Looking into God’s Word; Looking into Ourselves

…James 1:23 For anyone who hears the word but does not carry it out is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror, 24 and after observing himself goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25 But the one who looks intently into the perfect law of freedom, and continues to do so—not being a forgetful hearer, but an effective doer—he will be blessed in what he does… (Berean Study Bible)

This is our first time featuring the blog, Seeking God, which we discovered this week. All we know about the writer is his first name, Robert. Click the title below to read this devotional at source. Also, be prepared to click the different links to the many scriptures passages mentioned below, which will take you to Bible Hub.

God’s Word a Mirror, Not a Sword

God’s Word is a mirror that lets us see ourselves as compared to Him. God’s Word is to convict us as He speaks to us. It is not for us to condemn others by, for we are not God.

Know Thyself

How little many of us know our own faces: they’re something we can see if we look in a mirror, but they’re also something so common to us that we don’t even know all the details of how we look (make-up people excluded). We have a general image, but if blessed with exceptional artistic ability and asked to draw our faces, would we be able to make an accurate portrait? It is doubtful. Every pore is a world of its own, yet even the big things are thought of incorrectly (if I gave you a sheet of nose shapes, would you be able to pick out your nose– something you may even be able to see if you go cock-eyed enough–?)

A Mirror Unto Our Lives

Prayerfully reading the Bible and talking to God (with thoughtful consideration and openness to conviction of our own failures) is like a mirror showing ourselves since we are made in His Image (Genesis 1:27). If we don’t look into His truths, we will never know what we really look like compared to His Image as portrayed in Scripture. And if we only look into God’s truth and never apply it, we are like a man who looks into the mirror, leaves it, and immediately forgets what he looks like (James 1:23-24).

We Are Not Other’s Mirrors

It’s almost funny: we better know what others look like without knowing how ourselves really look. You know your best friend’s face anywhere. You can pick your lover out from a crowd. You can identify your parents in a photo taken twenty years ago (well, some people can). You’re the last person to know you have food in your teeth yet the first person to point it out in others (metaphorically speaking, even if it’s committed only in the heart (Matthew 5:28)). This is why Jesus said in Matthew 7:1-2 (ESV), “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.”

We’re often blind to the truth about ourselves, yet we’re quick to make a big deal of some perceived thing in others. Jesus continues on in the aforementioned passage: “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”

Indeed, how true: and so is the idiom, “Practice what you preach”, though we hear it so often that its depth of impact is lost upon us: it falls upon deaf ears that have tuned it out. Revenge and judgement: they are for God (Deuteronomy 32:35; Romans 12:19). We have not the right, for we have not the sight that God has: nor the heart, nor the understanding. It is not just outward appearances that God judges: it is not just actions. God judges the heart– the motives and reasons (1 Samuel 16:7; Proverbs 16:2).

Conclusion

Do we really know what we look like as compared to God? God remakes His true disciples day by day (2 Corinthians 4:16; Romans 12:2). Can we see ourselves as united to God: with Him being our God, and with us being His true people (Ezekiel 37:27)? Do we see the fullness of ourselves, and the fullness of God in us? Do we see every detail that brings beauty or ugliness in our faces? Do we really know what we look like– everything laid bare: no foundation, no make-up: just the truth of ourselves as God would have us know? Most likely, the answer is no. And neither do we know the truth behind the face others put up: many embellish their faces. Many hides flaws. Many things that we perceive as imperfections are not– beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but you hold not as you are only held. And much of what we think a haggard imperfection may not be so haggard as our own.