Give me Your eyes…
August 27, 2009
In just a few short weeks I’ll be taking a group of people down to Augusta to see Leeland, Brandon Heath and Francesca Batistelli in concert. As I got to thinking about it, I figured I’d see if I could track down Brandon Heath’s video to “Give Me Your Eyes” just for kicks. Now I’ve heard the song a number of times over the past few months as it has received a large amount of radio time, but a question struck me as I listened and watched this video today. What is it about people that makes them unlovely to us?
I’m serious…
What is it that causes us to judge for ourselves the value of a human being and then deem our extension of love and care to that person as “too important”? Before I dive too far into my thoughts here, I want to make a brief disclaimer, to those who would champion social gospel as the only gospel, we must be concerned with the glory and honor of God (i.e. we show Him love by our obedience to His word) when we consider the love we have for others… in the same vein, we cannot isolate ourselves in the splendor and glory of God for the sake of pure doctrine and neglect the cries of the hopeless because to do so would to stray from the biblical example that Jesus put before us. These two are one… we MUST love God and His glory and we MUST love other people as we love ourselves…
I have spent a considerable amount of time in my recent preaching attempting to establish the centrality of the love of God/love of others or “The Jesus Creed”, as author Scot McKnight calls it, as what is at the heart of our lives as Christians, as new creations in Jesus. (Matt. 22:37-40; Mark 12:29-31; Luke 10:27) However, it is an easy thing to say, but is it really an easy thing to do? One of the most interesting things you notice is in the gospel of Matthew where it says all the Law and the prophets hang on these… What is Jesus implying here? It is this: If we cannot love God by our obedience and we cannot love others with an uncompromising love, then the rest won’t truly happen. This is fundamental! We cannot “get” the rest if we cannot “get” this… it is essential that we GET it.
On that thought line it seems to me that this is what generally occurs… we “see” too much. There is some deep truth in Brandon’s lyrics that can be passed off as whimsical turn-of-phrase, but it is true. We need to see others and our relationship with God through a lens that is not our own. When I say, “we see too much” I mean that it is easy to surmise that we see others’ sin and that is what turns us away (which is true to an extent), however, the staggering reality is that we continue to go back and look through the lens of our own sin and it jades what we see. A lot of times the problem is not that we are eager saints who just need help getting past the “icky-ness” of others faults, it’s that we’re sinners who fail to realize we were in the same boat. How the tables have turned! Yes we need to love those who are still in sin, but we cannot be as bold to think that we are so far removed from that! This grace is not of our own making, it is a gift and by it we need to realize that holiness is not a set of benchmarks to be attained, but it is a process by which we are growing in daily in humble obedience to our Lord. The fruit of that growth is what causes us to see as Jesus sees. So to answer my original thought, our own sin is most often the culprit that makes people unlovely to us.
…what a humbling thought…
…but if we seek to honor the example of Jesus Christ, to make central the call to love, then the rest is a watershed… it will trickle down.
As I dwell on the thought that too often I am looking on others as my sin would see them, I desire to look upon others as Jesus saw them… humanity in need of hope, people in need of love, sinners in need of salvation. Not that I might think highly of myself, but as a sinful man who’s tasted grace and wants to share what he’s received.
“Give me your eyes for just one second
Give me your eyes so I can see,
Everything that I keep missing.
Give me your love for humanity.”
