I love to congratulate myself on little things I do well. Say I give some change to a guy on the street. Or I take a meal to someone who needs it. Or I engage someone who looks lonely in conversation.

Yay, me.

One of the things I love to tell myself is that I “have just been Jesus” to that person. That’s what Jesus would do. He’d befriend the lonely or feed the hungry or help the poor. So when I do those things, I become a representation of Jesus.

Too bad it’s the other way around.

Remember Matthew 25? That disturbing and confusing parable of Christ where the sheep are separated from the goats? If my self-congratulatory attitude was true, then someday Jesus will say to me, “Michael, thank you for being me to those people. Those people really needed some help. Those people really needed some money. Those people were really lonely. And you went in my place. Thank you.”

But the opposite is actually what happens. On that day, when all the sheep look to Jesus with surprise in their eyes and say, “What do you mean that we fed You? Or clothed You? Or visited You in prison?” He will in turn say, “Whatever you did for the least of these, you did unto me.”

It begins to change my perspective alot when I embrace the fact that the person under the overpass or in the shelter or in the prison is Jesus. That He identifies so closely with them that when I do something for them I do it for Christ Himself. How different would my spiritual experience be if I started seeing them as Jesus to me, rather than seeing myself as Jesus to them?

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