The evil queen’s question in the Disney classic Snow White is at the heart of this issue of our identity: “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” We seek the aid of a mirror to check on our appearance. Our reason for consulting the mirror is to see if we have put ourselves together properly to venture beyond the family circle.
Until the word of righteousness was spoken to my heart, my own concept of the mirror in James was negative. I would read,
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 (James 1:23-24 NIV).
Without consciously doing it, I had become a “transposer” of Scripture in the way a musician transposes a melody. I shifted it to negative key. So, it read “… is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets [how bad] he looks.” Then one day as I read it, it read me. Suddenly I forgot that we forget how good we look, not how bad we look.
This mirror on the wall is God’s Word. We see ourselves in it, and even though we find that when our hair is messed up or our collar is stained, we still look good. We look good enough to comb our hair and remove the stain, good enough to appear in Christ and walk to our engagement, knowing that His record of our righteousness stands, good enough to know there is “now no condemnation to those in Christ” (Romans 8:1).
The most frustrating chapter in the Bible for me was Romans 7. I had written a devotional commentary on it and did the intellectually dishonest thing. Due to the publisher’s deadline, I submitted it without knowing the meaning of some verses. I knew that whatever Paul knew when he wrote, “…it is no longer I who do it, but sin…” (Romans 7:20), I didn’t know. I fussed with Paul. “If it wasn’t you that sinned, then who was it?”
Years after the book was published, I got it. Paul knew who he was in Christ. He knew that sin was not an extension of him, but a contradiction of him. Sin was not him, but a dead man tied to him that could be removed if he asked for help in the right way. He could ask, “Who will deliver me?” not, “What will deliver me?” (See Romans 7:24.) Then he saw Christ and thanked God for His removal of this awful, grotesque contradiction of who he was.
Because he had stood in front of the mirror and knew who he was, he did not cave in under the weight of the sin he found so repulsive. God grants repentance because his goodness shows us our sins for what they are and shows us that our sins are not us.
Who we are in Christ is more than “saved sinners.” We are new creations created in perfection by the mighty hand of God to take up kingdom positions of significance. We came to the kingdom for such a time as this. We came with God’s DNA as the genetic blueprint of our lives. We are members of royalty and need to think like royalty, act like royalty, and speak like royalty. A royal decree has been made that is irrevocable: we are kings and priests, queens and priestesses before God. Now let’s enjoy being who God made us to be.
Yes, that really is you in the mirror of His Word.
Adapted from “The Supernatural Skyline” by Jim Hylton, copyright 2010, used by permission of Destiny Image Publishers, 167 Walnut Bottom Road, Shippensburg, PA 17257 www.destinyimage.com . Hear more about God’s Kingdom this week on LIFE TODAY and request Jim Hylton’s book when you support Rescue LIFE.
