“When God looks at you, He sees Jesus.”
The first time I heard this phrase as a teenager, probably during a Bible study or youth group lesson, I found it comforting. The idea is that God doesn’t see our sinfulness when He looks at us — only Christ’s righteousness. Which can be a comfort, especially when I think long and hard about the depths of my own brokenness.
But after a while, I didn’t find it as comforting anymore.
The more I heard this phrase, the more it started to feel like I was being told that the only way God can look at me — really look at me — is if I’m hiding behind a cardboard poster cutout of Jonathan Roumie from The Chosen. Like a younger child being told that her father can only love her — can only see her — if she looks and acts exactly like her perfect, overachieving, well-behaved older sibling.
Deep down, I began to wonder:
Is it wrong to want God to see me, too?
The me with three tattoos and a scar where my nose ring used to be and a star-shaped acne patch in the corner of my chin?
The me who cries more at animated children’s films than any other movies?
The me who sometimes listens to the same instrumental CD in my car on repeat when I just want to hear something familiar while I drive?
The me who would lie on the floor of my bedroom alone for hours, creating entire elaborate storylines for my McDonald’s Happy Meal toys?
The me who releases bugs outside instead of squishing them because I don’t like the feeling of death beneath my fingertips, no matter how small it is?
The me who did that weird half-skip, half-frolic thing (my parents affectionately refer to it as “prancing”) when my imagination was working overtime as a kid? (I’ve gotten better at not doing it in public as an adult, but once in a while it still slips out.)
The me who struggles to find my voice in a group of people unless I’m holding a pencil? Who felt invisible through most of high school and college and sometimes still as an adult? Who constantly jumped in front of the camera as a child because all I wanted was to make sure my parents could see what I was doing and call it good?
Why would a God with the power to create anything He wanted bother taking the time to make Kati Lynn Davis – now Tena – if He didn’t even want to see her? If all He actually wanted was a million tiny clones of Jesus walking around, couldn’t He have made those instead?
Why would I want a relationship with a father who spent all His time wishing I was someone else?
This bothered me enough that I finally brought it up to another Christian woman one day. The way she explained it changed everything.
God does see you, Kati. But because of Jesus, the person He’s seeing now is the restored version of you.
The you that you were always meant to be.
The you that you will be again someday, when all things are made new.
God sees all the parts of me I mentioned earlier — the creative, the sensitive, the imaginative, the sentimental, the shy, even the weird — and He loves them. He made them. He knew exactly who I would be before my parents had even picked out my unique (and often misspelled) name.
What He doesn’t see, because of Jesus, are the parts I don’t want anyone to see.
The selfish parts. The lazy parts. The jealous parts. The quick-to-anger parts. The ungrateful parts. The hurtful parts.
The parts that have said and done things I wish I could unsay and undo.
Those are the parts Jesus took with Him to the cross. Those are the parts He carried with Him to the grave. Those are the parts He left behind when He rose again — knowing that one day, when His Father looked at another one of His beloved children, He would only see the restored version of her.
The one who’s healed.
The one who’s whole.
The one who’s His.
And that’s who He sees when He looks at you, too.
Bonus verses about God seeing us in case you need to be reminded like I do:
When Abraham’s servant Hagar first experiences the presence and compassion of the Lord in the wilderness, she names Him “The God who sees me.” (Gen. 16, emphasis mine)
King David tells us in Psalm 139 that God sees our still-forming bodies while we’re in our mothers’ wombs, and that not only does He know all our thoughts, but that His thoughts about us are countless and precious.
David also writes in Psalm 8 that God thinks about us, cares for us, and crowns us with glory and honor. (I’ve never tried to do it, but I imagine it’s hard to crown someone with your eyes closed.)
In Genesis 1, God looks at all He has made — including humans — and calls it very good.
ABOUT THE BLOGGER:
Kati Lynn Tena grew up in Chester County and graduated from Oxford Area High School. After earning her bachelor’s degree in writing from the University of Pittsburgh, she returned to the area and got a job working for a local library. Seven years later, a man walked into the library looking for DVDs and complimented one of her tattoos. In April of 2025 Kati married this man, and the two of them are currently living the love story God wrote for them in an adorable little house on the same street where she was raised. Kati currently works part-time doing marketing for a local youth center, and she spends the remainder of her time hanging out with her husband and friends, working on her own writing and art ventures, and slowly improving her Spanish.