“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whosoever loses his life for me will save it” (Luke 9:23-24).
Old Socrates, the nemesis of corruption in his day, became famous for his dictum: “Know Yourself!” But one who was born some 400 years later, Jesus Christ, said, “Give yourself!” Now, there is a lot of difference between knowing yourself and giving yourself.
A knowledge of yourself is important. But altogether too often, once you have taken an honest and searching look within, you’re not very happy with what you see. Socrates understood that because he added, “It isn’t a pleasant picture to know ourselves.” What I’m about to point out may be a fine point, but I think it’s important. There is a good deal of difference between a knowledge of yourself, and self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is an endless search, a journey that some people embark on, never to really arrive at a destination. They are the ones who are always going to a seminar, always reading a new book, always trying a new therapy, trying to find out who they really are, but the knowledge of yourself is different. It is the frank appraisal of who you are, which comes by accepting what you see, instead of avoiding the reality of what you really are.
I think Paul would have agreed. You read about his personal struggle in Romans 7 in the New Testament. Here, Paul takes a look within his heart in light of what God expects—he didn’t like what he saw. He came up short. He said, “I don’t understand what I do. For what I want to do I don’t do, but what I hate I do.” Continuing he admitted, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I can’t carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing” (Romans 7:15,18-19).
Can you relate to Paul’s problem? When you acknowledge who you really are, you don’t like it. You know that you tolerate in your own life what you condemn in others. The thoughts that often fill your heart would embarrass you greatly if they were flashed on a screen for your wife or friends to see. They are, however, a reflection of the real you.
Modern psychology, and, frankly, some modern theology, makes you feel comfortable with who you really are. To make you feel better they talk of acceptance and understanding, but those were not the themes of the ministry of Jesus. His knowledge of people went beyond the veneer of respectability; he saw people exactly as they were. Yes, He didn’t spend His time and energy either condemning them, or placating them, stressing the fact that “we are just human.”
No, He challenged, “Give yourself!” In giving you receive—in dying you live. But giving runs contrary to our old natures. We want to receive, not give. We want our strokes, not to suffer the humiliation of learning to serve. Here is how Jesus put it: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it” (Luke 9:23-24).
The beautiful thing about giving yourself, first to God and then to others, is that in giving yourself, your old self changes. Paul described it as becoming “a new person,” one who is intrinsically different, not simply a glossed-over version of the old, which was pretty bad. This is the beauty of conversion.
Yes, it’s important to know yourself—to know your weaknesses, your failures, your sins—but once you know that, do something about it. Give yourself, and you will become God’s person.
Resource reading: Galatians 2.
