“Jesus Christ, we believe, is the
fulfilment of every truly human aspiration. To find him is to find ourselves.”
― John R.W. Stott (1921–2011)
SEARCHES
are made by every human being, whether they seem to care or not about life,
because everyone wants to be happy. And what is central to happiness is to know
the self. Our thesis, above, is that we cannot know ourselves unless we know
Christ.
Jesus,
when we come to know him, will give us intimacy with ourselves.
A
good many of us still battle to fully know and accept ourselves, because our
spirituality is compromised or we don’t have the connection with the Lord we
could have or used to have. Indeed, it is so important to know ourselves
through knowing Christ that God connects them both intrinsically; to know one
is to know the other, but if we struggle with either we struggle with the
other.
How
can we describe knowing Christ or knowing ourselves? We cannot. We can only
experience it, but perhaps if we could describe it, we would need to write
volumes to more fully capture what such knowledge is, what it means, and what
it gives. But let’s make an attempt...
Knowing
Christ – Knowing You
Considering
these knowledges may be identical in their character, what is it to know Christ
or to know the self?
We
could say that either is about being able to approach truth and not deny it,
and to acknowledge our weaknesses just as willingly as we do our strengths. We
might say that love would consume us: loving the self is licence to love
everything else. Grace, warmth, empathy and genuineness become us. Such
knowledge is the entrance to wisdom, though none of this is perfected, yet. To
know God and to know the self is about having a constant God-consciousness,
which is a mode of prayer which is continual. We would be ever mindful of God.
And the devotional life becomes irrepressibly part of us. A fuller knowledge of
God compels us toward doing the will of God, cheerfully. The fuller faculties
of faith are not only available and accessible, they are compelling.
If we
were to get inside ourselves, to know and love ourselves as we are, then we
would sense a type of freedom that comes only in Christ – a freedom that
transcends every other voice, particularly the judging and condemning voices.
‘You getting
inside you’ is actually the purpose of life.
As we
do such a thing, if we do not know Christ already, it’s as if we are led
directly to the Throne of Grace to partake of his Presence; we could not deny
the things of God any more. We would experience Christ via the Holy Spirit in
his immeasurable fullness.
***
To find Christ is to know him and to know
him is to find ourselves. The rest of our lives is an ever extrapolating
journey of growing in Christ and growing in ourselves.
©
2014 S. J. Wickham.
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