Day 144: Luke 7:1–10

Jesus heard this and was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following Him, He said, “I tell you, I have not found so great a faith even in Israel” (v. 9).

Jesus almost seems delightfully shocked in this encounter with the centurion, as though He was caught off guard by such faith. I’m so glad God purposed for Christ to know all things yet also to know the thrill of sudden amazement.

Perhaps you’ve bought into the “wretched worm that I am” mentality enough to be uncomfortable thinking about Christ being impressed by anything wretched man can do. But since we’re attempting to develop God’s taste in us—to love what He loves, hate what He hates, and marvel at what He finds marvelous—perhaps we could all use a little adjustment in our perception of the divine.

A word God used in Isaiah 66:2 blows my mind. The verse says, “This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.” The word esteem means to “regard with pleasure, . . . have respect.” God is clearly saying that He respects certain people.

Our difficulty imagining that God could have respect for a mortal is because we confuse attitudes of respect with feelings of inferiority. We tend to view respect as a feeling we have for those we perceive as being superior to us. And on our best day, we are so inferior to Christ that, if not for the Lord’s great love (see Lam. 3:22), we would be consumed by holy fire.

If we’re to have a balanced perception of all this, however, we must keep in mind that God created us. We are His “workmanship” (Eph. 2:10). He loves us. At times, He actually delights in us. God could have created us void of weakness and with a complete inability to sin. He didn’t. He purposely created us with free will and affections so that we could choose Him and love Him in the midst of many options and much opposition.

God didn’t create robots. He created humans. So when God sees humans cooperate with His good work and fulfill what they were created to be, He sees something very good. Perfect? No. But respectable? Yes. When the Father sees a human who is prone to selfishness, pride, and arrogance humble himself or herself and tremble at His Word, He esteems that person. Hallelujah! Oh, how I want to be someone God could respect!