A life without mirrors would make for an interesting social dynamic. You would have to rely on how everyone described your appearance to figure out what you look like. You would also have to start being more brutally honest about your co-workers hair that day, or the goober hanging out of their nose. But say after years of these charades you were the first person to be able to use a mirror and see a reflection of your true image. It would surely be a sight that you wouldn't soon forget. I would imagine that picture would stay with you forever.
A phrase I have heard many times is “take up your cross daily,” but I don’t feel I have truly grasped a full understanding of what that truly signified until recently. The meaning of these words of Jesus aren't all that different than seeing our reflection in the mirror and remembering what we look like throughout the day.
Matthew 16:24-26 “Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?”
The cross is the beginning of our new identity in Christ. This is because God made a New Covenant with us, salvation through His son Jesus Christ. While we were living our lives trying to be good enough, but still falling short of upholding every letter of the law to be righteous, God rescued us from that and made us alive in Him. Because of our Covenant with Christ, and His blood sacrificed for us, we are raised up with Him and seated in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:1-10)
From this we see that the beginning of our identity as Christians lies in what happened at the cross. This is the Gospel, and what the New Testament proclaims! We are a new creation alive in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17) because He overcame sin and death, so that we could have eternal life and abundant life now. I believe that taking up our cross daily means that we are reflecting on the image of our new identity, Jesus Christ, to understand who God has made us to be. God sees us as He sees his son Jesus. We sit with Him at the right hand of God (Luke 22:69, Eph 1:20, Eph 2:6) as He, Jesus Christ, speaks on our behalf. As we read about the riches of the Kingdom of God and see the life of Jesus and the apostles writings, we are looking into a mirror to see who God has made us to be and everything that is made available to us.
In James 1:23 it says that “Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.” Reflect daily in the mirror that holds our identity and that will bring about true life and fulfillment beyond anything we could ask or imagine, the Word of God. As we listen to the Word and hear the Word, approach it with an eagerness for understanding and committing it to memory so that we can truly remember who we are. The lowest points in our life, the lack in character, the words or actions we regret, the seasons of life where we seem lost and unsure of our worth or purpose, happen in a place where we have looked in the mirror and walked away forgetting who we are.
I pray that God may continue to give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. And that they eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. (Eph 1:17-23).
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