Imagine an older man writing to a younger one. He’s giving advice, perhaps a little bit of exhortation. The younger man isn’t so young any more, at least not as young as when he first me the old man, his mentor. Back then the younger man listened to the old man because the young man had no experience. Now he is listening to the old man for precisely the opposite reason: the young man has experience now, and still sees the value in the perspective of the older man.
The old man says, “You have seen nine things in me: 1. What I have taught you and others. 2. How I have behaved around people. 3. My goals and aspirations. 4. What I put my faith in and what I trust. 5. How I have exhibited patience, and where I’ve lost it. 6. The people that I love and how I loved them. 7. My persistence and when I’ve given up. 8. How people have done me wrong sometimes. 9. How I handled suffering and hardship when it came.”
The old man in this story is the Apostle Paul. The younger man, his mentee, Timothy. The above is a paraphrase of 2nd Timothy 3:10-11. If nothing else, it shows us the value of what people see in us. As we grow, we naturally display some of these things. Some of them we try to hide from view, but people usually see through our subterfuge. These are nine things that our children, our friends, our employees, our fellow students, and anyone who spends time around us see. How are you doing with that list of nine? Probably not as good as the Apostle Paul.
But even the Apostle Paul isn’t listing these things to show that he’s perfect. He’s not. He knows his sin. He knows when people have seen those sins. Maybe they didn’t say anything about it, but they saw it, they knew it. Likewise, most of the time we see it. We know God sees it. We know that God knows how we struggle with just this list of nine. That is why God gave us Jesus, someone who filled these nine things out completely. Someone blameless. Someone who didn’t need to hide anything. Someone who just let Himself be seen.
When we let people see who we are, we won’t show them a picture of perfection like Jesus did. But what we can show is a picture of what it is like to be people who have seen Jesus. We can show what it is like to be people who have seen the Lord in His perfection. May you show people the best life you can in these nine areas, but like Paul, where you find something missing – may you point to Christ who perfected them all, so that He could take His perfect life to the Cross to pay for your imperfect one.