When we meet someone for the first time, most of the time the first thing we will notice is their appearance. We can’t help this. As humans, we interact with the world around us with our senses. The first of our senses to be engaged when meeting someone is sight. As humans, we are also very good at finding patterns. Based on our previous experiences we associate certain appearances with people that we have encountered with similar appearances. This is made worse by all the ways that the culture that we live in reinforces our biases, especially media. This is not an entirely bad thing or even an entirely inaccurate thing, otherwise we wouldn’t do it. But it is something that illustrates an important difference between us and God, and points us to a character trait of God that we ought to emulate.
In 1 Samual chapter 16, God has directed the prophet Samuel to anoint a new king for Israel. God sends him to the house of Jesse, and Samuel makes the same mistake that we often do. When he meets the eldest of Jesse’s sons, he assumes right away that this is to be the new king because he looks the part.
“But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’”
– 1 Samuel 16:7 ESV
When God looks at us, the most important thing to Him is not our outward appearance, but rather our heart. The son of Jesse that God would choose to be the next king of Israel was not even brought out to Samuel initially. He was out tending the sheep and the youngest of Jesse’s sons. Jesse’s son David was chosen to be the next king of Israel, and the Bible frequently refers to him as “a man after God’s own heart.” When the Bible references the heart, it is not talking about the organ that pumps blood through your body, but rather the innermost part of who you are. Our hearts are not easily changed. The heart is formed over the course of our lives by the choices we make and the things we point our affections towards. Our deepest and most true desires proceed from the heart, which is why God cares more about our hearts than the way we look. It is easy to change our outward appearance, but our heart is much more difficult to change.
As Christians, our goal should be to imitate God within the limits of our nature. We cannot look at someone and know their heart. That is a way that God is distinctly different from us, but that does not mean that we cannot know the contents of a persons heart.
“For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear bad bruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”
– Luke 6:43-45 ESV
When we take the time to get to know a person, to know their actions and their speech, we can begin to discern the contents of their heart. We will still be limited in our ability to know the contents of their heart, but we do not completely lack the ability to know someone’s heart either. The key difference between us and God is that God can look into a person’s heart an know them and we must spend time with people to know them. We must be careful not to judge people based on their outward appearances or even our first few interactions with them. Appearances and a limited number of interactions do not reveal a persons heart. Time, vulnerability, and patience are required to truly know another person and to begin to catch a glimpse of their heart. So if we want imitate the character of God, and learn to look on the heart rather than outward appearance, we must take the time to get to know people. We must fight against that instinct to label people based on our past experiences, and ask God to help us open our hearts to people and do the hard work of knowing others and being known.
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