This sermon by Shawna Boren unpacks regarding people from a human point of view and then guides us to take practical steps to view people as God views them. This is the way that we live in love as Christ loved us.
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Heaven’s Perspective on Earthly Faces
• Shawna Boren
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In this second sermon in the series Better Together, Shawna Boren addresses a key barrier to being the kind of church that God has called us to be. This barrier is a scheme of Satan that tricks us into thinking that we are doing the right thing when we are actually working against God’s purposes (2 Corinthians 2:11). This scheme is about how we see or perceive other people. We tend to view others on the surface and thereby turn them into enemies because we do not see them as God sees them. We view them from a worldly or human point of view as Paul wrote about in the focus scripture above.
From God’s point of view, we are either born from above or potentially born from above. We are either children of God or potential children of God. This reality is rooted in the fact that Christ died for all (2 Corinthians 5:14). We view people as part of the family or potential members of the family because Christ’s work on the cross is for everyone. Our perspective about someone doesn’t matter if it doesn’t align with what Jesus has to say about them.
However, the worldly point of view is so much easier to practice. This occurs as we judge one another, ranking people based on income, status or ability. When we analyze people we are “othering” them. We treat them as an object instead of a person that we relate to. This othering means that our judgments will always be wrong because we do not look beneath the surface. Then we generate a perpetual “us vs. them” cycle. And as this cycle escalates, we find ourselves trapped in our negative feelings toward the other. In the moment, this othering feels like it is life-giving but in reality it is junk food to our soul.
We must look to what is not seen (We don’t focus on the things that can be seen but on the things that can’t be seen. The things that can be seen don’t last, but the things that can’t be seen are eternal. — 2 Corinthians 4:18). We do this because the cross has generated a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). This is a new reality where human barriers are dismantled, status makes no difference and there is no “us vs them.” We do not yet fully see this manifest in our daily lives, but it is accomplished already on the cross. And we change the world as we refuse to see others from a worldly point of view.
Hide Extended SummaryTopics: Community, Conflict, Identity in Christ
Sermon Series: Wholehearted, Better Together
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The MuseCast: April 21
Focus Scripture:
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2 Corinthians 5:16
So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.
