I RECENTLY HAD the pleasure of joining current and past colleagues, students, and friends at a dinner celebrating the 60th anniversary of the school where I teach. This was my first time seeing some of these folks in over 30 years. We had a chance to catch up a bit on each other’s lives: what people are doing, where they live, whether they have grandkids yet, and so on.

Throughout the evening, I heard the refrain repeatedly from people I hadn’t seen in a long time: some version of “You look exactly the same.” I would tell people that I can’t take any credit for that; my father looked 70 even when he was 90. Indeed, earlier that week, when I mentioned to my students that my wife and I have been married for 47 years, one of them admitted that she had been guessing privately that I was about 47 years old.

I told her we got married when we were two.

I get it. I suspect that a lot of it has to do with the fact that my hair hasn’t greyed much; again, I have my father’s genes to thank for that. But I know that I feel older and tire more easily. Despite what others say, I see something different than they do when I look in the mirror.

And then there are the things we don’t talk about at reunions — or for that matter, much of anywhere else. We talk more about what’s going right than what’s going wrong. When we do talk about what’s going wrong, we tend to paint ourselves in heroic terms, as basically good people trying to do the right thing but being stymied by obstacles over which we have no control. We downplay our own personal mistakes, and play up the situational factors that compelled us to act as we did.

I’m not saying that every conversation should be a confessional. But there can be a real gap between who we are and how we present ourselves, between what we see in ourselves (when we’re being honest) and what we let others see.

There is nothing, however, that God doesn’t see. He sees everything we’re able to see; he sees everything we refuse to see. So here’s the question: who are we in God’s sight? What does he see when he looks at us? And can we see ourselves the same way?

. . .

IN TEACHING THE Colossians about the reconciliation that came through the cross, Paul reminds them just how badly they needed it. But in the very next breath comes a stunning reversal of their status before God:

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation… (Col 1:21-22, NIV)

In the first sentence, the Colossians are described as alienated, antagonistic, and evil. Then in the very next sentence, they are holy, without blemish, and blameless. It’s enough to give you theological whiplash.

Sandwiched between the two descriptions is the difference-maker: the cross, the sacrificial death of Jesus. But there’s a small puzzle here. What the New International Version translates as “Christ’s physical body” could be rendered more literally as “the body of his flesh.” Paul could simply have said “Christ’s body” — so why say both “body” and “flesh”? We’ll come back to that question in the next post.

However one answers the question, his emphasis here is more on the consequence of their reconciliation than how it came about. He wants the Colossians to see themselves as God does so they can strive to live up to that new reality.

Paul uses different ways of describing that new reality. They are “holy,” which often suggests something that has been consecrated or set apart for God’s purposes. They are “without blemish,” language reminiscent of the purity and spotlessness required of sacrifices offered to God through the ancient Jewish rituals. And they are “free from accusation,” or blameless and beyond reproach.

Who among the Colossians would dare to say such things about themselves? What believer today would be so bold as to claim that they were spotless or blameless?

If we’re being honest with ourselves, we know our own sin. Start with the Sermon on the Mount: contemptuous anger; lust and covetousness; broken promises; retaliation; hatred of those we consider enemies. How could we possibly consider ourselves to be holy? Without blemish? Beyond reproach? That’s not what we see in ourselves. So how can Paul say that this is who we are in God’s sight, in the sight of the one who sees all?

There can only be one reason: as Paul is so fond of saying, we are in Christ. When God looks at us, he sees the righteousness of his holy and blameless Son, the spotless Lamb of God who was sacrificed on our behalf.

God, of course, isn’t blind to our sin. Nor was Paul blind to the sins of the Colossians or any of the other churches. If he had been, he wouldn’t have bothered with all his carefully composed pastoral advice.

But here again is why we need to remember the relationship between the “already” and the “not yet.” We are already in Christ, but we are not yet completely conformed to his image. We have already been reborn, but we are not yet finished growing up.

That’s the nature of Christian hope: when we have the eyes to see who we already are in God’s sight, it empowers us to continue to strive toward who we will become over time, despite the challenges. Indeed, Paul encourages the Colossians to hold onto their hope, as we’ll see shortly.

But first, let’s come back to the question I raised earlier: why does Paul seem to make such a big deal about the body of Jesus?