If you know anything about photography, then you’ll know that a filter is a cover or lens through which you see things. A filter can be used to make a picture have a desired warmth, color hue, or tone. Filters can alter the way we see things. Filters can be used to make differences appear, well more different.
Our daily lives have filters as well. Often we use filters and don’t even know it. Unlike camera filters, the ones we use in our day-to-day lives aren’t as easily removed. All too often we use them and we don’t even understand what purpose they serve. Filters can be good but, if we don’t know their purpose, they can be useless at best and harmful at worst.
And if this wasn’t bad enough, we tend to pull out these filters in the church as well. The church however is a place where these filters really should not be present. The Apostle Paul teaches in Galatians 3:27-28,
For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free,
there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
You see it’s easy for us to point out our differences. It’s easy to see someone who looks different and focus on that. Our world is riddled with division and difference. But not just the world, the same division is also finding its way into the church. We focus on things like color, gender, nation of origin just to name a few. We bite and pick each other apart just because we’re not all exactly the same.
But the message of the gospel is that no matter our starting point the end can be the same in Christ. When we surrender our lives to the truth of Jesus’ death and resurrection, then all of those colors – genders – nationalities – and other things that divide us fade away. You see the gospel isn’t about where you start but who gets you to the end. Salvation isn’t dependent on what you bring to the table but it’s dependent on what Jesus did for you. A life that’s completely surrendered to Jesus knows little of these divisions because, as Paul says, For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
The point of our lives is the person and work of Christ. When we clothe ourselves in the life of Jesus that’s what people see in us and that’s what we see in others. To be a follower of Jesus in a way means that we live a life with #nofilters.
Today try to look around you with clear eyes. Lose the filter of racial divisions. Lose the filter of prejudice and injustice. Lose the filter of hatred and disgust. It’s when these filters are gone that we can see with the eyes of love that God placed in our heads. No this doesn’t mean that we are all physically the same. Nor does it mean that all of our decisions are ok. It just means that when it comes to salvation and the message of the gospel there’s no room for these ridiculous filters.
So let’s live the life of grace that Jesus lived for us. Let’s live a life of #nofilters.