The chapters for this week were 14 and 15 which address the self and the importance that we be free to be ourselves.
Chapter 14 "Freedom to be Ourselves"
In this chapter Tom Marshall teaches on some core issues that are important if we are to have a healthy posture toward the self. First he talks about "the created self":
- "...the Bible declares that people were made to be loving beings." We know this because we were created in God's image, and He is love.
- "Genesis makes it clear that human beings were created as selves or egos (Gen.2:7)...if God made the self, He is not going to blot it out or eliminate it...God is not turning out spiritual Christians in batches of ten, all thinking alike, praying alike, believing alike, worshiping alike. That is a human method of mass production, not God's creativity at work. (Eph.3:10 shows us the diversity that God loves.) For this glorious harmony God needs our individuality to be fully expressed, yet held in harmony with each other's individuality.
- One of the most wonderful discoveries I have made about God is that somehow everything He does and everything He commands always ends up being for our benefit. Often we think God's commands are in order to extract something from us, but they are always in order to give (Deut.10:12,13)...When He commands us to love Him, it is for our benefit, not His...it is we who need both to love Him and be loved by Him...
Marshall goes on to finish this chapter by saying that God's way of sharing His love-nature with us was to create the self as a "goal-directed mechanism", meaning that whatever the soul focusses on, it reproduces in human nature:
- It (the soul) works consciously and unconsciously, waking or sleeping, to produce in us the replica of what it is occupied with. In Adam God meant the self, directed towards the tree of life, to produce the likeness of Christ in human beings.
Chapter 15 "The Fallen Self"
The author now explains what happened to the human self in the garden of Eden. He says of the fallen self: "Human nature seems like a machine that has toppled off its stand, but with the motor still running, wheels still spinning, pistons pumping, levers flailing. It gets nowhere, accomplishes nothing, and is a danger to itself and everything around it."
Marshall says that the first sin of humans was that of injustice in that Adam and Eve took something that God said was His alone (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil). God gave them free access to all other trees but that one, and they would not accept that there was something they couldn't have for themselves..."The hardest lesson a child has to learn is not obedience but justice. 'You cannot keep that; it does not belong to you', or 'You cannot have all the sweets for yourself; some of them are for the other children.'"
The fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil seemed to offer fulfillment for the basic God-given needs within humans: life, love, wisdom. But the deception was that these were not in that tree but in the tree of life, Christ (Jn.1:4; Eph. 5:2; Col. 2:2,3). To eat of the tree of life meant that Adam and Eve must love God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength, and it was in this choice - whether to give love to God or invest it in themselves - that they failed.
Marshall goes on to give six radical effects the fall had on human nature:
- Deep investment of love on the human self/ego..."from being an ego, we became egocentric."
- Humans lost fellowship and relationship with God, cut off from access to the tree of life..."Their future access to the tree of life could now only be secured by the way of another tree, the tree of Calvary."
- Humans were also cut off from true knowledge of God since they no longer had fellowship with Him..."Human beings made in the image of God now make gods in the image of human beings...focused on these distorted gods, people increasingly reproduce the same distortions in themselves (Jer.2:5)"
- Humans have lost the capacity to love others in a truly disinterested, unselfish way..."We love other people merely so that they will love us and meet our need for love..."
- The self as a goal-directed mechanism is cut off from its true goal, which is the tree of life. "It still functions the only way in which it can - it seeks a goal and reproduces that object in its nature." The only goal now available to the self is the impressions and feelings and responses that we experience in relation to other people. "This is the origin of the self-image, the concept of ourselves that we acquire first as small children..."
- The self-centered universe that we are now locked into is a fertile source of fear, anxiety and depression. "Anything that appears to endanger or threaten the self induces fear and anxiety, anger or hurt."
At the close of chapter 15 the author addresses the Christian believer saying that in the new birth, we generally experience forgiveness for acts of sin but our conscience usually is not sensitized yet to wrong motives. Since the real problem is the "very deep love investment on the self that takes place in levels below the conscious mind," believers are often not aware of our need for deeper cleansing and healing. And when faced with the possibility of this need, there are 3 primary defenses that we protect ourselves with: rationalization, projection, repression.
But God is vitally interested in cleansing our motivations as well as our actions and after we are born again, "His Spirit begins to probe into the depths of our personality to deal with the hidden streams of motivation..." His work is so thorough that we can know that our motives are pure and not live with self-doubt! The following 2 chapters will deal with the liberated self...
In closing I want to add that what Marshall says about the self being a "goal-directed mechanism" confirms what I've learned about the power of contemplation - contemplation is simply focussing on something (either the right thing or the wrong thing). As I have practiced the presence of Jesus more and more in my walk with Him (in other words, contemplating Him and His beauty and works), I'm being transformed. My self is being changed because of what my focus is. This is what Paul in II Cor. 3:18 is referring to: beholding/contemplating Him, we become like Him, changed from glory to glory.
Let's read chapters 16 and 17 for next week, and that will finish out the section on the self. God bless you this week - know that He is with you every moment and His grace is available to you to fix your gaze on Jesus, the Tree of Life!
The timing of the Lord is impeccable. The two chapters on the self this week were powerful for me because it’s been more recently for me that God, a.k.a. Jealous Jealousy, is after particular areas that are not abandoned to Him…and I was very encouraged, challenged and stirred up to read on liberation of the self.
ReplyDeleteThis week in particular has been an intense battle of desiring freedom from self-consciousness and self-focus and yet finding myself spiraling back into seeing me only because it was what I contemplated like all the time– whether good or bad things about me, it was me, me, me.
It’s freeing to realize that it’s not any level of my own desire, exertion or effort to pull me away from self, but looking to God and Him doing it as I take time to gaze upon Him. Earlier this week there were some difficult circumstances that pulled the crutches out from under me and I was suddenly at a desperate state. And what an awesome place it is to be in DESPERATION and in that desperation to look and get my perspective shaken to reality – of gazing upon the ONE who is worthy to be lifted up, contemplated, adored and worshipped. And in all of the beauty and glory of who He is, He alone is able and willing to free me from myself.
And so I threw down all my glorified attempts & methods to break free from self and I just cried out “Jesus!” What a beautiful name and what a beautiful ONE to see. I can’t save myself, but He can.
In reading these chapters the reality sunk in a little more of Jesus suffering-He endured the most painful, excruciating form of punishment and death that any man has ever & ever will face and He triumphed – that is GOOD NEWS. He conquered everything, and in this area of self – I love what Marshall wrote on Jesus always doing what pleases the Father, but during his time in the Garden of Gethsemane there was a “great, unexpected struggle to yield to the Father’s will. He broke the deep, self-centered fixation within human nature and…chose the Father’s will, broke us free from radical selfishness.” Oh, hallelujah!!! There is One who has gone ahead of me and all of us and broken the power of self and He carries us with Him to the Father.