Mirror, Mirror

James 1:22–25

Several weeks ago, I started a new sermon series called Pretty Ugly People. The title itself suggests the central idea—that you can somehow be pretty and ugly at the same time. Outward looks may be deceiving to everybody, but not to God, who sees your heart.

In the previous message, we said: Stop trusting appearances—especially your own. The God who sees straight through you is the God who loves and chooses you anyway. He sees you in the truest way possible, and he loves you truly. Part of his loving you so perfectly is that he will show you yourself. He will show you the person he sees, your true self. And what the Lord sees is not always the most flattering reflection.

It is an uncomfortable mercy to be shown the truth about yourself. But God’s aim is not to shame you. He intends to change you, from the inside out. How does that work? First, he asks you to take a long, brave look in the mirror.

True or false: all babies are cute.

Now ask it another way, especially for the mothers: all my babies were cute. That is where the idea becomes interesting. You have probably heard someone say, “That guy has a face only a mother could love.” What does that mean? It means a mother looks at her baby from a place of deep, prior attachment. She loves first.

Not all of us were born Honey Boo-Boo. I mean, have you really looked at newborns? Back when hospitals laid them all out and you could see them through the nursery window, didn’t it sometimes look like somebody crash-landed a UFO and all the aliens fell out? But to all those mommas, their babies were the prettiest.

There are exceptions, maybe cultural ones. Franziska Mayhall once told me that one of her babies had ears that stuck out like a Volkswagen Beetle with the doors open, so she did what any good German momma would do. She taped the kid’s ears back with Band-Aids. I am sure he thanked her later.

But that story gets at something important. Genuine love wants the best for you. Love takes your actual self—ears and all—and loves you into becoming your best self. That is the way true, unconditional love works. It receives you as you are, but it does not leave you unchanged. That is the way of God’s love. It is transformative. It changes you.

James describes in practical terms how this transformation happens. He has just established a fundamental principle: power to change comes through the word of God. But the word will not work in you if you do not hear it. You have to read it. You have to receive what it says. This is where change begins—learning the truth, welcoming it, letting it take root, surrendering to it.

This is God’s word. It comes with his own authority to command your life. You do not get to disagree with it or pick and choose what you will accept. Rosaria Butterfield talks about this in her book The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. She describes praying that if Jesus was truly real and risen, he would change her heart. She prayed for strength to repent of sin that did not feel like sin to her at the time. She asked him to take her life back and make it what he wanted it to be.

That is the posture required before the word of God: total submission, total surrender to what God says, no matter how I feel about it, no matter whether I agree or disagree at first. This is how you must read the Bible. This is what it means to hear the word.

But hearing the word is good, and still not enough. James says, “Don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says.” The silent, inward process must eventually show itself outwardly in your behavior. The work of the word is not complete until it changes the way you act. If nothing ever changes, nothing ever changes.

James says the word of God is like a mirror that shows your true face. It is a magic mirror, you might say. It shows what ordinary eyes cannot see. James speaks of “the face you were born with.” That means your unedited face, before cosmetics and camouflage. The face beneath the curation. The face beneath the performance. The person you really are when nobody is applauding, evaluating, or being fooled.

Love always points to truth. This action of God’s word is an uncomfortable mercy, but it is mercy nonetheless, because it creates the opportunity for change, for reorientation. It is like the map marked with the arrow that says, YOU ARE HERE. If you do not truly know where you are, you cannot truly know where you are going. Or in this case, what you are becoming.

James says that a person may look into the mirror of God’s word, see the face he was born with, then walk away forgetting “what kind” of person he is. That goes beyond forgetting what you look like. It means forgetting the truth about yourself. What kind of person are you? Beyond all appearances, beneath all polish, apart from all excuses—who are you really? That is what the word of God will show you.

Between verses 24 and 25, James uses two different words for “look.” In verse 24, the person checks the mirror. He sees, but he does not stay. In verse 25, the word carries the idea of bending down, leaning in, looking carefully. James is contrasting two kinds of looking. One person glances and goes. The other bends down and stays.

That is what we must do with the word of God. Don’t breeze by it. Don’t use it as religious decoration on your coffee table or your Facebook page. Linger over it. Stay with it. Let it read you. Then do what it says.

This brings us back to a mother’s love. A mother loves first. She looks at that child from a place of deep attachment. Before the baby has done anything impressive, before the child can return the love, before there is anything to brag about except ten fingers, ten toes, and maybe ears that need a little German engineering, she loves.

But real love does not leave the child unchanged. Love feeds. Love washes. Love teaches. Love corrects. Love trains. Love tells the truth. Love wants the beloved to grow.

That is the love of God. God sees the face you were born with. He sees beneath the image, beneath the polish, beneath the version of yourself you try to manage and present. He sees what kind of person you are, and he loves you. Because he loves you, he will not lie to you. He will not call ugly things beautiful just to spare your feelings. He will not let you walk away from the mirror forever.

Jesus did not die for some imaginary version of you. He died for the real you—the sinner in the mirror, the person who forgets, pretends, makes excuses, and walks away. He sees you truly, and he loves you completely.

So today, don’t just hear the word. Don’t just glance and go. Bend down. Look carefully. Stay with what God shows you. Then take the next obedient step. Because the God who sees straight through you is the God who loves and chooses you anyway.

He shows you the face you were born with so he can transform in you the image of Christ.

In Christ,

Pastor Tim