It’s not a good decision to take off your 3D glasses while viewing a movie in 3D. It’ll really mess with your head. It’s disorienting. Everything is fuzzy and out of balance. You can sort of still follow the plot and make out a few of the characters but you’ll miss so many things. 2D eyes in a 3D world leaves you very limited. It makes the movie you paid for just a drab and blurry show.
“From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh.” –2 Corinthians 5:16
I think of those 3D glasses when I read that text. Paul was living and ministering in 3D but they didn’t have the glasses for it. or at least they weren’t wearing them. This is why when it came for picking which ministers they’d follow the chose the flash super-apostles. The humble and constantly suffering apostle didn’t stand a chance. They picked charisma over character, every time.
Until the gospel changes our way of seeing the world we’ll do the same thing. We’ll skip over the runt David and beg God to let us anoint the skilled and savvy. And it’ll bite us every single time. Because character won’t come simply because we thrust someone into a position. How many times do we have to see high-profile (and incredibly gifted) leaders fall before we realize these words of Craig Hamilton are true?
People can pick up skills relatively quickly, but character isn’t something you just pick up. Character is often forged over a long period of time and over multiple experiences, and it only changes with great and sustained effort. It can and does change, but it’s much harder to change your character than it is to learn skills. (Wisdom in Leadership, 48)
The Corinthians had determined that Paul was a loon. But he kept preaching the gospel to them because he knew that this would be the means by which they’d get a new set of eyes. Apart from grace, though, they’d put gospel men in the loser category every time. And they’d fall hard after super-apostles…even to the point of being abused by them. But seeing through a gospel lens would change all that.
The Gospel Changes the Way We View All People
We can also tell if we’ve embraced the gospel by the way we view every person. Philippians 3 gives us a clue as to what Paul means by regarding people “according to the flesh”. In that text we read a
When Paul speaks of viewing people according to the flesh we get a clue to his meaning in Philippians 3. There we see a list of identity-shaping accomplishments. These are not only the place for Paul to receive his identity but it’s also the lens by which he views the world. He’d use this to size people up when he met them. Are they Jews? Are they Pharisees? Are they zealous for the law?
The gospel gives Paul a new set of eyes. Now all of his previous questions are rubbish. Only one question matters, now. Is this person “in-Christ” or not? If this person is “in-Christ” then I’m engaging a brother or sister. If this person is not in-Christ then it’s someone I need to love and share Christ with. Either way it shaped the way he interacted with people. He no longer viewed them according to the flesh but all through the eyes of redemption.
So too may all our questions be considered rubbish. What lens do we use to classify people? Politics? Gender? Skin color? Denomination? Economic status? Family name? Level of Education? Titles?
How do these things impact the way you are going to listen to or deal with a person as a person?
What Paul is driving at here is that with a gospel lens the only category we use now is, “in Christ” or “not in Christ”. You have more in common with a liberal Democrat who has faith in Jesus than you do a dyed in the wool, social conservative, who goes to church every Sunday but doesn’t actually have a relationship with Jesus”. You have more in common with an Iraqi Christian than you do a US soldier who is rejecting Christ.
If you are still viewing people fundamentally through another lens, then you aren’t as shaped by the gospel as you think you are.
The Example of John Newton
I love the example of John Newton. He was so captivated by the gospel that it did indeed change the way he viewed everyone. Newton had this to say about the way we view one another:
Whoever . . . has tasted of the love Christ, and has known, by his own experience, the need and the worth of redemption, is enabled, Yea, he is constrained, to love his fellow creatures. He loves them at first sight; and, if the providence of God commits a dispensation of the gospel, and care of souls to him, he will feel the warmest emotions of friendship and tenderness, while he beseeches them by the tender mercies of God, and even while he warns them by his terrors.
Newton lived this. Newton’s “first reflex was to love lost people” (Piper). And it was his first reflex to love all people. Reflex is the right word. It’s what happens spontaneously. It’s not the happy face you put on at church. It’s not what you think you should do. It’s just what happens. Just as you really cannot control the twitch of the knee when the doctor hits that sweet spot, so also the gospel-shaped Christian cannot control the reflex of love when he meets another image-bearer.
May the same be said of us.
Lord, make my first reflex be to love.
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