BP38
Have you ever looked in a mirror? Why do we look in mirrors anyway? Some people might say to see how good they look. Others might say to see how bad they look. Many gaze in mirrors to see if they need to tend to their hair or face to make themselves more beautiful or presentable to the world.
We look in mirrors, then, to see how we look on the outside.
In the 19th century fairy tale entitled Snow White, the Brothers Grimm wrote about a queen who practiced witchcraft. As part of her unnatural powers, she had a mirror that never lied to her. She would frequently look into the mirror hanging on the wall and ask who was the fairest woman in the whole kingdom.
Every time, the mirror told her that she was the fairest of all.
One day, however, the mirror told her that her young stepdaughter was the most beautiful in the kingdom. Shocked, the queen—who was the second wife of the king—hated Snow White for being more beautiful than her.
Most of us know the rest of the plot about how the queen attempts to murder her rival who is living in the forest under the protective care of seven dwarves. Many of us, however, may not know the end of the story as written by the Brothers Grimm: The queen meets her demise when the prince who is to marry Snow White (after she recovers from the piece of the apple that had been lodged in her throat) orders the queen to wear red-hot iron slippers and dance in them until she drops dead.
The main point of this old fairy tale for our purposes here today is the evil queen’s mirror. She approached this truthful mirror and inquired about her physical beauty time after time. She was very pleased with the message of the mirror until the day it spoke a truth she hated to hear.
How do you receive the truth of the mirrors in your life–not only the mirrors that reflect your physical appearance, but especially the ones that reflect the contents of your heart? What do you feel when a mirror tells you a truth you don’t wish to hear? Do you even have such a mirror in your life? Do you permit it to be in your presence?
Some people send away any mirror that wounds them with truth they do not want to hear. But then how can they grow if they don’t have someone outside of them who reflects back their strengths and their weaknesses, their maturity and their immaturity, their holiness and their sin?
We simply cannot grow without mirrors that show us who we are and who we need to become.
Is it your goal in life to grow in spiritual, psychological, and relational maturity? If growth is your goal, remember the truth that God is not always as interested in what He can do for you as what He wants to do in you. The Holy Spirit and God’s word are the best mirrors in the universe. Both will grow you by shining light inside your heart and by bringing the power to change.
There is another issue to be considered concerning mirrors. Some mirrors are true. Some are false. The true mirrors of the Holy Spirit, God’s word, and faithful, honest friends reflect back to us who we are in our hearts which may be a challenging image to receive since we are quite broken inside. But at least they are true.
Other mirrors–like the distorted ones in our own hearts as well as the enemy’s mirror–will portray us in grotesque ways accompanied by accusation and condemnation. Some people choose to send away all mirrors because a few are false and shaming. How tragic. If we shun all mirrors, we shun God Himself and then cannot see ourselves through His eyes.
For life and growth, we need to be very careful not to banish the true and faithful mirrors that will grow us.
Speaking of growth, have you ever thought that Christians have been given a distinct advantage in the realm of personal growth?
I don’t make this statement to boast about believers or to claim that non-believers are incapable of growth. What I am saying is that three gifts that accompany God’s mirror are uniquely helpful for followers of Jesus in terms of freeing them to grow.
More strongly stated, one could say that these factors are necessary prerequisites for human growth. Significant growth cannot occur without them because they all make looking into the mirror of truth possible. (Often we want to avoid even glancing into the mirror of truth because we’re afraid of what we’ll see!)
These three gifts that form the beautiful frame around God’s mirror are unconditional love, mercy (forgiveness), and grace. They represent the three keys that unlock the chains that absolutely keep a human bound by the fear of being known.
Unconditional love sets people free from the fear of not being lovable, from believing the lie that if God’s mirror reveals something bad or sinful in their hearts, they will be abandoned.
Mercy delivers an individual from the fear of judgment, shame, and condemnation that other mirrors communicate quite ecstatically.
Grace liberates all believers from the fear that they must make themselves good enough to approach God and look in the mirror of His loving face.
More essential aids to emotional/psychological growth exist no where else in the universe. These three are not simply helpful options among many out there. They are the three essential gifts that make looking inside our hearts possible.
When we know we are loved without condition, delivered from shame and condemnation by mercy, and empowered by God’s grace instead of our own efforts to change, we are set free to be transparent, vulnerable and honest—all prerequisites to growth (because growth can never occur without the ability to look inside one’s heart).
Without love, mercy and grace, we remain imprisoned and cannot make strides toward growth. Growth requires looking inside. The three fears of unlovability, condemnation and powerlessness prevent us from doing so, but love, mercy and grace negate these fears.
Let’s briefly consider these three factors that make growth possible.
The unconditional love of God is just that—unconditional. It means that God loves you right where you’re at (but that He also loves you too much to let you settle for where you’re at because He wants to do a greater work in you for your joy).
Unconditional love pursues you first. It doesn’t require you to make yourself lovable. It means that Jesus’ love is primary—even before your obedience or faithfulness. His love draws you to Himself and then you obey in response to that unbelievable love.
Also, God’s unconditional love can’t be derailed by you, a mere human. Have you ever actually believed that you could impact or lessen any attribute of God’s character? As a believer in Jesus, even if you sin and feel despicably unlovable, He will not reject or abandon you.
His love is unconditional. It is not contingent on your performance. What an amazing advantage it is to be a believer in Jesus and live with the promise of that unchanging love! How much more inviting it is to look in a mirror if we know that no matter what we see, we will be loved. No matter what.
Then there is the gift of mercy.
One definition I’ve read about mercy is God not giving us what we deserve in terms of the penalty for our sins, for our wrongdoings.
