WHO AM I? THOUGHTS UPON WORTH, VALUE, AND SIGNIFICANCE

“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.” Romans 12:3 ESV

Who Am I? Do you ever ask that question of yourself? I have been thinking allot about how we define ourselves in life. As a pastor I have wrestled with this allot. Over the years people have asked me questions like, "How big is your church?" "Do you have a building?" "How big is your youth group?" I will often times see in their faces approval or disapproval in my answers to their questions that I have allowed to cause me to measure myself in such a way that I feel like a failure, worthless, and discouraged about what I do. For many years I put the worth of my life based upon others judgements or my criteria of ministry success. When my church was considerably larger, bible studies were well attended, lots of programs were going on, the finances were booming, I was on top of the world. I was somebody! But when everything changed I would go to pastors conferences and hear the stories of church growth and would leave wondering "what's wrong with me?" I would feel worthless, discouraged, that I had let God down, that somehow I had missed His will or leading in my life, and that God was disappointed with me for my lack of success. These thoughts made me a very sad and defeated person. I have come to see how wrong and how foolish it is to measure myself this way; but even more, to measure myself at all!

Oh how often we ask the wrong questions of ourselves. How often we seek approval, significance, esteem, worth, and value as the quest for our lives. The ground of this quest for fallen man is that he measures in his own mind or others minds what gives him worth, esteem, value, and significance. Thus the means of finding this significance is those things through the world, others, and self. For example, fallen man says "I am significant in what I do, how I look, who I know, what I have achieved, what others think of me, or what I have accumulated." All of this is rooted in pride which when achieved brings self-exaltation and when not achieved brings on self pity. I have known them both very well. Both of which are sinful. Man's search for significance is a dead end because invariably man will never find what he is looking for and it is a grand deception because even when he thinks he has found it, he is nothing but deceived and his significance is misplaced.

Even much contemporary Christian Popular Psychology doesn't get it. It kindly, well intentioned, but erroneously says, "Do you want to have significance? Then look to Christ as a means to your significance. Do you want to have value? Then look to Christ as the one who gives you value. Do you want to have esteem? Then look to Christ as the means of your esteem?" In short, the goal is still the same as the non-Christian: esteem, worth, value, and significance. The difference is the means. Now instead of people, the world, and others, Christ is a means to the goal of your significance and esteem and value. Now we are to let Jesus Christ be the one who makes much of you. I think this is a wrong view in the light of scriptures. John Piper asks the question "do you love God because He makes much of you or do you love God because in Christ He frees you to make much of Him?" There is a world of difference.

The Apostle Paul in Romans 12:3 says an astonishing thing. He looks out at man and as he watches people puff themselves up, thinking of themselves too highly, he says, Here is how to think soberly about yourself: Make faith the measure of your mind. Make faith the measure of your heart, your life. Faith looks to Christ and enjoys him as the sum and judge of all that is true and good and right and beautiful and valuable and satisfying. So what Paul is saying is that the essence of the new Christian mind is that we see and savor—we behold and we embrace—Jesus Christ and not ourselves as the supreme truth and supreme treasure in the universe.

By doing so he turns self-exaltation upside down. He says, Do you want to have significance? Then look to Christ as infinitely significant. Do you want to have value? Then look to Christ as infinitely valuable. Do you want to want to have esteem? Then look to Christ as worthy of infinite esteem. You were made to embrace Him as infinitely significant and infinitely valuable and infinitely worthy of esteem. That is what God wants us to love to do. That is our deepest identity.

I’ll say it again: Do you want to have significance? Then embrace Christ as the one who is infinitely significant to you. Do you want to have value? Then embrace Christ as infinitely valuable. Do you want to want to have esteem? Then embrace Christ as worthy of infinite esteem.

Our faith in Christ is the measure of our significance and value and esteem, because faith means looking away from ourselves to Christ and embracing him as the all-satisfying embodiment of all that is significant and valuable and worthy of esteem. The measure of our new self in Christ—the renewed mind—is the degree to which we look away from ourselves to Christ as our truth and treasure.

If Christ is more to you, you are more. If Christ is less to you, you are less. Your measure rises and falls with your measure of Him. Your valuing Him is the value that you have. Your esteeming Him is the esteem that you have. Your treasuring him is the treasure that you are. Henry Scougal put it so well, "The worth and excellence of a soul is measured by the object of its love."

The Christian can truly say "away!" to his quest for significance, worth, approval, and value. The Christian can finely be free from its relentless tyranny. No longer do allow ourselves to be defined by who we are, what we do, and who we know. The quest for significance ends at the foot of the cross. Because of Christ's death, resurrection, and the new birth, I am now truly loved by God and free to do what God created and redeemed me for: TO FIND MY SIGNIFICANCE IN MAKING MUCH OF HIM. "This is eternal life, to know You the only true God, and Jesus whom You have sent."(John 17:3). Our quest is now like Count Zinzendorf, "I have only one passion, it is He!" or as Paul said, "For me to live is Christ...I want to know Christ".

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a poem that sums up our quest to find our significance before man or God. He wrote it while he was in prison in June 1944. He was executed by the Nazi's a year later, three days before the end of the war in 1945. It is titled "Who Am I?" I have always appreciated it because when all is said and done, the only thing that matters is not who were are , but whose we are!

Who am I? They often tell me
I would step from my prison cell
poised, cheerful and sturdy,
like a nobleman from his country estate.

Who am I? They often tell me
I would speak with my guards
freely, pleasantly, and firmly,
as if I had it to command.

Who am I? I have also been told
that I suffer the days of misfortune
with serenity, smiles and pride,
as someone accustomed to victory.

Am I really what others say about me?
Or am I only what I know of myself?
Restless, yearning and sick, like a bird in its cage,
struggling for the breath of life,
as though someone were choking my throat;
hungering for colors, for flowers, for the songs of birds,
thirsting for kind words and human closeness,
shaking with anger at capricious tyranny and the pettiest slurs,
bedeviled by anxiety, awaiting great events that might never occur,
fearfully powerless and worried for friends far away,
weary and empty in prayer, in thinking and doing,
weak, and ready to take leave of it all.

Who am I?
This man or that other?
Am I then this man today and tomorrow another?
Am I both all at once? An impostor to others,
but to me little more than a whining, despicable weakling?
Does what is in me compare to a vanquished army,
that flees in disorder before a battle already won?

Who am I? They mock me these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, you know me, O God.
You know I am yours.

THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS IS NOT WHO WE ARE, BUT WHOSE WE ARE!

Seeing the worth, the beauty, the significance of Christ, esteeming Him highly, and enjoying Him forever, and thus finding out "Who Am I",
Pastor Bill