My grandmother used to have this phrase to describe a particular kind of family resemblance. She’d say something like, “He looks out of his eyes the way his dad did when he was a kid” or “The way you look out of your eyes makes me think of your mama.” She didn’t mean that you look like your mom, exactly. She meant that the expression on your face mirrors the expression your mom has on her face sometimes—even if you don’t look much alike. The way you look at the world reminds her of someone else. I often look for that trait in people who are biologically related and sometimes in people who aren’t. My kids are adopted, but sometimes I see a look on their faces that reminds me of the image I see in the mirror every day. It’s not a resemblance in the traditional sense of “she has your eyes” or “he has your dimples.” It’s an expression, a look—narrowing of the eyes or the raising of a brow or a casting of a glance that looks like someone you’re close to. Even now, I struggle to put to words what the phrase means, though I always knew exactly what my grandmother meant when she said it. You know it when you see it.
I don’t know if that phrase—“the way you look out of your eyes”—is something unique to my family or if it’s a southern expression my fellow Tennesseans use. Or maybe everyone has some sort of colloquialism that exactly captures my grandmother’s turn of phrase. I’ve never heard anyone else outside my family use her words, but I thought about it this morning when I was reading Romans 12. Paul wrote to the church, encouraging them to live wholeheartedly as God’s people—abhorring what is evil and holding fast to what is good (see Rom. 12:9). In sloppy penmanship, I scrawled out in my notebook what I thought that verse meant: “loving what God loves, hating what God hates.” I tapped my pen against the page while I thought for a moment. That means, I continued writing, that as believers in Christ, we can never celebrate or condone what God calls evil, and we must love and hold up what He loves. What does God hate? Like a mental rolodex, I flipped through the things I’ve learned from the Word that God hates. Sin. Death. Satan. Oppression. Murder. Divorce. Abuse. Legalism. Lukewarm faith. What does God love? His people. The church. Children. The brokenhearted. The oppressed. His name. His glory. His kingdom. His elect. His Son. I could go on.
More than a list, though, Paul’s call in this verse is to look at the world the way that God looks at the world, not the way we’ve been conditioned to look at it with earthly eyes. Or, as my grandmother would put it, to look out of your eyes the way that God looks out of His. We who have been justified by faith in Christ have been grafted into the family of God, so we are His children. As such, He wants (and rightly demands) all of us. Our whole hearts. Everything we do, everything we are belongs to Him. The longer we listen to Him, walk with Him, learn from Him, spend time with Him—the more we will look like Him—and not in a “you have His eyes” kind of way. We’ll look out of our eyes like Him. We’ll look and act and express ourselves in a way that reminds others of Him. And honestly, that’s what I want for my life. I want to remind others of the One who has changed me and made me His.
If you go on in Romans 12, Paul gives a big list of imperatives for the Christian life. He exhorts us in the church to love one another, to outserve and outdo one another in showing honor, to open our homes and hearts to each other, to enter into one another’s suffering and joy, to trust God with the outcome of a situation where you’ve been offended, to bless and be kind to those who persecute you. It feels like an impossible list of commands, to be honest. How in the world do we obey so many commands to live in a way that is contrary to who we are (or at least were) at the core? He tells us before he gives us the commands, actually. In Romans 12:1-2, Paul tells us to present our whole lives as worship before God and to renew our minds so that we are transformed from our old patterns of worldly thinking and living to a new pattern that is good and pleasing and acceptable to God. We’ll know the difference between the two ways of living when we fill our minds with God’s Word. We’ll be changed by it. We, with our self-worshiping natures and me-loving minds, will be shaped over time to look like the holy, holy, holy God who has called us out of darkness and into His marvelous light. He will transform us with His Word when it dwells in us richly, and we’ll look like Him. And not just “look like Him.” No, we’ll look out of our eyes like Him. Even now, I struggle to explain it when I see a person who looks out of their eyes like the Lord, but oh, I know it when I see it. It’s the kind of family resemblance I long for.
The longer we listen to God, walk with Him, learn from Him, spend time with Him—the more we will remind others of Him. Share on X
Photo by Soroush Karimi on Unsplash
Glenna Marshall is married to her pastor, William, and lives in rural Southeast Missouri where she tries and fails to keep up with her two energetic sons. She is the author of The Promise is His Presence (P&R) and Everyday Faithfulness (Crossway), and Memorizing Scripture (Moody). Connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.