The Life With Nothing to Hide

"Love must be sincere." - Romans 12:9

There is a piece of pottery on a wooden shelf, unremarkable in every detail until someone lifts it toward the window. In the old world, a potter who had a flaw in a bowl could fill the crack with wax, smooth the surface, and sell the piece as whole. It looked fine on the shelf, and only showed its flaw in the light, where the wax softened and the crack showed through. The Latin root sincerus came out of that shop, and it meant without wax. Nothing filled in, nothing hidden, the piece is what you see.

One line Paul, an early follower of Jesus, wrote to a church in Rome carries the same idea, "Love must be sincere," Romans 12:9. The Greek he chose is anupokritos, and it comes straight from the theater. A hypokrites was an actor who held a painted mask in front of his face and spoke from behind it. Anupokritos is the actor with the mask down, the face the audience sees is the one that is actually there.

There was a man named Nathanael, one of the first people Jesus met. Before they had exchanged a word, He saw him coming and said, "...here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit," John 1:47. Jesus was not calling him perfect. He was saying there was no second version of Nathanael underneath, no other self kept out of sight. If you have ever held a version of yourself in place through a long meeting, a family dinner, a hard conversation at church, you know the weight of it. Nathanael did not carry that weight.

The quieting inside you, the lowered guard, the held-back word, the yielding you did not expect, the good you did not rehearse, none of it was for its own sake. It was all shaping one thing, a life with nothing left to hide. Sincerity is not a skill you can practice. You can only notice what used to be hidden coming quietly into the open under a Light that has been patient with you for a long time, and recognize that what is showing through is not a flaw anymore. It is a person God has been quietly making real.

Live it out.

Prayer

Father, we have carried versions of ourselves longer than we realized. Thank You for the Light that keeps showing us what is actually there, and for the patience that waits while what was hidden comes into the open. Finish in us what we could never finish on our own. Amen.