“For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man (person) that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.”
We think a lot today about “self-image.” Evidently, they did in Paul’s day too, for he reminded the Roman Christians not to think of themselves more highly than they should. Does he mean that we should hate ourselves? No! Quoting from Leviticus, Jesus told us to “love our neighbors as we love ourselves.” This presupposes that we will love ourselves. This, however, does not mean to be “in love” with ourselves. In fact, Paul wrote that we should “think soberly” about ourselves. This means that we should look at ourselves honestly, and see the good and bad in us as we do in other people. I will be the first to admit that it is awfully difficult for us to look at ourselves objectively. We like to think that, though we know that we have faults, we don’t have any real bad ones. If we would think soberly about ourselves, we would think realistically about ourselves and make changes where they need to be made. I think that this is what Paul meant by, “according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.” It takes faith to look at ourselves realistically and change accordingly. We need to stop and think about how often we think about ourselves during the day. It would be a humbling experience, for we think of ourselves quite often. As usual, our example for this is Jesus. He seldom thought of Himself as He reached out to others. People crowded around Jesus, sick and needy, and He tirelessly helped them. He did take some time for Himself, and helped His disciples do the same, but ultimately He was not consumed with Himself. Another biblical example is King Saul, the first king of Israel. He had been chosen as king of Israel because he stood out from the crowd. He did well, and then David came on the scene. David became a hero to the people of Israel. In fact, after victorious battles, women would meet the army and sing:”Saul has slain his thousands and David has slain his ten thousands.” This caused Saul to be jealous and he sought to kill David. Saul’s problem was that he was not thinking of the nation of which he was king. He was not thinking about how important an addition David was to his army. He thought mainly of himself. You can be like Jesus or King Saul: You can think about yourself less or waste your life obsessing about yourself. This is good advice:“Don’t think less of yourself, think about yourself less.” Bro. Joe
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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September 2021
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