"Love one another with brotherly affection.
Outdo one another in showing honor."
Romans 12:10
Whether you have 20/20 eyesight or not,
each of us is born desperate for vision surgery from the Great
Physician – for the Holy Spirit to enter into our lives and
radically transform the viewpoint from which the eyes of our hearts
see life.
Our struggle in life is that we are all
born with eyes that are constantly turned inward – we are, by
nature, concerned primarily with how we are affected by what
is going around us. Our default is not to seek to understand how
something might be impacting others, but rather to compulsively see
only how we are treated. We are, quite simply, self-obsessed.
Instead of being “me-focused,”
Christ calls us to be “others-focused.” Instead of being
self-obsessed, Christ calls us to be self-forgetful. And what He
calls us to, He will empower us for. His Holy Spirit alone can
perform such monumental paradigm shift in our thinking – sometimes
in big, dramatic ways, but often in small steps as He, little by
little, adjusts our lenses to see and honor others above ourselves.
It is how our King lived as He walked this earth, and as His
followers, we are being made like Him, “being transformed into the
same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corin. 3:18).
When we allow the Holy Spirit to do His
work in our hearts, when we ask Him for eyes to see ourselves and
others the way He sees us, we begin to walk in unspeakable freedom!
Suddenly, as His Gospel washes afresh over us, we're reminded that,
because Jesus paid the price for our sins, we are justified before
God and set free from the pressure to perform perfectly in this life
to gain His acceptance (which we never could!). His Spirit reminds us
that, because Christ is our Savior, we are beautifully clothed in His
righteousness and forever declared “good enough” by the only One
Whose opinion of us really matters! We are free then to take our eyes
off ourselves, free to stop trying to make sure nobody shakes our
fragile false sense of self-worth – and instead we can open our
eyes to those around us, seeing their needs and joyfully seeking to
meet them, trusting that our Savior has and will continue to meet all
of ours.
Our love, devotion and service to
others is genuine when it comes from a Holy Spirit-inspired place of
gratitude for all that Christ has done for us. May we daily seek to
see ourselves and others through His eyes so we can spend our time
walking in true brotherly love for one another!
