“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.”
2 Corinthians 5:16
In the verse above, Paul takes time to remind the Corinthians that because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, humankind has become a new creation in God’s sight. Every person that you will ever meet has an eternal soul. That means that every single person you meet will end up in one of two places, heaven or hell, for eternity.
As C.S. Lewis put it, “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.”
It really puts things into perspective. No one that you meet is just a mortal being. We’re all headed toward an eternal destination. Every interaction that we may have with another person has an effect on what that destination is. That’s what Paul is talking about. The way that we view other people changes the way that we treat them.
He says it’s the same as the way Jesus was seen before and after his resurrection. Before, many saw him as just a man, just a teacher. After he was raised from the dead and it became clear that he was much more than a man, but in fact God, people no longer regarded him in that way. Paul says the same applies to all of us. If you think of people simply as people, you’ll treat them the way Jesus was treated before his death. If you look at them as eternal beings, endowed by God with an eternal soul, everything changes.
Prayer:
Father,
Help us to have eyes to see the immortal beings that we interact with on a day to day basis. Help us to strive always to help people toward eternity with you, rather than push them away. Let us keep that point of view in all of our interactions, and forgive us for the times that we have failed to do so.
In Jesus Name,
Amen.
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