One of my dear Christian brothers recently called to tell me the Lord is revealing things in his life that need to change. He said it is embarrassing and humbling to see these things; I knew exactly what he meant! (See the June 30 blog post.) Reflecting on his words, I realized the reason for our embarrassment is that we like to think of ourselves as being better than we are—accordingly, we avoid such self-examination.
Paul affirms that we ought to examine ourselves to see if we are in the faith (2 Cor. 13:5). But the inherent danger during these times is that we become introspective—painfully “self-conscious.” Note Paul’s emphasis is not on ourselves, but on whether or not we are living in faith.
When Adam and Eve sinned, they became SELF CONSCIOUS for the fist time. Their nakedness is symbolic of self-consciousness and shame. Shifting focus away from God’s sufficiency, they paid more attention to their incompetence and what to do about it. Paul says we become slaves to the things we pay attention to (Ro. 6:16). Overly paying attention to our problems keeps us stuck.
We will never be changed by looking at ourselves; when we forget who we are (in our flesh) and focus on who He is, we will be changed into who we are called to be. Let us be careful during times of self-examination to keep fixing our eyes on Jesus (Heb. 12:3).
Greg,
ReplyDeleteI am grateful that God is merciful. When He requires us to examine ourselves it is an occasional task, and not one that we must always occupy ourselves with. But when He does insist we see what He sees--the end of our self-efforts--then He also adds His remedy: the man in the mirror must die, no matter how beautiful we appear to ourselves or how ugly we appear (the other side of the deception-coin).
After the work of the Cross has taken place then we can go back to the mirror and reckon ourselves according to what He says about our new man. The challenge then is to actually believe that what He says is true. This time, though, the more we look at our Lord and hold Him in our vision, the easier is will be to make the transition from seeing ourselves in truth as "sinners" saved by grace to "saints" who occasionally sin (thank you, Neil Anderson!).
But this is a lifelong process. And the pain we experience as God reveals the progressive layers of self-deception tat we must overcome is designed to drive us to His feet in our dependence upon His strength to make the hard decsions. But the joy we can expect far surpasses the "light affliction" we must pass through as He fashions the experience to work for us a "far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."
Stan