Mar 25, 2020
By Pastor Scott Hausrath
When friends come over to my place to watch football or a film, we always put some snacks and bowls onto the kitchen table. Each of us uses a bowl to hold our chips, crackers, cookies, and whatever other wonderful carbs we’re enjoying that day.
Some of the bowls on the table are disposable, so they get tossed into the trash when people go home. Some, however, are durable bowls so they go back into the kitchen cabinets after being washed. My two favorite durable bowls are the ones that my sister gave me when she was taking a pottery class 23 years ago. On the bottom of each bowl Lynnie carved her initials and the date she made it.
Both of these bowls are precious to me—because they were made by the hands of someone I love, someone who herself is precious to me. These gorgeous pieces of pottery connect me with my sister.
A while ago someone accidentally tossed into the trash one of my store-bought durable bowls. While I was a little peeved about this, it was no big deal. I simply retrieved it from the wastebasket and washed it. What if, however, someone had thrown into the trash one of the bowls my sister had made? What would be my reaction to that?
Sometimes we treat people in ways that make them feel like trash. For whatever reason, we fail to recognize how much each human being is actually worth. God, however, never does this because He is omniscient. Because He knows the truth about each of us, He deeply loves each of us.
Yes, part of our truth is not pretty, because each of us has done some ugly things. God would be fully justified in damning us to hell because of our behavior. Something led Him, however, to sacrifice His only Son in order to rescue us from damnation. Scripture calls this the love of God. Paul says in Ephesians 2:4-5, “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”
What is it about God that enables Him to love us so profoundly and unconditionally? My best guess is that, because God made each of us with His own hands, and because He made us in His own image, He fully comprehends how valuable we are even if our behavior has tarnished us. In Psalm 139:13-14, David reminds us of how precious we truly are: “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”
When God looks at us, He sees His fingerprints all over us. His image permeates our being. He sees Himself in us. How could He, therefore, treat us with anything else but love? It’s His intimate knowledge of us that makes it impossible for God to toss us into the trash.
How can we, in our daily living, love each other the way God loves us? Perhaps it begins with our knowledge of ourselves, a Biblical understanding of what a human being actually is. In 2 Corinthians 5:16-17 Paul says, “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
As followers of Jesus Christ, we are no longer the people we once were. We can now look at the world, including its people, not from a worldly perspective, but from a godly perspective. Seeing the image of God in people helps us to love them the way God loves them.