If you’ve spent any significant amount of time around Christians, then you know that the people of God are a conglomeration of imperfect folks, each with their own set of weaknesses and shortcomings. And since we’re all flawed in one way or another, it’s easy to look at our brothers and sisters and see those warts and blemishes in bright, vivid detail.

Yet the perfect One, the Holy One, the One without a single imperfection doesn’t look on His people the way we often do. Listen to what God says through David in Psalm 16:3: “As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight.”

It is profound to think that God calls His children the “excellent” (or as another translation says, “majestic”) ones. Most of the time I don’t feel particularly majestic. I usually picture the Lord pointing me out to one of the angels saying, “Look, Gabriel, there’s one of my majestic ones,” then I imagine Gabriel saying, “Who, him?! I’ve seen how that guy acts sometimes - he doesn’t seem all that majestic.”

Let’s be honest, sometimes our brothers and sisters don’t appear so excellent to us. Every church is filled with a motley collection of “majestic ones” struggling with a potpourri of sins and weaknesses. Like Brother Backslider that you spent a whole afternoon trying to encourage, only to have him call you three hours later from the pit of despair. Or Sister Backstabber who whines that there’s no love in the church, even after 25 of her brethren helped her move last week. God calls those annoying, sometimes-infuriating people His “excellent ones.”

And furthermore, He says they are the ones “in whom is all my delight.”  How is that possible?! Well, the reason God sees His children as delightful, is because He redeemed us with Christ’s blood and is transforming us into His likeness. And since the Father’s delight is in His Son, He now delights in His children who are one with that Son.

And so, the next time I get frustrated with one of God’s weak, flawed, messy people, I need to remember how the Lord sees them.  Because if God sees His children as “excellent,” and finds “delight” in them, then so should I.  Look for the good in your brothers and sisters.