The Face of Love
“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
Mahatma Gandhi
We hear it all the time. Christians are hypocrites. Christians think they are better than everyone else. Christians think they have all the answers. Christians say one thing and do another.
All those statements have been true at one time or another. We can really get on our high horse. We can pontificate until the cows come home… or in our case, Jesus returns. In other words, we are human.
When the unsaved look at us, they see a mirror image of themselves. Flawed. Sinful. Imperfect. They expect more. After all, don’t we try to let others see Jesus in us? But often others are looking at the wrong thing. We, as Christians, should never claim perfection, or that we are “better” than others. We aren’t. We are saved. We are forgiven. But we alone aren’t God’s children. All people belong to Him.
Often where those who are seeking the truth err is that they expect to look at us and see Christ, they expect us to pour a saving grace upon them. But we cannot save them. What we are called to be is God’s conduit to a lost world. And we need to keep that role in our minds as we try to lead others to Christ. We need to re-orient their sight from us, to God above.
When they look at us, they see the result of a life rescued by Christ. It isn’t a life without torment, without problems, without sin. It is a life redeemed. And it is a life that overflows with God’s love.
That’s the face we need to show the world, a face of love. That is the face of God.
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