The man across from me was drawing on coffee cups. So, on a whim, I asked him, “Why cups?” It turns out this scruffy man was named Bill—Bill the Artist. It was a Sunday morning, and I was exhausted and desperate for some time alone with God. My family had graciously let me slip out of the house early before I needed to “get to pastoring” at church; I just wanted to catch my breath and find some prayer.
That is when I saw Bill. Sadly, I’ve walked past many “Bills” in my life, but this morning I felt that nudge—Talk to him. Maybe you’ve felt the nudge; it always seems to come when I’m drained, but it brought the second wind I needed. Bill was such a joyful fellow and so happy to talk about how he had really been in a bad space, but was working to get better.
Slowly, gradually, the hour slipped by as our coffee cooled and my anxious heart slowed, simmering into the contentment of the moment. All because God nudged me to see Bill.
El Roi: The God Who Sees Me
God is a God who sees, and he sees all of his image bearers. Genesis highlights these truths right in the first chapter of the Bible, “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).
And in Psalm 139, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb . . . when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body” (Psalm 139:13, 15b-16a).
Another beautiful space we see God “seeing” someone is in Genesis 16:13, “[Hagar] gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: ‘You are the God who sees me,’ for she said, ‘I have now seen the One who sees me.’ “
The first time in Scripture that God is given a formal name—El Roi: “The God who sees me”—is by an abused slave woman whose name means “foreigner.” She is alone, ready to die, far from her home and country, and running from her apathetic masters (see Genesis 16).
But God sees her, one of his image bearers, and gives her a promise. Bible scholar Hakeem Bradley says, “[God] promises to give [Hagar] an innumerable amount of descendants. In other words, he will make her into a great nation. Isn’t it interesting that God promises Hagar something similar to what he promised Abram in the previous chapter?”1
God didn’t have to give her blessings; it would have been enough to just save her, to send her salvation of some sort in the desert. But God sees her. He sees who she is, how she has been treated, how life is beyond her control, how different it is from what she probably imagined as a girl, and he promises to make her into a great nation, the same as Abraham.
Loving Image Bearers
Do we do this? Do we see with God’s eyes? Do we see people around us and see image bearers? Because, truly, everyone is one.
Carmen Joy Imes highlights this beautifully—“no person is excluded from this status as God’s image . . . to fulfill God’s commission, we need each other.”2 There is a definite need for redemption in this broken world. There is a broken relationship between all creation and its Creator that needs the Redeemer. That is why Jesus came. So that image bearers of God might be name bearers of Jesus.
This must be our default view. We must see people as image bearers of God first and foremost. Our starting line is God, and he made us in his image.
We must see people as image bearers of God first and foremost.
John Mark Comer highlights this perspective in Live No Lies. “The secular world’s dominant idea . . . is that human beings are animals, simply aided by time and chance to evolve into the dominant species on our planet.”3
But this is a false start. It opens the door for “othering” people into groups we don’t care for. Alan Noble repositions us properly when he says, “our belonging to God gives us a specific set of laws for determining right actions, which in their simplest form amount to loving God and loving our neighbor.”4
This means not loving others for what they can do, for us or society or our church, but loving them for who they are. They are image-bearers of God. It is not because they are so good in and of themselves; this love stems from an extremely high view of God. If we love God, then we will love his image-bearers—our neighbors.
Default Actions as Image Bearers
When seeing as God sees is our default, then things change.
I have a friend who people-watches, particularly in airports. As he does, he takes note of individuals and prays Psalm 139 over them—reminding himself they are preciously made in God’s image and knit together in the womb by God himself. When the person we see on the street shares with us the most important of commonalities, then it becomes harder to “other” them into a group where we can keep our distance.
In a time that is marked by extreme division and disunity, it is even more important that our default view sees others as created image bearers in need of redemption rather than a “they” who need to be beaten down and conquered or hidden from. We must marry proper perspective with action. By sitting and listening to those who think differently from us. By forgiving those who wrong us within and without the Church. By extending hospitality to not just those who can pay us back in kind.
Moments of Showing Jesus
Simple, rhythmic interactions bring with them Gospel moments of showing Jesus. One prime method is table fellowship; when we eat together, we break down barriers that words sometimes can’t quite climb over. Even the basic act of asking someone’s name brings with it an intimacy that bridges, rather than buffers. It is much easier to pray for someone if you know their name.
- What might happen if we strove to invite over for dinner everyone in our church throughout the year? What about everyone on our block?
- Or, what if we hosted apartment building parties?
- Whose story might you become involved in for Jesus’ name?
May we see the world as God sees it—full of broken image bearers in need of redemption to be name bearers of Jesus. Let’s slow down and not miss the Bills of the world, those just waiting to share a coffee with us.
- Hakeem Bradley, “The God Who Sees,” October 21, 2024, https://hakeembradley.substack.com/p/the-god-who-sees. ↩︎
- Carmen Joy Imes and Esau McCaulley, Becoming God’s Family: Why the Church Still Matters (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2025), 41. ↩︎
- John Mark Comer, Live No Lies: Recognize and Resist the Three Enemies That Sabotage Your Peace (Colorado Springs: WaterBrook, 2021), 31. ↩︎
- Alan Noble, You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World (Lisle: InterVarsity Press, 2025), 133. ↩︎
