The Freedom of Self Forgetfulness

by Timothy J. Keller

it is the normal state of the human heart to try to build its identity around something besides God.2 Spiritual pride is the illusion that we are competent to run our own lives, achieve our own sense of self-worth and find a purpose big enough to give us meaning in life without God.

People sometimes say their feelings are hurt. But our feelings can’t be hurt! It is the ego that hurts – my sense of self, my identity. Our feelings are fine! It is my ego that hurts.

it is incredibly busy doing two things in particular – comparing and boasting.

pride is by nature competitive. It is competitiveness that is at the very heart of pride.

‘Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next person. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about.’3

Pride is the pleasure of being more than the next person. Lust may drive a man to sleep with a beautiful woman – but at least lust makes him want her. Pride drives a man to sleep with a beautiful woman just to prove he can do it and to prove he can do it above the others. Pride destroys the ability to have any real pleasure from her.

Paul’s approach could not be more different. He cares very little if he is judged by the Corinthians or by any human court. And then he goes one step further: he will not even judge himself. It is as if he says, ‘I don’t care what you think – but I don’t care what I think. I have a very low opinion of your opinion of me – but I have a very low opinion of my opinion of me.’ The fact that he has a clear conscience makes no difference. Look carefully at what he says in verse 4. ‘My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent.’ His conscience may be clear – but he knows that even if he does have a clear conscience, that does not necessarily mean he is innocent. Hitler might have had a clear conscience, but it does not mean he was innocent.

He knows that trying to find self-esteem by living up to a certain set of standards is a trap.

His sins and his identity are not connected.

He sees all kinds of sins in himself – and all kinds of accomplishments too – but he refuses to connect them with himself or his identity.

Paul is saying that he has reached a place where his ego draws no more attention to itself than any other part of his body. He has reached the place where he is not thinking about himself anymore. When he does something wrong or something good, he does not connect it to himself any more.

If we were to meet a truly humble person, Lewis says, we would never come away from meeting them thinking they were humble. They would not be always telling us they were a nobody (because a person who keeps saying they are a nobody is actually a self-obsessed person). The thing we would remember from meeting a truly gospel-humble person is how much they seemed to be totally interested in us.

True gospel-humility means I stop connecting every experience, every conversation, with myself. In fact, I stop thinking about myself. The freedom of self-forgetfulness. The blessed rest that only self-forgetfulness brings.

They will not listen to it or learn from it because they do not care about it.

But this is the possibility for you and me if we keep on going where Paul is going.

Not thinking more of myself as in modern cultures, or less of myself as in traditional cultures. Simply thinking of myself less.

And he is saying that the problem with self-esteem – whether it is high or low – is that, every single day, we are in the courtroom. Every single day, we are on trial. That is the way that everyone’s identity works. In the courtroom, you have the prosecution and the defence. And everything we do is providing evidence for the prosecution or evidence for the defence. Some days we feel we are winning the trial and other days we feel we are losing it. But Paul says that he has found the secret. The trial is over for him. He is out of the courtroom. It is gone. It is over. Because the ultimate verdict is in.

Do you realize that it is only in the gospel of Jesus Christ that you get the verdict before the performance?

But Paul is saying that in Christianity, the verdict leads to performance.

In Christianity, the moment we believe, God imputes Christ’s perfect performance to us as if it were our own, and adopts us into His family. In other words, God can say to us just as He once said to Christ, ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’

As our substitute. He took the condemnation we deserve; He faced the trial that should be ours so that we do not have to face any more trials. So I simply need to ask God to accept me because of what the Lord Jesus has done. Then, the only person whose opinion counts looks at me and He finds me more valuable than all the jewels in the earth.

Self-forgetfulness takes you out of the courtroom.

All I can tell you is that we have to re-live the gospel every time we pray. We have to re-live it every time we go to church. We have to re-live the gospel on the spot and ask ourselves what we are doing in the courtroom. We should not be there. The court is adjourned.

Pray that God would give you what you need to enable you to develop true gospel-humility and the freedom of self-forgetfulness.