Made in His Image

Our Scripture for today is Galatians 3:26-28 

“You are all children of God through faith in Jesus Christ, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

 

God sees us as one—his children who have faith in Jesus Christ!

All our differences, our earthly qualities and physical identifiers are covered with Christ.  Our filthy rags of sin are washed away by the blood of the Lamb!

We are beautiful in God’s eyes, because we are one with Christ.

Unfortunately, we don’t always see each other the way God sees us.  We sometimes look at our fellow humans and judge them by the human qualities we can see.  We look at some people and declare in our thoughts that they are too lost, too dirty, too wrong somehow.  Sometimes we want to judge and exclude those whom we see as not good enough, not clean enough, not measuring up to our standards of righteousness.  But thankfully, we don’t get to judge!  God will be the judge.  And God knows all our hearts.

Matthew 7:1-2 says,

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged.  For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

As children of God, with faith in Jesus, our job is to believe Him; and to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; to love our neighbors—all our neighbors—all other people on the Earth!  And who knows?  If we LOVE them all, we just might help lead a few of them to Christ, and therefore help to grow God’s kingdom—the Kingdom LOVE!

 

Let’s pray together:

Dear loving God, help me to remember.  Help me to LOVE more and to stop judging who is clean enough and who is too dirty.  Help me to see Christ in my fellow believers, no matter their affiliations, their lifestyles, or their politics.  Help me to LOVE all my earthly neighbors more like the way You LOVE them.  And please forgive me when I don’t measure up. Forgive me for judging and help me to LOVE all your children!  In Jesus name we pray – Amen!

Today’s podcast was written and read by Bernice Howard.

Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.

If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: podcasts@1stchurch.org.

First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.