A glazier is an artisan responsible for cutting, installing, and removing glass.
God is a glazier.
Imagine this: we have this mirror. And the mirror’s job is to show sin. All our ugliness, all our junk, all the things we cannot hide from ourselves, and some stuff that no other people get to see. Mirrors tell the truth. And the truth is that for all of us, sin is a big problem—a deathly big problem.
Our mirror is looking busted—there are cracks everywhere, the glass won’t stay polished, the frame is chipped and peeling away. This mirror looks worthless. And we know we cannot fix it. But what if God gives us a new mirror?
god gets to mirror making
Jesus. The Son. The Christ.
Jesus who emptied himself and became one of us, who was humble and obedient even to death.
Jesus came, lived, died, and resurrected to rescue us from the sin we see in the mirror.
We were incapable of rescuing ourselves. So God, being “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,” took it upon himself to rescue us (Exodus 34:6). Jesus’s rescue of us comes at his own shame, humiliation, and death. Sin brings death and enslavement to all of us. The only way to conquer sin—to bring life and freedom to all of us—is for a sinless person to die. And who can achieve a sinless life except Christ, who is both fully human and fully divine?
Jesus died to bring us life in place of death and freedom instead of bondage.
new mirror, new you
Because of Jesus, we get life and freedom. And we get a new mirror to see ourselves. Gone is the mirror of sin and death. We’ve got something priceless now, handcrafted frames and polished glass that doesn’t crack. Jesus’s death gives us the opportunity to replace the vision of us in the mirror with himself. Because, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new is come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). And the new “us” that we get isn’t a “human being round two.”
This is salvation by grace. We can now put on the new self, “which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Colossians 3:10).
The girl in the mirror is forgiven, redeemed, renewed, indwelled and empowered with the Holy Spirit. She now has the ability to resist the temptation of sin, ask for forgiveness, and strength for repentance.
Girl, God’s salvation looks good on you.
Still see my failures and carry around some forgiveness of myself.
I bring up in my mind my past sins, faults, and critique myself as not enough. As unworthy or unable.
All of us are bound in some way like the woman that cannot lose enough weight. We don’t tend to see the beauty, we still see the fat girl. We never get it right. We allow the enemy to flog us with old sin and habits rather than standing on the Solid Rock and crushing the enemy’s head and declaring By the Blood of the Lamb, I am a new creation!
I still have a hard time forgetting about my old son. I keep bringing it up and revisiting it while God is asking why do you keep doing this. I’ve forgiven you and washed you white as snow. That sin is forgiven and I’ve wiped it away. As humans we continue to beat ourselves up over sin that has happened in the past. This bondage keeps us from fulfilling Gods purpose for us. I need to stop looking at myself through the broken, cracked, weathered mirror of my own eyes but through the perfect, polished new mirror of God.
There are times that I feel so bad and undeserving of the grace of God.I know in my heart that i am forgiven .
What a beautiful picture, seeing Jesus face instead of my own in the mirror. I am still carrying around the old mirror because I tend to forget what lengths Jesus went to for me.
Although I keep thinking I have taken on the new mirror… when certain "things" happen in my life, it is like the old mirror shows itself all over again!
Our own self doubt and hatred and revisiting things
Every so often I get a little bogged down with the temptation to take something personally or judge myself on how I could have done better. More and more I do see the new mirror in these moments. More and more I am recognizing that the old mirror is a lie and trusting enough to rely on the new and wow what a difference it makes!
I can still be critical of myself and others. I try to see the world and other people through Gods eyes, but I’m not real good at that yet. I keep praying on it.