Grace

“I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Co 1:4

“Do I see Christ in them when I see the people sitting next to me in the pews?” This is the question we need to ask ourselves.

Instead of beholding the purity and perfection of Christ Jesus, we may see all the warps and wrinkles in our brothers and sisters and start to wonder perhaps we should be somewhere else on Sunday morning.

“Do I see Christ in me when I look at myself?” This is perhaps a more important question for us to address than the previous one. What we see in a mirror is a man who has been vexed by sin and is struggling to get a hold of himself, a man who needs to muster every ounce of his energy to get up in the morning and has to drag his feet just to move slowly through the day. Is this the man you see when you look at yourself?

Can I thank the Lord for myself? This is a difficult thing to do for some of us, isn’t it?

Some people may have an easier time doing it than others, but there are things in all of us with which we are not pleased, things both within and without ourselves that remind us of Adam’s fall, things that sometimes make us feel that we shouldn’t have been born, things that made old Job curse his birthday and caused his foolish wife to say: “curse God and die.”

I used to try to hide my crooked teeth by keeping my mouth closed when I smiled. It’s indeed a small thing for people who have straight teeth, but it’s a big deal for me. What do I see when I look into a mirror? My flat nose and crooked teeth. I have learned to identify myself by my perceived physical and mental flaws and, no matter how hard I try, I still feel the same way about myself. The fancy name for this type of infirmity is: inferiority complex.

“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” Do I see Christ in me? Maybe I should. Do I see Christ in people who sit next to me in the pew? Maybe I should.

We thank the Lord for who we are and for our fellow Christians for who they are because of God’s grace, not because of our own or their merit. People’s great merit only causes their neighbors to become jealous, but divine grace makes people give thanks and praise to God.

Never a single time have I offered thanks to God for my crooked teeth; never once have I praised the Lord for my less than perfect personality. Maybe I haven’t really seen Christ in me.

“How can Christ make his abode in this pile of dung, this awful filth?” we wonder.

Christ sank to the lowest of the low to bring us up to the highest of the high. Who we were didn’t surprise him a bit, so who we will be should not surprise us. Because of his grace, Christ in us isn’t an illusion at all; it’s reality. Therefore we must make an effort to see Christ in them when we look at our fellow Christians and, more importantly, let us see Christ in us when we look at ourselves and gradually, we may even start to enjoy looking at ourselves.