Mercy means that if you turn to the Father and reach your arms toward Him, He will set you free from guilt, shame, badness, accusation, condemnation, the prosecuting attorneys that live in your head (including Satan, internalized voices from your outside world, your own sinful flesh) and even the anger of God toward unholiness.
God’s mirror in which you behold your fallen, stubborn, and rebellious self does not disqualify you as too bad to be in God’s family. Quite to the contrary, the voice of His mirror invites you to come.
Always come.
The third gift that accompanies God’s unconditional love and mercy is His grace. One definition for grace is God giving us good things we do not deserve including things like faith and the power to live a life that desires to obey and follow Jesus.
Mercy means that God doesn’t give us the negative consequences we deserve, and grace says that God does give us positive consequences we don’t deserve. What an amazing combination that makes looking in His mirror safe and even desirable.
Ephesians 2:4-5 dovetails these three attributes of God in one passage: But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved [you don’t have to make yourself good enough].
These three gifts from God are also on display in 2 Corinthians 5:21 where it says, For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.
In other words, in His great love (John 3:16), the Father sent His son to take our sin and its penalty on Himself (mercy) and then gifted us His righteousness instead (grace).
When we are told that we are always loved no matter what; that we will not be condemned when we do stumble and sin; and that He is the One who is responsible for making us faithful and obedient instead of our own efforts, we are set free to approach God’s mirror (throne in Hebrews 4:16) with boldness.
Yes, Jesus makes it safe for us to look in the mirror that will expose who we are—the good, the bad, and the ugly. In the presence of love, mercy, and grace, we can identify and confess every fault within us. No wonder believers in Jesus have a monopoly on deep inner growth.
Nonbelievers are not as free to clean the inside of the cup (their hearts) because their mirrors are not framed by the gifts of God’s love, mercy and grace that make it so safe to know oneself. When those who do not have Jesus as their beautiful savior look in the mirrors available to them, they hear only the accusations of the inner self (superego), the internalized condemnation of others, and the scathing indictments of Satan. They have no defender!
On a side note, the more God is removed from a culture, the more even the common grace of God is no longer available. People are totally alone with condemning mirrors and have no fragrance of God wafting into their lives with the common grace that declares that they are precious because they bear God’s image and are eligible for redemption and reconciliation.
They have no Defender (Jesus) who loves them with mercy and grace so they cannot bear to look inside their souls. They are completely exposed to the condemnation of the prosecuting attorney. Their only option, then, is to look outside themselves and blame (focusing on the badness of others), or to look inside and hate themselves resulting in anxiety, depression, and addictions.
Back to the amazing advantage believers have when it comes to growth . . .
There are many signs that point to the growth that occurs as a believer gazes into the safe reflection of Jesus’ mirror. These signs do not arrive in a split second at the moment of justification. No, they develop day by day in the hearts of believers as they spend time with the Triune God.
Four of these signs are teachability as opposed to defensiveness (guardedness, personalizing, self-referencing); looking inside at oneself as opposed to outside at others; loving others as opposed to needing perfect mirroring from others to meet deep narcissistic needs; trusting those who are safe as opposed to controlling others.
This post will develop one of the above briefly, namely, teachability v. defensiveness.
A sign that a believer is gazing into the loving mirror of Jesus’ mercy and grace is an openness to receiving correction and discipline. Maybe this teachable person doesn’t throw open her arms and say, “Hit me with truth.” She may not love receiving constructive criticism.
She is receptive, however, to hearing God’s word, the Holy Spirit, and others around her as they reflect on her personality and behaviors.
She may hear God’s word say, “The love of money is the root of all evil. You are spending extra time at work and leaving your kids in daycare so you and your husband can buy that amazing cabin on the lake. You are loving a possession more than your own children.”
She receives this message from God’s word because she knows she’s loved unconditionally and she knows the truth is spoken to her out of fondness for her, not a desire to shame her into obedience.
She might also be open to the inner conviction of the Holy Spirit: “Lauren, every time you return from church, you criticize the worship experience. You complain that the overall manner of worship is not charismatic enough for you. Instead of looking for the negatives, focus on God during worship and experience my presence in your heart. Look only at Jesus and you will have great joy.”
She hears the conviction of the Spirit as a mercy because she senses no condemnation in it—only a challenge to grow to be more like Jesus.
When her friend tells her over coffee that she passively expresses her anger toward her husband by disrespecting him in front of others, she swallows hard and listens. She waits until the hot wave of embarrassment and anger within her subsides before she answers. Instead of immediate denial or defensiveness, she asks, “Can you give me an example of what you see?”
She receives her friend’s reflection to her because she knows that her lovability does not rest on her performance but on the grace Jesus gives her to grow.
Love, mercy, and grace. When these beckon to you from the mirror in which God desires you to look, there will be only some defensiveness on your part when you are called out by God or others. You will lean away from denial, arguing, blaming, and shooting the messenger.
Do you ever wonder if some people deconstruct their faith because they are angered by God’s correction? If they experience discipline as being placed in the spotlight of accusation and shame, they will find God distasteful—maybe a lot like a parent or another previous authority in their lives. Transferring their anger toward these people onto God, they defend against His voice instead of welcoming His truth.
Moral of this story? Don’t be like Snow White’s stepmother who hated the truth from her mirror so much that she wanted to murder her own stepdaughter.
Open your heart to God’s unconditional love and condemnation-erasing mercy and God’s riches toward you expressed in grace and look in His mirror of growth. Today, what you see in that mirror may be dim and vague. But not for long. The child of God will eventually be transformed into the mature son or daughter of the King.
The more you look in His mirror, the more you’ll grow. The more you grow, the more you’ll become like Him. The more you become like Him, the more you’ll love the One who gave His life so that you might love the world as He loved you.
And the world today certainly needs the unconditional love of Jesus like never before!
When I was a child, I spoke like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known ~ I Corinthians 13:11-12