He Sees You Among The Filth!

“Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.” (1Jo 4:17 AV)

An excellent verse in the imputation of Christ’s righteousness and the security of the believer.  That last phrase teaches us of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.  As the glorified Christ is in heaven, we are here on earth.  These words were written to the saints who were struggling in their faith.  They questioned their eternal security.  Eternal security is the purpose for this letter (1John 5:13).  There are several proofs offered for evidence of our salvation.  There is continuous victory over sin.  There is the love for others.  It seems John left the best for last.  Or at least, toward the end.  The fact that the Father sees us as He sees Jesus Christ is a comfort to the soul.  Not only that, it is present tense.  In other words, our final glorification is not the beginning of eternal security.  It is the conclusion of it.  That God the Father sees us as righteous as His own Son is the security we have in this present evil word.  However, I wish to make a bit more practical application than what is directly shown in our passage.  Or to posit a question, we know we are secure in Christ and we should never doubt our salvation, but how does that work on in my daily life?

Have you ever walked a sandy beach looking for treasured stones that stand above the rest?  As you walk the shore, most of what you see is tan sand.  Along the way, you see and smell rotting fish, old seaweed, or driftwood.  Then there is the evidence of human activity with beer cans, picnic garbage, or abandoned beach paraphernalia strewn around the otherwise beautiful beach.  As you walk, you are looking down.  You are picky.  Not any stone will do.  There may be some that stand out only because they are not sand.  There are others that may have some beauty to them, but they have not been polished or smoothed by the ebb and flow of the sea.  But then you see a stone.  A precious stone.  Or at least that is what you think it is.  It is sea glass.  Man-made glass that has been smoothed over by the movement of sand and sea against its surface.  It does have a certain beauty to it, but it isn’t that rare stone.  As you go along, there is one here and one there.  A bright white stone that has a bit of color to it.  Smoothed over and semi-round, it a something to behold.  They you see another.  It is jet black but has a ribbon of tan running through it.  Still another.  A mixture of colors, but what sets this one apart is the sprinkling of reflective additives that makes it look like the universe wrapped in stone.  The surrounding commonness of the beach did not take away for the inherit beauty these stones possess.  The discarded fast-food wrappers, the plastic pieces of man’s encroachment, or even the decaying wildlife, never affected these pieces.  Even the superabundance of tan sand could not diminish what beauty these stones possessed. 

This is how God sees His children among the filth of the world.  We still struggle in keeping ourselves unspotted from the world.  We still allow the old man to get his say once in a while.  We are not perfect.  We fail God all the time.  Regardless, the LORD does not see us as we are as much as He sees us as what we will become.  We are the perfection in Christ.  Presently, we are the righteousness of Christ.  That does not mean we never sin.  What that does mean is God sees us in the righteousness of Christ and changes us to that reality.  What a comfort this is. Sometimes we get down because we are surrounded by the filth of the world.  We are affected by it.  We allow the filth of the world to become part of our lives.  We wonder if the LORD sees us only in our failures.  Not so.  He sees us as He sees Jesus.  Perfectly sinless.  Praise be to God!  When your child plays in the mud, you may see him covered in silt, but you see him underneath that filth.  Therefore, you clean him up because you see him as he is, not as what he has become.  Praise the LORD God sees us according to what He has made us in Christ and what we will eternally be and not in the filth which we unfortunately play in!