Mirror, Mirror

Mirror, mirror
On the wall
Who is the fairest of them all?

“Me, please be me!”
The devil cried with glee

Yet not the fairest one of all
The devil took a nasty fall
And God declared that he would be
Damned for all eternity

While the above poem is obviously not a direct quote from Scripture, I want it to help illustrate something: Satan tried to change the truth, and will forever suffer for it. However, since he has not yet received his full punishment, he is still trying to change the truth. And he cruelly wants us to suffer with him, too.

Sadly, he still has his old mirror and likes to fling it around.

The other day my husband and I were discussing God’s forgiveness. Somewhere in the conversation, it was mentioned that because of Jesus’ death on the cross, and the life of the Holy Spirit we now have inside of us, God can no longer see our sin in us; He only sees Jesus.

I nearly choked with this reminder.

You see, I am a perfectionist and an avid self-punisher. I am a worrier and an over-anxious person. I can tie my brain up in knots within minutes, and can create a sense of mental claustrophobia inside myself. I desperately fear failure, for somewhere deep down I’ve been believing this faint whisper which says I am not good enough unless I try hard enough. And even then, I still might not make it.

It’s a perpetual spider web, really. I create a web of fear, and fly into it like a doltish, witless little insect…and crunch, I’m seized by the fangs of my self-imposed spider.

(Back to God no longer seeing sin in us, though.)

As a Christian who tends to become laxed, I was reminded that if I am not constantly plunged into God’s word, seeking it as my source of truth, I make it easier for Satan to slip his mirror into my room. The result? I look at myself, see myself, see my sins and my failures and all the things that should separate me from God…and I get discouraged. And I get depressed. And I become worried and anxious. And Satan throws a party in my misery.

But…if I am on my guard, I can pay attention and realize, “Hey, this is not  the person God sees. My sins are covered (yes, I still have to deal with the consequences of living in a sin-filled world) but God has forgiven me, through Jesus, and now I am no longer in bondage to sin or separated from God. The Holy Spirit lives within me, and I am filled with the fullness of Christ. I am not my sin.”

Satan doesn’t have this option. He looks in the mirror and sees exactly who he is: an enemy of God, rejected from God, and damned for eternity.

And every time he asks his mirror…it tells him the same thing it did since creation:

Mirror, mirror
On the wall
Who is the fairest of them all?

Jesus.

– –

“For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority…having been buried with Him in baptism and raised with Him through your faith in the power of God, who raised Him from the dead. When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; He took it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities He made a public spectacle othem, triumphing over them by the cross.”
– Colossians 2:9, 12-15

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”
– 2 Corinthians 5:17-21