He loves you as the individual "you."
We’ve all heard the religious cliché:
“The good news is that when God looks at you, He doesn't see your sin… He just sees Jesus.”
On the surface, it sounds like the ultimate statement of grace. It’s wrapped in the language of mercy, designed to make us feel safe and covered. But if you sit with that idea and actually mine it out, you discover something incredibly heavy, sterile, and actually not so good.
If God only tolerates you because He is looking at someone else, then you aren’t actually loved. You aren't the object of His affection...
The modern Western religious framework has conditioned us to view our relationship with the Divine through a strictly legal lens. In this narrative, you are an intrinsically repulsive, toxic rebel. God, being holy, has a biological allergy to your presence. To fix this, Jesus steps in the way like a human shield, and God agrees to hit "pardon" because He likes His Son.
Think about how insulting that is to your actual, personal identity. (and by implication to the one who made you)
If a human father only treated his daughter with kindness because she reminded him of his favourite son, we wouldn't call that a beautiful family dynamic; we would call it a psychological tragedy. Yet, we project this exact dysfunction onto the Creator of the universe. We turn God’s love into a legal fiction, a game of divine make-believe where you are essentially a blank canvas covered up by a better painting.
The Dirt and the Masterpiece
The Early Church had a radically different starting point. They didn't start the human story with a broken contract in Genesis 3; they started with God’s eternal design. You were created in the image and likeness of God (Imago Dei). That original identity was never a mistake, and it was never destroyed. (The lost coin never lost its value or became repulsive to its owner; rather, its lostness drew its owner's fervent attention)
Imagine an art restorer discovering a dirt-caked, centuries-old Rembrandt masterpiece in a dusty attic. When the master look at it, they don't stare at the grime and wish it were a different painting. They see the priceless, unrepeatable treasure underneath the dirt. Their entire mission is to peel back the debris so the original creation can breathe again.
Jesus did not come to hide you from an angry, short-sighted Father. Jesus came to show you what the Father has always seen - Your valuable humanity.
When God looks at you, He doesn't see a generic, uniform Jesus-shape that makes Him forget you exist. He sees you - exactly who He engineered you to be before the foundation of the world.
Union is Not Erasure
A lot of our identity crisis comes from confusing union with erasure.
The New Testament talks extensively about us being “in Christ,” but divine union never wipes out your essence. Think of a magnificent stained-glass window. When the sun rises, the brilliant light pours through the glass. The light doesn't make the window invisible; it illuminates it. The light reveals every intricate pattern, every unique line, and every vivid colour.
- The Light is Christ.
- The Glass is your specific, unrepeatable humanity.
The Light shines through you so that you can finally look like you were always meant to look. You don't lose your identity in the divine family; you finally find it.
Changing Our Minds About Identity
True repentance (metanoia) simply means changing your mind. And it’s time to completely change our minds about how the Father views us.
You do not begin your story in a state of absolute detachment, hoping a religious transaction will somehow force God to tolerate your presence. You began your story enfolded in the Trinity.
Let’s drop the exhausting religious act. You don’t need to hide behind a mask, and God doesn't need to blind Himself to your existence by looking at someone else. The Father loves you. He likes you. Turn your face toward the Light, step out of the shadows of shame, and awaken to the baseline reality that you have been held, valued, and completely loved from your very first breath.