What are the blessings of seeing others from God’s perspective?

Luke 13:28-30“There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, for you will see Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the prophets in the Kingdom of God, but you will be thrown out. And people will come from all over the world—from east and west, north and south—to take their places in the Kingdom of God. And note this: Some who seem least important now will be the greatest then, and some who are the greatest now will be least important then.”

Jesus taught that many big surprises await us in his Kingdom. We may find many people there we didn’t expect to see, and many absent we expected would be there. And many people may indeed be surprised to see us there! In these verses, Jesus pictures people of impeccable spiritual pedigree on the outside looking in, not only at Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the prophets, but also at a mob of spiritual nobodies (non-Jewish people) from all over the world. Jesus is not only rebuking our presumptions and biases here, but also challenging us to see people from his perspective. We must realize that our spiritual status doesn’t come from culturally-defined goodness, but by receiving God’s grace. People are marked as God’s not by religiosity, but by receiving God’s forgiveness and reflecting his goodness. How often have we turned away from reaching out to others we wrongly presumed were beyond God’s saving help!

Matthew 5:43-48“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that. But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.”

In many situations, seeing others from God’s perspective will keep us from treating other people the wrong way. During the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus highlighted widely held perspectives about murder, adultery, divorce, making vows, showing justice, and loving one’s neighbor (Matthew 5:21-48). He challenged each of these perspectives by broadening them and deepening them in ways that still transform our perspectives today. We are blessed whenever we replace our faulty human perspectives with God’s perfect perspectives.