From Scarlet to Snow – How God Sees His Children
When Jesus prayed “Our father”, this was a ground breaking moment. Before Jesus explained our relationship with God, God often wasn’t spoken of directly, let alone in an endearing way that’s rooted in a relationship. This perspective is at the heart of how God views his children.
There’s a tension in Scripture that captures the heart of divine love: on one hand, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” and “Nothing unclean shall enter heaven,”. How can imperfect believers then enter heaven? Western Christianity has developed the idea of legal justification to get around this… believer are declared legally righteous based on God’s righteousness even if they are still inwardly imperfect. There are a couple issues with this way of looking at it, though. One is that it’s not rooted in the love of God to think we have a legal relationship with God, and even the bible says our legal relationship as was the case before Jesus, has transformed, “the handwriting of ordinances that was against us” has been “nailed to the Cross” (Colossians 2:14).
I’ve come to see it like this: God looks at His imperfect believers as children. He doesn’t see us primarily as sinners or failures, but as beloved sons and daughters still growing into the fullness of His likeness. The Cross removes the legal barrier between us and God—but the journey of transformation, the washing “though our sins be like scarlet, they shall be white as snow” is a work of love, not law.
When Isaiah says, “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18), he’s not describing mere legal pardon. He’s describing an inner cleansing—a divine metamorphosis. God’s forgiveness is not a transaction, but a transformation. He is not simply satisfied with acquitting us; He wants to heal us. Moreover, God has a different way of approaching us, it is through the eyes of a loving father like the story of the prodigal son. He doesn’t see imperfect believers, but rather through love he sees us as his beloved children. This is an ontological way of looking at things, on the surface it’s superficial and similar to looking at us legally, but it’s based on love and relationship, not law.
The Orthodox View: Healing, Not Just Forgiveness
The Orthodox Church approaches salvation not as a courtroom drama, but as a process of theosis—becoming partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). It sees sin not as crime to be punished, but as sickness to be healed. Christ, the Great Physician, came not just to pay a debt but to restore humanity’s lost glory.
So when Orthodoxy says “nothing unclean shall enter heaven,” it’s not speaking of exclusion based on moral performance. It’s describing reality: the unclean cannot endure the blazing light of divine love. God’s fire is not vindictive—it’s purifying. To be in His presence is to burn with truth. The saints are not those who earned heaven, but those whose hearts were healed enough to dwell in its light and who were declared clean as beloved children.
That’s why even after the Cross, the Church calls believers into confession, repentance, and purification—not to earn grace, but to cooperate with it. Salvation is not a one-time event; it is a lifelong participation in divine healing.
The Western Legal View: Justification as Acquittal
In Western theology, especially after Augustine and later the Protestant Reformers, salvation came to be framed more in legal terms. Humanity is seen as standing guilty before a divine Judge, and Christ’s death as satisfying divine justice. When a believer accepts Christ, his sins are forgiven and Christ’s righteousness is imputed—credited to his account.
This view, called justification by faith, beautifully expresses the truth that we are saved not by our merit but by God’s mercy. Yet, it tends to describe salvation as an external declaration: God declares the sinner righteous even though inwardly the person remains imperfect. In this sense, justification is about status before God rather than state of being.
Orthodoxy, by contrast, insists that justification must become internalized. God does not merely call us righteous; He makes us righteous by uniting us to Himself. The Cross is not just an act of pardon—it is a medicine of immortality. Where Western theology emphasizes imputed righteousness, the Eastern tradition emphasizes imparted holiness.
If the Western view says, “You are acquitted,” the Orthodox view adds, “You are lovingly accepted – now come and be healed.” The Cross removes the barrier; the Spirit begins the cure.
The Father’s Eyes: Beyond Legal and Moral Perfection
When I think about how God sees His children, I don’t picture a courtroom or a moral exam. I picture a Father’s gaze. A father doesn’t measure a child’s worth by perfection but by relationship. When a toddler stumbles, the father doesn’t condemn the fall — he reaches out with delight and says, “Up you go again.”
I don’t believe believers ever reach some abstract state of moral perfection. We grow in love, yes, but we remain human — limited, emotional, sometimes fearful, sometimes self-centered. What changes is not that we become flawless, but that we become more open to love, more transparent to grace.
So, when I say God looks at His imperfect believers as children, I mean that His love is not conditioned by performance. It’s parental, not judicial. The Cross doesn’t just cancel our transgression — it opens the Father’s arms. The relationship is not built on legal standing, but on affection, mercy, and belonging.
Even the Apostle John, the “beloved disciple,” writes:
“Beloved, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” (1 John 3:2)
Notice the emphasis: we are children now, but will be like Him later. The relationship is already secure even though the transformation is unfinished. It’s love that carries us forward, not law.
This perspective sits somewhere between the Western legal model and the Orthodox therapeutic one. Legal justification focuses on being declared righteous. The Orthodox view focuses on being healed into righteousness.
But the Father–child relationship goes deeper still. It says: “You are already loved in your imperfection. You are already His.” Holiness, in this view, isn’t a requirement to earn God’s favor — it’s the natural outgrowth of love received.
The prodigal son didn’t clean himself before returning home. He just came back. And before he could even finish his apology, the Father was already embracing him (Luke 15:20–24). That’s not law or perfection — that’s relationship.
In this sense, salvation isn’t God overlooking sin as if it didn’t matter, nor demanding perfection as if love were conditional. It’s God holding us, forming us, and slowly teaching us to live as children of light — even when our hands still tremble.
Near-Death Experiences: Glimpses of Divine Light
Interestingly, many near-death experiences echo this very theology. People who encounter the “Light” describe it as unconditional love—so vast, so personal, and so pure that it exposes every hidden thought and motive. Some speak of a “life review” where they feel the impact of their actions, not in judgment, but in truthful love.
They often say, “God didn’t condemn me; He showed me who I really was through His love.” That is Orthodox spirituality in essence: divine love as refining fire, not wrath. In the light of God’s presence, impurity is not punished—it is transformed.
Such accounts remind us that heaven is not merely a reward, but a reality we become capable of entering. To see God is to become like Him (1 John 3:2).
Becoming White as Snow: The Journey of Transformation
In Orthodox thought, the entire Christian life is this process of becoming “white as snow.” Prayer, repentance, mercy, and humility are not duties to appease God—they are ways of aligning ourselves with divine grace. Every act of love cleanses the mirror of the soul. Every honest confession removes a layer of distortion. Every tear shed in repentance polishes the heart to reflect more of the divine image.
God does not see His children through the lens of shame but through the eyes of infinite patience. The Father running to meet the prodigal son is not blind to the son’s past—He simply values relationship over record. In the same way, God looks at His struggling believers not as sinners to be judged, but as children learning to walk.
The Science of Happiness and the Father’s Love
Modern research in the science of happiness confirms what the saints always taught: joy flows from inner alignment, forgiveness, and love. People who let go of guilt, resentment, and self-condemnation experience measurable increases in well-being. Gratitude rewires the brain. Compassion releases oxytocin and serotonin. The inner state the Bible calls “peace that surpasses understanding” (Philippians 4:7) has biological correlates of calm, coherence, and resilience.
Spiritual purification—the movement from scarlet to snow—is not only the path to heaven; it’s the path to joy. When the heart is healed and rests in the Father’s unconditional love, it finds even now a foretaste of the eternal happiness to come.
The Law of Love 
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