To Encourage You

2 Corinthians 4:16 “Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.”

The Bible would have us to know that things are rarely as they seem for we are so limited by what we can physically see. However, God isn’t like this, and wonderfully, He has let us who know Him in on what He sees.  We are told that “the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). That’s why it’s so easy to fool a human being, but impossible to fool God. 

For example, as people looked at the pomp and splendor of the religious leaders in Jerusalem in the first century, they saw a picture of wealth and privilege. They saw people who saw themselves as “a cut above” the common folk. But what did God see?  Listen to Jesus’ words as He exposes them for what they really were: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness” (Matthew 23:37).  You see, these men were not as they appeared. Rather, they were the exact opposite. 

As I sit here and think about this, my mind turns to the local nursing homes.  What do people see when they walk into such a place?  They see examples of “the outer self . . . wasting away.”  Everywhere we look we see wheelchairs, oxygen tanks, weakness, lameness, people impaired in so many ways with poor hearing and eyesight and a lack of physical strength.   But what does God see?  Well, we can be sure He sees more than meets the eye – our eyes, that is.  He sees the inner self of each and every person. Within any that know Him He sees the glory and majesty of His Holy Spirit that dwells there.  He sees the glory of His own Son. 

Think about what people saw when they saw Jesus.  We are told in Isaiah 53:2-3 that “He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as One from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.”  But then, at the transfiguration, God peeled the surface back and what did the apostles see?  We are told that “He was transfigured before them, and His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became white as light” (Matthew 17:2).  It was this same glory that Paul saw on the road to Damascus, where he was blinded by the radiant light of the glory of Christ. 

You see, God the Father saw this inner glory of His Son all the time, in spite of the blindness of the men who looked at Him.  And God sees this same glory shining in the inner man of those whom He has made His children, those made new in the inner man as they’ve placed their faith in His only begotten Son.  That’s what our God sees in the nursing home, in the hospital bed, in the persecuted believers languishing in the prisons of North Korea – not a wasting away, rather a day by day renewal of His strength made perfect in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). 

The beauty and the glory of the inner man: it’s something that is the awesome possession of every believer, no matter the outward appearance and the mundane circumstances in which we find ourselves.  May God help us to fix our eyes on what is unseen, i.e., the wonderful realities that He has revealed to us in His Word, “For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18).

To God be the glory for the things He has done!