Here's lookin' to You, Lord

by John Fischer ((from Purpose Driven Life Daily Devotional))
http://www.purposedrivenlife.com/devarchive.aspx?

Becoming like Christ seems like a daunting task, and it is, but there is a certain grace in its impossibility. Because we can never reach it in this life, this becomes a goal that will never stop driving us – a purpose that takes us through to the end. If it were an attainable goal, what would we do then?

This was certainly the error of the religious leaders of the day when Jesus was here on Earth. They thought their strict adherence to the requirements of the law had earned them a place among the righteous. They had arrived, in other words. Of course they hadn’t, and this was something Jesus was continually trying to bring to their attention. The only thing they had arrived at was their own interpretation of the law, which was sorely inadequate to produce the true inner character of righteousness that God is after. They were measuring themselves by a scaled-down version of the law and looking at those who they deemed worse than themselves in order to make themselves acceptable in their own eyes. Had they looked at Jesus, something very different would have happened.

When you look at Jesus, at least three things happen. 1) You realize your own shortcomings and how far you have to go. 2) You realize God’s love and accept the forgiveness made possible through Christ’s death for us on the cross. 3) You reflect his glory, not your own. It’s the only way you can still stand in front of his perfect righteousness and not be consumed – you receive, as a free gift, a righteousness you cannot earn. Looking at Jesus makes you humble and holy all at the same time. Not holy like the Pharisees, mind you, but holy in that you are totally counting on Christ for your own righteousness because you realize how much you lack.

Humphrey Bogart made the line famous in Casablanca: “Here’s lookin’ at you kid.” It was a special look – a secret he and Ingrid Bergman shared as unrealized lovers. In the same way we go through our day looking to Christ; it’s a secret we know about but not necessarily information shared by everyone. Our love for God and his love for us make up for the deficiencies in our character and the distance we still have to go to have Christ fully realized. And yet, as we keep looking to him, we begin to reflect something of him in our lives, and without even knowing it, we become like “mirrors that brightly reflect the glory of the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 3:18) May we reflect him today in everything we do.