“When God looks at us, he sees Jesus. He sees forgiven sin, perfect righteousness, and an adopted son or daughter. We spend entirely too much time allowing ourselves to be defined by something other than Him.”

Have you ever heard someone say something when you were younger and it didn’t make the sense at the time, but over time it made sense to you? I still remember the sunny Sunday afternoon when I was driving in my hometown and listening to John Piper’s biographical sketch of Charles Spurgeon. He focused on how Spurgeon preached through adversity and shared an illustration I shall never forget.

He spoke of how the pressures of ministry can create a hall of mirrors in the pastor’s soul that causes him to not know who he is anymore. He said the morbid introspection pressure creates in us can push us to “the precipice of self-extinction.” Here’s the relevant paragraph. I can’t retell it better than he said it.

“I don’t mean suicide. I mean something more complex. I mean the deranging inability to know any longer who you are. What begins as a searching introspection for the sake of holiness, and humility gradually becomes, for various reasons, a carnival of mirrors in your soul: you look in one and you’re short and fat; you look in another and you’re tall and skinny; you look in another and you’re upside down. And the horrible feeling begins to break over you that you don’t know who you are any more. The center is not holding.”

I did not understand Piper’s words then but they stuck with me. It makes perfect sense to me now. What Piper said can be true of ministry is also true of any kind of intense suffering and pressure in life. Our difficulties can lead us to lose a true sense of who we are. We hear the negative voices in our head and pay more attention to the taunts of our soul’s enemy than we ordinarily would.

When we lose a genuine sense of who we are as followers of Jesus, what should we do?

Return to the Gospel

We need to see the Gospel as doing more than just saving our souls so we can go to heaven. In addition to that, the Gospel redeems us so that we might walk as the people we were meant to be in the beginning and given a new identity that rests in Christ and Christ alone.

The identity piece is so important in a culture where we tend to define ourselves based on what we do. Instead, we are defined by what has been done by another on our behalf. When we trust in Christ, we are united with him by faith. We share in his righteousness and receive the benefit of his death on our behalf.

Instead of finding our sense of acceptance and dignity by our successes or feeling rejected because of our sins, we look to the one who never failed. When God looks at us, he sees Jesus. He sees forgiven sin, perfect righteousness, and an adopted son or daughter. We spend entirely too much time allowing ourselves to be defined by something other than him.

This is much easier said than done. Our failures feel more real than Jesus does. We cannot see him, but the chaos brought about by our sins is right in front of our faces. Remember that Jesus, his righteousness, his work on the cross, his resurrection, and his return are as real as your sins. He took them upon himself for you. So, when you are tempted to look to yourself for your identity, take long looks at Christ to understand who you really are.

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