When I look at my children, I have an honest awareness of their flaws and failures. But I also have an overwhelming sense of their beauty, value, and significance. I am absolutely committed to them in a way that only seems fitting for a perfect child, and yet I know they are not this. And even in full awareness of their defects, I am able to enjoy them with reckless abandon as if they didn’t have any, even because of them in some sense.
If I’m not mistaken, this is how God views each of us in Christ. He loves us so fully and magnificently as if we were perfect because by His sacrifice we are made so. And yet He is also far more aware of every single imperfection in us than we are. And He revels in our every move and rejoices to behold us. Teaching us this disposition, I believe, is a big part of why He gives us our own children.
But if all of this is true, the next real challenge is whether we can learn to see other Christians through this same basic paradigm. Can we learn to see them through Christ as God Himself does? Can we learn to find their flaws and foibles as endearing as those of our own children? Every day, I hope I grow a little bit closer to being able to say, “Yes,” to that question.
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