There is a face you have not been able to forget.
Not the face of the man who failed you. Not the face that hardened across a board table, or smiled while it was deciding against you, or turned away when you needed it most. That face is in your memory too, and I will not pretend it is easy to dislodge. But I am not writing about that face today.
I am writing about the other face. The one you saw before any of this happened. The one that drew you in the first place. The face of Christ as He met you in the gospel — gentle and unflinching, clear and merciful, the face you were given when you first understood that He was real and He was for you.
That face is what I want to put in front of you again.
Some of you are reading this with a wound still open. A man who held the role failed you. The church that was supposed to be a sanctuary became something else. And somewhere in the aftermath, an old confusion crept in: if the under-shepherd was that, what does that say about the Shepherd?
I want to be plain with you. The face you saw in the man who failed you was not the face of Christ. It was a man’s face, claiming an authority that was never his to keep, distorting in the moment of its unmasking. You were not wrong to be wounded by it. You were not wrong to walk out of that room. But that face is not the face that called you.
The face that called you is the face that has not changed.
Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one” (John 10:27–30, ESV).
Read that slowly. Read it again.
The sheep know His voice. He knows His sheep. He gives them eternal life. They will never perish. And no one — no one — can snatch them out of His hand.
Notice what is not in that passage. There is no clause about the under-shepherd. There is no contingency on whether the man in the pulpit was faithful. There is no asterisk reading unless your elder board fails you. The promise is direct and unconditional and made by the One whose hand has never let go of anything He has held.
If you are His, you are still His. The man who failed you cannot reach into the Father’s hand and pull you out.
Paul writes, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6, ESV).
The light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
The same God who spoke creation into being is the God who lit your heart with the glory He showed you in the face of His Son. That is what happened to you when you first met Him. The face you saw was the glory of God breaking into your life. And what God lit, no man can put out.
A failed shepherd can scatter a flock. A failed shepherd cannot extinguish the glory of God in the face of Christ. That light is not in the under-shepherd’s hands. It never was.
I know there are mornings when the face you remember is the wrong one. When the betrayal feels closer than the gospel. When you are not sure you can walk back into a sanctuary because the last sanctuary became the place of the wound.
I am not going to tell you what to do about that on a Tuesday morning. There are other Tuesdays for that.
What I want to leave you with today is this: the face you first saw is still the face that sees you.
He has not looked away. He has not turned. He has not handed you to anyone else. The under-shepherd who failed you is not standing between you and Him, and was never able to. The Father’s hand still holds you. The Son’s voice still knows you. The glory you saw is still shining.
You have not been forgotten by the One whose face you have not been able to forget.
That face is still the face that called you. That face is still the face over you.
That is the face that stays.
If this resonated, would you share it? Someone in your life may be carrying a wound from a church and may need to hear that the Shepherd they met is still the Shepherd over them. Pass it on quietly.