When a Mirror Isn't a Mirror
it is actually just a window into a home that you made for yourself.
Trying to live a Christian life isn’t always easy. No matter how I try to start my day, it doesn’t take long for the world to test my love for others. Though I know that I should love my neighbor because of God’s love for me, I don’t always know what to do when I feel wronged. Most of the time all of my love for my neighbor is counted as absent as soon as I begin my morning commute to work—anyone that has ever driven a car anywhere knows how I feel. How quickly we all seem to lose our tempers because of the “bad” or “dangerous” decisions of others, while we are always quick to explain how our own decisions are never wrong, always justified, and always stemming from a supposed deep love for the world.
That same propensity to always justify our own decisions follows us as we seek to find assurance in our Christian walks. Whenever we are in a season of trials and doubt, how quickly we choose to look inward, towards how we see ourselves in our own walks with Christ. Instead of fixing our eyes upon the blood shed for us by Jesus Christ on the cross, we look at our own reflection in the blood of Christ and choose to see our gazing upon Him as the thing that promises our own salvation. And while it is true that we must choose to follow Jesus, we can’t forget the person that we are placing our faith in—with the help of the Holy Spirit.
Our inclination to place our faith in our ability to have faith itself and place our assurance in that really shows us how quickly we too become like the Israelites following God and Moses into the wilderness. One moment we have faith, but the next moment we are building golden cows because that seems more promising. At least we can see the cow!
One of the reasons that our American churches seem to find themselves in an identity crisis is partially because we so often forsake the Man for which we all make our weekly pilgrimages to church. We get saved, then we decide it’s time to move on and learn how to lead a good Christian life. We got the easy part down, now we can rest and just take notes while the pastor talks about our biblical heroes and how we can be like them in our walk with God, we often think. Yet we forget that even the already saved need to be constantly reminded of the love that came down from heaven to save them. We all need to be reminded of how we fall short every moment, and it is only though Christ that we can truly be seen as righteous before God.
This Sunday, I challenge each of you to really take time to think about how amazing it is that we serve a God that sent His only Son for you! His blood was shed so that you could be able to live in communion with God in His absolute and perfect love. He didn’t shed His blood so that you would go back to trying to prove yourself by your actions. You can’t.
We are all like the Galatians that met Saint Paul at the church doorstep. We want Christ, but we also want people—ourselves included—to prove that they really mean it when they say that they love God. We assume that the mundane lives of our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ must surely mean that they aren’t living the “perfect” or “clean” lifestyle that God has commanded of them. Indeed, they probably aren’t. You probably aren’t.
Jesus wore the entirety of the weight of your sin for you. Because of Him, you don’t ever have to know what it would mean to truly wear it forever, and that is something to be thankful for.
Prayer:
God, thank you so much for every single person that is reading this article in this very moment. I pray that you guide each and every one of them as they strive to get to know You better through your Word. Thank you for sending Jesus to die for me, in spite of all of my hard-headedness and constant failures. Though I do my best to always love others, I know that sometimes I fall short. Thank You for loving me even when I seem to easily forget the promises that You have made to me and to all of the world. It is my prayer that everyone reading this would be reminded of how deeply You love them, and how amazing it is that Jesus died and rose again: for them. If anyone is reading this and doesn’t know You yet, I pray that Your Spirit would guide their hearts towards opening the door for the love that you have left for them just on the other side. In Jesus’ name, Amen.