I've started reading The Saint and His Savior by Charles Spurgeon and he got me thinking about self esteem and self love. Our men's group is reading it together and I've got some extra copies, so if you need some good summer reading, pick one up on Sunday. Spurgeon argues that one thing that keeps us from thinking better of Christ. is that we think far too well of ourselves. And perhaps you've noticed, when you think you have life together, when you are ticking the boxes, you don't think much about how much you need Jesus. But in those times when God reminds us of our sin and shows us the fruit of the bad things we have done, we begin to think better of Jesus. I need him and he gave me exactly the things I need.
And so we need to be in the habit of reminding ourselves of our sin. In particular we can think of our recent history and remember several things:
Notice how your behavior broke God's law.
Think of the penalty that sin deserves and what it cost Christ to win your forgiveness.
Think of how that sin wounded your soul and brought bad results to you.
Think of how that sin wounded the soul of others and brought bad results to them.
Now the goal here is not to stay stuck in our sin and misery, but to think about our sin and our condition the way that God sees it so that we are able to begin to see the goodness of Jesus as he really is and to remember that God has given us Jesus' goodness. And it is seeing Jesus' goodness that God has given us that then lifts us up out of our misery because we see that we have the pearl of great price which he has given us.
