How the Gospel Disrupts My Search for My True Self
"Find your true self” is a mantra for our age. The assumption is that we are blind to the true essence of who we are, and we must search for that true identity.
We are told that once we find our true selves, we can live “authentically,” that is, we can live out the version of ourselves that we finally discover.
There are two problems with this naïve and shallow approach:
Finding an accurate picture of who I am can be complicated. The waters of our inner self get murky with narratives imposed on us by our culture (which is confused) and by our tendency to lie to ourselves (the most dangerous lies).
When we do finally discover that true identity, we are not likely to appreciate what we find. After all, remember Jeremiah’s description of the human heart: “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked… Who can know it?” (Jer 17:9).
So that’s our dilemma: Once we do unearth our true self, we’re not likely to be encouraged by what we find. The human heart is, as Calvin put it, a factory of idols.
My wife and I enjoy watching British crime dramas. Occasionally we will see a confession scene in which the killer is not defiant or smug but incredulous. She tearfully confesses to the crime but can hardly believe she is capable of that sort of violence: “That’s just not who I am!”
But we all know that it’s not just murderers who have this problem. We all have an idealized self-image, a version of ourselves that expresses our aspirations. And we all live with the tension between those two versions of ourselves, those two identities: the kind of person we know ourselves to be and the kind of person we want to be.
This tension, of course, is nothing new.
It is the human condition Paul described in such exquisite detail two thousand years ago in Romans 7:18-19: “For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.”
Left to my own devices, I will never be able to connect those dots between the kind of man I am and the kind of man I want to be. My heart is too broken and corrupt to let me go there.
But the Gospel disrupts and subverts that tension between the kind of person I am and the person I long to be.
My identity in Christ replaces that simple, binary tension with a new, more complex tension. Now, thanks to God’s intervention in my life, that tension is far more glorious and far more hopeful.
Yes, I still struggle with sin. The Puritans had a name for the continued presence of sin in the heart and life of the believer. They called it “indwelling sin.” It should come as no surprise that even the heart of the believer continues to be corrupt; so long as we are in this flesh, we will continue to struggle, and our hearts will continue to manufacture idols.
But the Gospel declares that I am “in Christ.” This means that when the all-knowing, all-seeing One beholds me, He doesn’t see my fickle, corrupt heart, which causes so much pain to me and others. Instead, He sees the glorious purity and righteousness of His Son, who died in my place. Somehow, incredibly, I stand sinless before the eyes of the Holy One of Israel!
…and the Spirit is sanctifying me. God has taken it upon Himself to bend the trajectory of my life toward holiness. He has committed Himself to connecting those dots, making me the kind of person I’ve always longed to be. As Paul so helpfully put it, “He who began a good work in you will carry it to completion on the Day of Christ” (Phil 1:6). In my herky-jerky, three-steps-forward-two-steps-back spiritual progress, it is so good to know that the final outcome of my long battle with sin is assured not by my faithfulness but by God’s faithfulness.
This is why the Gospel is such good news.
The Gospel means I don’t have to excuse or minimize or justify my sin. Because I am secure in my identity in Christ, the Gospel frees me to acknowledge and confess my sin and my shortcomings.
But the Gospel never leaves me there with my sin. The Gospel also calls me to repent and abandon my sin and turn to righteousness, and it assures me that because of what the Spirit is doing in me, that righteousness will be mine not just in theory or aspiration but in fact and in truth!
I wish I could tell you that once you apprehend this glorious truth, you’ll never forget it.
But the truth is that we are forgetful creatures.
This is why we must continually preach the Gospel to ourselves.
We must continually remind ourselves of who we are in Christ, and we must constantly lean into the power of the Spirit to make real in our lives what is already true before the eyes of God.
Persevere,
Paul Pyle
Pastor of Discipleship