The Right Mirror

"For we are His workmanship , created in Christ Jesus for good works , which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them." Eph 2:10 NASB

The potter and the clay, shepherd and sheep, master and servant are all beautiful metaphors, but they are not for you. If you use those images as a picture of your relationship to God, you're getting a very distorted image. You are not God's clay, sheep, or servant. You are His masterpiece, His saint and His son.

Read More...

All mirrors are not created equal. Some are more accurate than others are. As a kid, I loved the bent and twisted mirrors at the fair that made you look two feet tall or like your neck was eight feet long. That was one thing no one ever got tired of. Why didn't they sell those as household toys? It may have significantly postponed the video game revolution. Anyway, I loved playing with those distorted images of myself then, now it just makes me seasick...pathetic.

Did you know there are two mirrors in the Bible? Most of us know them as the Old and New Testaments. Actually, they're two covenants, or contracts between God and His people. Both are inspired and useful. However, if you want to know who you are, you have to be careful not to look into the wrong mirror.

Paul made a point in one of His letters to Timothy to encourage him to study the scriptures so that he could correctly handle the word of truth. One version uses the phrase, "rightly dividing the word of truth." The truth is, scripture needs to be divided so that each part is used for its intended purpose. Some of what is written in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament, does not apply to believers. Without going into too much detail, just take the book of Job for example. Quoting verses from that book can be dangerous, since much of it is simply the human analysis of Job's situation, which God comes back to personally refute. Imagine that! If you don't know how to divide the truth, you might quote a Bible verse that God says isn't true!

Well, it's not that uncommon. There are several metaphors of relationship to God in the Old Testament. The potter and the clay, shepherd and sheep, master and servant are all beautiful metaphors, but they are not for you. If you use those images as a picture of your relationship to God, you're getting a very distorted image. You are not God's clay, sheep, or servant. You are His masterpiece, His saint and His son. How many songs we sing, how many sermons we hear that tell us we are less than what we are. God help us.

At times it may seem like a minor issue, but please remember what it is that separates the Old from the New in Scripture---the cross of Jesus. Ultimate punishment placed on Infinite Innocence is the dividing line and the price paid to bring us across that line was the very life of God. How can we think it a small thing to choose to stay in the bondage from which He died to rescue us? Was it a bad thing to be clay, sheep, or servant before the cross? No, it was the best that was available on earth. However, it is bondage compared to what is available to us now. The entire book of Hebrews was written to make that single point.

So look into the right mirror. Read the Old Testament, but always through the lens of the cross, and spend your time in the New Testament. Don't settle for a distorted image. God gave Paul, Peter, John and the other New Testament writers the full revelation of who He made us to be. Read what they wrote. Meditate on it. Gaze into it like a mirror and learn to know deeply who you are. I believe it is then and only then, that you will begin to live like the masterpiece, the saint, and the son (or daughter) that you are.

References: Job 38, John 1, Galatians 3, Colossians 1, Ephesians 1, Romans 1, Eph 2