Seeing and Getting

The Christian faith is simple: What you see is what you get. See Jesus as the Savior, and you get salvation. Do not see Jesus as the Savior, and you are left in the same desperate situation as you were before.

“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him my have eternal life.” (John 3:14) The one works like the others. The Israelites did not see the journey through the wilderness as an act of God’s deliverance. All they saw was their own misery and discomfort. So, they got what they saw. God sent poisonous serpents. When they recognized their sin, God told Moses to make a serpent out of bronze and lift it on a pole. All that a person had to do was look. Then they would be spared.

Sometimes we talk about faith as though it were a special kind of seeing. But faith is more than just seeing and believing. Faith is also a kind of getting. When we see the sign of God’s great love for the world, then we get what that sign offers. We get grace. We get healing. We get mercy. We get a life that will not end. We get it. It becomes ours, already now. Our present possession.

If we do not see Jesus lifted upon the cross as the sign of God’s great love, then we also get exactly what we see - in other words, no help or benefit from it. We are left alone and perishing in a whiney world of misery and complaints. See God as the judge and you get a judge. See God as the Savior and you get a Savior. See God as a commandment and you get commands. See God as a promise keeper and you get the promise kept forever. See God as a condemner and you get condemnation. See God as the lover and you get love. That’s the way God’s signs work. What you see is what you get!

Blessings on the Journey!