Until we have faces--- A spiritual note on the quest of "Self"
First of all, the Bible clearly talks about self-denial rather than self- approval or self-loving. We are to die in order to live. We are to deny ourselves to follow Jesus. We are to take up our cross daily to follow Christ. Phillipian 2:3-4 says, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others." (NIV)
We are to love God, and love others. I actually don't see place for self left. It should not surprise us because the moment we were immersed in baptizing water, it symbolized our funeral, our dying with Christ. " I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."(Galatian 2:20 NIV)
Ok, now this really bothers me. I bet it bothers you the same way. My struggle with this can be sum up in two questions:
Q1. If Galatian 2:20 is true, then what about this "I" who is currently living? I know Jesus lives in me, but what about ME? What about MY dream, MY plan, MY vision, MY feeling, MY need? And MY self-evaluation?
Q2. If I were to die to myself, how can I obey the second commandment, i.e., to love others as yourselves?
Here comes the tricky part. Timothy Keller says in his sermon "the Freedom of Self-Forgetness" that we mistakenly think our problems lie in low self-esteem, i.e., we love ourselves too less. Yet the truth is just the opposite. We love ourselves way too much then we think.
If you happened to attend the Christian counseling seminar, you will find out this is nothing new. And sincerely speaking, as a person who has been counseled myself, this is something I dislike the most. My problem is lacking self- confidence, and are you telling me I am actually have loved myself too much????!!!
But what is true is true. Your dislike does not change the fact.
Ok, even if I accept the fact that I have too big an ego. And I need to literally accept that I was dead. But my questions still left unanswered. What's more, now I have an identity crisis. Who am I? Jesus lives in me, but I am certainly not Jesus! So who am I? The Bible talks about this new self, but how can I be this new self while still worrying about my sin?
WHO AM I?!!!!!!
The answer I think what the Lord gracefully showed me recently is that:
It is ok to have an identity crisis. It is possible to have an identity crisis but still have faith and joy and peace because our new self is secure in God. He knows who we are, we don't. Because in this life we are in the process of becoming. Our old selves died, now we are living as new born creatures, a member of a brand new categories, brother and sister of Christ the King.
10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.(Ephesians 2:10)
God is the creator, we are His handiwork. We were born again in His Spirit, and from then on our whole life becomes a journey in which we were formed into the likeness of His Son. With the help of His Spirit, each time we chose to obey His commands, we chose to die to ourselves. Obedience is no light thing. It should pain our egos. It should pain our selves. But every time we die to ourselves, we live to the Lord. Our spiritual life grows. And that pain carves like sculptor into our spiritual feature, creating a self that is totally unlike the self of this flesh.
C.S.Lewis has a book entitled "Until We have Faces". I have never read this book but somehow when I typed these words, this beautiful title just came naturally to mind. I think I might get what he tries to say (correct me if I am wrong).
Paul says in 1Corinthian 13:12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
God already knows who we will become. From all eternity, He knows and predestined us to be His people. Yet we, bound up in time, can only dimly see the reflection and longing for the true identity we have in heaven. When our earthly journey ends in glory, we will see our Lord face to face. That will be the time when we can fully know God, and it will also be the time when we fully see ourselves in our true faces. We do not have faces now, but till then we will clearly see with unveiling eyes who we truly are, who we were made to be.
What I want to say about this amazing revelation is that
a. Our new selves is in the future, not in the past. It is safe and secure in the Lord's hands.
a. Our new selves is in the future, not in the past. It is safe and secure in the Lord's hands.
b. It is a new self, totally different from our old self. And every choice we make during this life time, is working with God to create our new self in eternity.
c. We will have a new face, a new body, and a new name that only God knows when He created us. (Revelation 2:7)
When you realized these things about your new self, it actually brings unprecedented freedom. It actually takes the burden of self off your shoulder, for it is settled, protected, eternally secured.
So basically God is telling us through the whole Bible, I will take care of your "self" when you take care of other people. That is why Jesus plainly says "Loves God and loves others", with no place left for yourself. Not because you don't have a self, but because if you love God, He will be responsible to take care of your self.
That is also why Jesus asks you to "love your neighbours as yourselves". It does not mean love yourselves first, then you know how to love others. No way! Because if you love yourselves first, how can you love others? It means you should cast yourself unto God, ask Him to take care of you, to love you, to tend to all your needs, so that you can use the love you once had for yourselves to love your neighbours.
We are not called to be perfect for sure, yet neither are we called by God to be real, especially when this "real" means "real" to who you were. We are called to love, we are called to die, we are called to do good works, we are called to be God's people. We are called to create our new self with God with every obedience we made, until we have faces, know Him and be fully known by Him.
Comments
It helps me to look at what the Gospels say as often being figurative; their writers using words and ideas to get near to what they are trying to say. A lot of what they were trying to say must have had no adequate vocabulary for them to express it so they just made their vocabulary up. Like the words they use - 'redemption' 'debt' 'repent' 'forgive' and so on are being used in the Gospels in a new way than the way they were ordinarily used in everyday life in those days. They are new bottles, you might say?
What Jesus taught was 'new wine', and the new uses of words taken from everyday Greek that tell us about Jesus in the Gospels are 'new bottles' for his 'new wine'. I think in the New Testament several times the idea comes up that people on earth talking about and trying to describe 'heavenly things' can only happen when men and women use earthy language in a figurative way when they are trying to tell us approximately what the heavenly things are like.
There are also lots of examples in the English versions of the New Testament where language is used not with the precision we like to try to use it by today, but instead without too much fuss about logic and word order and stuff. I guess as long as the point that the writing was making managed to come across to a reader or hearer that's all the writers really cared about?
So your worries over whom we might be once we have 'relinquished ourselves' were not an issue for a person reading the Gospels or St Paul in the days they were writing in. I just want to say that no matter how hard we try to be neat our lives are messy - no matter how hard we try to be 'good' or 'Christlike' we mess up. I agree that; and you have seen it as an important insight - that life is 'unfinished business' and 'a journey' 'a progress'; but its not a neat and tidy one.
So cut yourself some slack and allow yourself a few mistakes, because even our mistakes are not wasted and teach us something, about ourselves, about the world, about Jesus. Going for too exact an understanding or interpretation of Scripture is not only grief to our spirits, but like the rest of life, it's not easy to put comfortably into a spreadsheet without having loads left over that we don't know what to do with or where it might sit comfortably. very best wishes/Peter