Friday, June 2, 2017

First Impressions (Friday Devotional)


“Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.”

- Galatians 5:19-25

Never judge a book by its cover, they say. But of course, we do it anyway. Think about it—when you’re in a bookstore or library browsing the shelves, you almost never have the time or inclination to read every dust jacket, much less to open every book and read a chapter or two. Your interest in a particular book is, inevitably, sparked by the cover, whether by its bright design, its clever title, or the familiar name of its author. What grabs your attention and makes a first impression, for good or ill, is the cover.

And the same goes when the principle is applied to people. What you see on the outside of a person inevitably affects what you expect about who they are inside, whether that expectation winds up being correct or not. Everything from a person’s clothes to their posture creates your initial impression of them—and while repeated exposure to them may disprove what you first thought, it’s hard to overcome the first impression.

This goes double when applied to your actions, the most outward expression of who you are, the true cover of your book. Even the kindest people have moments of cruelty or thoughtlessness, just as even the meanest people can occasionally show grace. One out-of-character action should not define you indefinitely in the eyes of others. But sometimes it will. For the down-on-her-luck waitress, how you tip when her service wasn’t up to par is your only chance to show her your heart is governed by grace. For the umpire at your child’s little league game, what you shout from the stands determines whether he thinks your heart is full of joy or bitterness. The driver who cuts you off in traffic can only judge your capacity to forgive by how you react to him in that split second.

The Bible teaches that we are all sinners, prone to stumble and fall away from God. The promise of the cross is that there is forgiveness for your sins, that when you place your faith in Christ, God judges you not on your own righteousness, but on Christ’s. God’s impression of you is based on the totality of who you are in Christ, not on one false step or ugly word.

But the people around you, especially those outside the community of faith, do not have the luxury of knowing you as God does—they can only call it like they see it. So their impression of you and of your God is largely based on your demeanor, your priorities, and your responses to injustice. If what they see from you is “the works of the flesh”, then they are unlikely to see any need for the God you call your Lord—after all, He doesn’t seem to be making you very different from anyone else.

“If we live by the Spirit, let us be guided by the Spirit,” says Paul. Few lives are truly open books, but every one has a cover, something observable to all. If your life has been saved by Christ’s forgiveness, mercy, and righteousness, then your call is to be a light to the world on his behalf, for the Holy Spirit to bear fruit in you so that others will see in you love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The world will judge what’s in your heart by what they see from your actions—will they see Jesus?

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