“Looking good, bro!” I couldn’t help but hear the conversation behind me. I was a security contractor working for the State Department in Baghdad. After my first assignment at the embassy, I moved to the Operations Section and found myself at the Baghdad Diplomatic Support Center (BDSC).

Initially, I wasn’t very thrilled. Everyone at the embassy compound dissed BDSC, and now I knew why. What had been Camp Victory during Operation Iraqi Freedom was now managed by the State Department. The name Diplomatic Support Center sounded good until I arrived and got a reality check. It was a dust bowl in the summer and a mud pit in the winter. The gym was primitive compared to the embassy gym, and the air conditioning never kept up with the heat (I’ve never complained about the gym being too cold ever since).

I looked over my shoulder and could see about half a dozen contractors pumping iron and admiring themselves in a wall of mirrors. It was looking in a mirror that sent me to the gym to begin with, so looking again was the last thing on my mind. These were the guys I heard the “looking good” comment from. To use my former pastor’s Southern California lingo, they were some buff dudes! There weren’t a lot of off-duty options, so pumping iron was a favorite pastime. “Looking good” was the desired outcome.

As a Christian, I can get caught up in the “looking good” syndrome. I focus on the outward appearance and neglect the inner man. In taking that path, I never know for sure if I look “good enough.” There are several reasons for that.

Scripture tells me, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9, ESV). If I am simply a hearer of the Word, and not a doer of the Word, I deceive myself. “For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like” (James 1:23-24).

Second, I have this very inconvenient thing called a conscience, and it won’t leave me alone. Paul tells us people who hear God’s Word but don’t exercise it cannot escape their conscience. “They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus” (Romans 2:15-16).

Trying to look good never brings any inward peace or satisfaction. The old conscience is accusing or excusing, and frankly, apart from God, it is only accusing. And then the devil jumps in to accuse us of not looking good. He is called the “accuser of the brethren … which accused them before our God day and night” (Revelation 12:10, KJV). He’s like the little tattletale brother or sister who tells dad every time I screw up. BUT God! There is a solution, and God made it available to all who will come.

There are many Scriptures that tell us we are “in Christ,” but I want to focus on just a few. God has “raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6, ESV). “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27). “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). “And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30).

When God looks at me, He doesn’t see me; He only sees His Son whom He acknowledged from heaven. “And behold, a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased’” (Matthew 3:17).

I am righteous because I am in Christ and Christ is in me. It doesn’t get any better looking than that. I’m looking good today!

What say ye, Man of Valor?