort from his divine Father. God was the Father that protected, guided, and instructed Daniel in wisdom. Daniel recognized this, therefore his Father, his God, was the center and focus of his life. While Daniel’s peers were focused on keeping the law for righteousness, Daniel was focused on his relationship with God for righteousness and every other aspect of life. Daniel is an example of what that relationship with God means–being God-centered and making Him the focus of our lives with everything else taking its position around God at the center.
The Spiritual Life That Leads to Christlikeness
Daniel possessed these virtues that set him apart from others and made him precious in the eyes of God. But it was more than that–Daniel was in a special relationship with God, as Father and son. God led, and he followed. He humbled himself and set his heart on understanding God’s word and will for his life. He turned to God and sought after Him through prayer, “So I turned my attention to the Lord God to seek him by prayer and petitions, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes,” (Dan. 9:3). There is another biblical hero who had the same type of relationship with God, who related to Him as a son to his Father, and who spoke to God constantly through prayer. King David’s relationship with God and his conversations have been preserved in those Psalms which he authored. His words reveal why God referred to David as, “A man after my own heart,” “The LORD has sought out for Himself a man after His own heart, and the LORD has appointed him as ruler over His people,” (1Sam. 13:14). David and Daniel knew God personally and this relationship was the foundation that shaped their lives. David was a warrior and a rugged man of unbridled passions which caused him to stumble, but his great faith and true repentance brought him back in God’s grace. Daniel was a man with a gentle spirit and of high integrity who served God faithfully for his entire life and did not stumble. These men followed different paths and had different personalities, but they both loved God and placed Him as the main priority in their lives. In Daniel, we see a life of true piety and purity. In David, we see a life filled with struggle against worldly desires, but we also see a man of great devotion and faith to His Lord where he maintained this relationship through deep confession and repentance. Believers can identify with one of these men as they desire to be either, “a man or woman after God’s own heart,” or as a person “greatly beloved by God.” The heart of the matter is that we were made in the image of God so that we could be in relationship to Him–Love, honor, and cling to the Lord who has adopted you by faith just as a child clings to their father.
Hosea 4:6 Teaching Ministry 