Remember the day when Moses came down from Mt. Sinai and the people couldn’t bear to look at Moses because they saw the reflection of God’s glory in his face? I hope and I pray that it might be so with every one of us! We have seen God, in the face of Jesus. We have known his mercy and grace. We have basked in the warmth of his love. We have gloried in the assurance we have in our eternal salvation. We have been to the cross and we have been to the empty tomb and we eagerly await for his return.
Can people see that we have been there? Do they know we belong to Christ? Can they read it on our faces and in our lives?
Can People See Jesus In Our Faces?
1. because we know the love of God in Christ
Why was Jesus willing to go to the cross to save you? That might seem like a silly question. We know why Jesus died for us. He died for us because he loved us.
That only brings us another question. Why did Jesus love us? Why would he become emotionally attached to people who forsook him and fled, lied about him in court, spit in his face, crowned him with thorns, nailed him to a cross, and dared him to come down? Why would someone so perfect love people so sinful as you and me?
Our text gives us an answer to that question. Jesus said, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” If you’ve ever read psychological profiles of people who are in prison for repeated crimes or who are on death row, they are sometimes described as “incapable of love.” They may say they love their wife or their children. But because they grew up in a family where there was no love shown between mother and father and between the parents and the children, they never learned how to express and show their love. They became “incapable of love.”
If people who grow up without love are incapable of love, then the opposite must also be true. People who grow up in an environment where there is lots of love are also capable for lots of love. For all of eternity before the world was created, for those never beginning and never ending eons in the timelessness of heaven, God the Father loved God the Son in the family of the Triune God. There was never a moment in all those eons when God the Father did not love the Son.
Then how do you explain the hours on the cross when God punished Jesus for the sins of the world? There was a father who took his son to the hospital for an emergency surgery on his appendix. The child was frightened and didn’t want to leave his father. But as the child was taken into the surgery room, the father could not go along. The child cried and begged that the father not leave his side. But the father, who never stopped loving his son, let go of his son’s hand because he knew it was necessary. It had to be.
So it was in those moments on the cross. It had to be. There was no other way for mankind to be saved. It would take the life of his one and only Son. It would take those moments in hell to atone for the sins of every generation that ever lived or would live. So God let go of his Son, not because he stopped loving him, but because it had to be.
Did Jesus know that? Of course he did. He also knew what had to be. He also never lost sight of his Father’s love. His first words from the cross were, “Father, forgive them.” His last words from the cross were, “Father into your hands I commit my spirit.” God’s Son never stopped showing that he was confident of his heavenly Father’s love.
Friends, do you realize that the necessity for which God made his Son suffer was you and me? I don’t know if we can say that God for that moment at least loved us MORE than his own Son. I don’t know if we can say that for that moment God love us AS MUCH AS his own Son. But I know we can say with confidence that God, who did not spare his own Son because of the necessity of saving us, certainly has loved us from eternity and will love us to eternity.
And I surely know that I can say that Jesus, who says that he loved us as his heavenly Father loved him, loved us more than his own life. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remained in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do what I command. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. That is how we know that God loves us. Because God the Son laid down his life for us.
Friends, do people see Jesus in your face because they see the confidence you have in God’s love as a child of God? When we suffer hardship, we can say, “I know that whatever happens to me, God still loves me. He can never stop loving me.” When we are soon to go to heaven, we can say, “I know that Jesus will be waiting for me and I have nothing to fear.” When we are worried about something, we can still say, “But I know God is watching over me and I am safe in his hands.” What a wonderful testimony we can give for our Savior by showing such confidence in God’s love!
Those who have experienced great love are capable of great love. It isn’t always easy for people to see our faith, because our faith is in our hearts. It is easy for people to see the love which is reflected from God’s heart and through our lives. Can people see Jesus in our face ...
2. because we reflect the love of Christ
“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” What is it about a love that finds its reason and its pattern in Jesus that makes it so different and noticeable? Maybe its because a Christ-like love goes farther than any other love. Let me give you some examples of what I mean.
Children, no one in the whole school will sit next to you-know-who, what’s-her-name. There’s always someone in every class that gets the nobody treatment. Everyone picks on her [or him]. No one even likes to say her name out loud, let alone sit NEXT to her at lunch. But the new man in us, the Christ-like part of us, sees the loneliness and feels the pain. It is not such a big thing to be a friend to someone who doesn’t have any friends. Yet it is the Christ-like thing to do. “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” I can’t find any rule or law in the Bible that says you have to sit next to what’s-her-name in the cafeteria. But it is just the Christ-like thing to do. It’s a love which goes beyond.
That kind of love is truly Christ-like. Do yourself a favor this week and read John 4 and the story of the women at the well of Samaria. Here was the town’s version of the person they considered the nobody in town. She wasn’t a nice woman, mind you, by most social standards. She had been married five times and the man she was with didn’t even bother honoring their relationship by getting married. She was out there at the well in the heat of the noon day sun, getting her water when no one else did. Nobodies tend to do that. If you avoid the crowd, you won’t FEEL like you were treated like a nobody. It wasn’t hard to ignore this man by the well because he was a Jew and Jews NEVER talked to Samaritans anyway. Only this one did. Not only did he talk to her but he said things to her that no one else had ever said. That day she went home a believer in God’s love, because she was loved by the man at the well who said he came in God’s name.
Friends, when you treat people like they are somebody, when you don’t just look past them as if they don’t exist, you are reflecting God’s love from your face to theirs.
There is another aspect of this Christ-like love that stands out. Jesus says, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” People who love as Christ loved them, do it with the same attitude that Jesus had. “Hebrews 12:2 Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Jesus did what he did for you with joy. He was glad to do it. When you show kindness to one of those nobody people in the world, you do it with joy. You have fun doing it. You do it not because you have to but because you want to.
Again an example. Some years back in my former parish the children in my confirmation class would get a ride on the bus from the Junior High to my confirmation class at church. Often the kids on the bus would make fun of them for going to classes at the church. One child told me what happened one day. “This guy said, ‘Does your Mommy make you go to church after school?’ So I said, “No. No one makes me go. I WANT to go.” That was the last time the kids got teased, at least for a while, just because they knew this was something they WANTED to do.
Can you think of some other things the world might think we HAVE to do but really we WANT to? I don’t HAVE to go to church, I WANT to. I don’t HAVE to give 10 % to the Lord’s kingdom. I WANT to. I don’t HAVE to stand up for my neighbor when someone is doing the gossip routine. I WANT to. I don’t HAVE to pray for people in my church who are sick, I WANT to.
Friends, do people see Jesus in your face because of the loving things you do every day and for the joyful way you do them? Sometimes we get up grumpy and stay grumpy all day and no one sees the joy I have in Christ. Sometimes we listen to your sinful nature and become selfish and uncaring and no one sees the love of Christ reflect in my life. We aren’t perfect yet, nor will we be until we are safe in heaven.
But even here people can see Christ in our faces. For we do not make excuses. We make confession. And with confession we receive absolution and forgiveness. And with the forgiveness, we receive strength and joy to live and love again today - more Christ-like and more joyfully than yesterday. Always we remain confident in his love. Always we live each new day to reflect his love. And then people WILL see Jesus in our face! Amen.
