Masters of Disguise [Tract]

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Masters of Disguise

We have so many layers. Like peeling an onion, someone has said. We can be piously sweet, smiling and gregarious. We can be connivingly sneaky, self-serving and mean. We can be ever-so-clean, and then disgustingly filthy. In our desire to be respected and accepted, we publicly show our better side. We are masters of disguise.

Perhaps you read about Corey Hughes’ escape in Northern California. The 27‑year-old inmate was with a prison work-crew near Interstate 5 in Stockton when he disappeared. The convict was on the run, but most knew it would only be a matter of time until someone noticed him and turned him in to the police. He had a very large skeleton tattoo covering his face that was far too easy to spot. Acting on tips, a police dog was sent into a home and Corey Hughes was apprehended and returned to custody.

Did he really think he would be able to evade the police for long? If he thought he was a master of disguise, he thought wrong. There were just some things about him that gave his identity away.

We might smile at how obvious his markings would be to police and wonder how he ever thought he’d be able to truly escape. But on another level, we are no different. We think we have ourselves fully disguised and that somehow God doesn’t see who we really are.

The reality is that God sees us with a clearer vision than we can see ourselves. People try to hide from God — but they have never once evaded His holy and all-seeing eyes. Without the aid of tracking dogs to sniff us out, He knows every dark alley we have ever been down with our feet or traversed in our minds.

The Pharisees approached Jesus wearing their colorful robes of piety and stood before Him confident in their religion. Jesus saw totally inside them. He said to them, “I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you” (John 5:42).

On another occasion it looked like the people were accepting Jesus and His teachings. But John records that Jesus did not entrust Himself to the people because “He knew all men” (John 2:24). More than once we read in the four Gospels that Jesus, “knowing their thoughts” (Luke 11:17), spoke with them.

God knows our hearts so well that He doesn’t just know what we have already done; He also knows what we have the potential to do. No one has ever done every dark thing their heart had considered doing. The brokenness and helplessness and sinfulness of the human heart is more obvious to God than the face of a man wearing a skeleton tattoo is obvious to us.

So, why try to run and hide from God? Why not turn ourselves in? The Bible calls it “repentance.” Simply, it means agreeing with God about who I really am — a sinner. The camouflage, the subterfuge, the veneer, the layers and the staging are all swept away, and I stand alone before God with nothing to offer Him — nothing whatsoever. Just my desperate lostness. My brokenness. My sin. That’s repentance.

Jesus issued a wake-up call to people who were assuming others had tragically died because of some sins they had committed — as if they themselves would never stoop to similar offenses. He said to them, “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3).

The Apostle Paul said he had one message for every person he preached to — regardless of their background — the necessity of “repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21).

When you understand clearly you have nothing to offer God as a sinner, you will also understand that unless He forgives you, you will perish forever. At that point, you will reach out and embrace the amazing truth in the Bible: “When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6-8).

A prison manager once asked incarcerated Christians this question: “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They simply responded: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:30-31).

Would you like to turn yourself in to God just now? There is good news: He will not arrest you and condemn you to eternal punishment. He will completely forgive you and make you a part of His family.