Look in the mirror and what do you see? I see a laugh-line looking at me. I’m guessing there’s a pretty high percentage of people that see the flaws being much more prominent than their beauty. As we age, there’s often a stretch of time that all we see are the flaws. We start seeing things like crow’s feet, laugh lines, white hairs and sunspots. Even the younger generations look at their reflection and see the negatives. They base much of this on what social media says is beautiful – and we all know that doesn’t reflect the truth. We often assume that we don’t measure up, but we’re not even sure what we’re trying to measure up to. We look in the mirror and fail to see beauty.
My husband and I have been leading a book study at our church that’s wrapping up soon. We’ve been reading and discussing The Gospel in Ten Words by Paul Ellis. Excellent book – highly recommend – seriously, a great book that is fully backed up with scripture. I can sum it up with 4 words: Jesus did it all. We might reflexively agree to that simple statement, but then we see our reflection in the mirror and subconsciously disagree. (Seriously, get the book.)
We look in the mirror and see the selfish tendencies, the anger we feel towards someone who has done us wrong, the wrong we’ve done to someone else, the tongue that can’t seem to be tamed, and all of the ways we have fallen short. We zero in on the wrinkles, we see the sunspots, the white hairs stand out more and more, and how did birds leave prints without our knowledge? We see our failures and forget that we’ve been saved.
How often do we look in the mirror and see Jesus smiling back at us? That all depends on how we read and understand the Bible.
Have you ever messed up – in thought, word, or action – and felt as though there was a distance between you and God? You might even hear a condemning voice asking how you can call yourself a Christian. I know I’ve heard it… if I’m completely honest, I mess up every single day. Even if my actions aren’t out of line, my thoughts very often are. And then the frustration of failure follows. That’s when I see the flaws in my reflection.
Instead of believing the totality of what was accomplished at the cross, I’m clutching a toiletry bag to groom myself into what I believe is beautiful and acceptable to my Father. Is my hair just right? What about my make-up? Is it too much or not enough? Maybe I need to get a plumper for my lips, a special injection to hide the frown lines, perhaps my eye lashes need extensions… highlights in the hair will hide the gray… count the calories more than blessings… best to keep up with the changing trends.
All of this lack that we zero in on is not what Jesus died a horrific death to provide. We need to start defining ourselves by His finished work at the cross instead of all the ways we lack in performance. We need to start believing what God says about us instead of what the world says.
When I first sat down to investigate this out, I felt a bit overwhelmed. How is my reflection any different from the moment before salvation to the moment of salvation… and all the moments after? Why is it that we hear the message of come as you are and then we’re saddled with look and act the part? We’re lured in with the promise of grace only to be tricked into a lifestyle of performance. We’re assured that all our sins were paid for at the cross, but there’s this underlying current of an expense that is our responsibility. We’ve been made new, but do we realize what that is?
I wrote about this divine transaction a few years ago in It’s All Greek to Me. The Greek word tetelestai, meaning it is finished, is from John 19:30. Jesus has gone through a brutalization before hanging on the cross and He is marking the finality of the transaction with the word tetelestai. It’s not a religious progression to being saved, but a divine transaction of redemption. I’m not a sinner saved by grace – I was once a sinner, but I’ve been made new. The transaction was completed at Calvary and it became a reality for me when I accepted His grace.
That sounds too good to be true and, if we’re honest, we know that we still mess up. We don’t often hear that our performance is not meant to define us, but rather our parentage. As Paul Ellis puts it, this is not about your performance, but about your pedigree. Let’s take a look at some scripture:
No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin because he is born of God. I John 3:9 NASB (emphasis added)
When we say yes to Jesus, we are filled with Him. We are no longer a sinner, but rather we’re a son or a daughter. When we say yes to Jesus, His seed that is in us cannot produce sin. An apple tree will produce apples and inside those apples are apple seeds. Do apples get bruised at times? Yes, but they don’t turn into pears – they remain apples.
Even though we’ve been made apples, that’s not always how we act and as a result, that’s not always what we see when we look in the mirror. Many of us fail to see the new creation that God made us. We have been made new (Romans 6:4 and II Corinthians 5:17), and as we gain revelation of God’s goodness and love, our actions will naturally reflect that.
I don’t want to look in the mirror and see who I used to be – I’m defined by who Jesus is – as He is, so am I (I John 4:17). And if you’ve said yes to Jesus, then you should see Him and His righteousness staring back at you when you look in the mirror, too. When we look in the mirror and see Jesus smiling back at us, there will be no laugh-lines, sunspots, crow’s feet or white hairs to fret over – we’ll see that we’ve been made new and will be confident in our relationship with our Father.