BUILDING CHRIST-ESTEEM

To live with a confused identity is one of the worst things that can ever happen to anybody. When we do not know exactly who we are, we miss our God-given purpose and fail to live up to our full potentials in life. There is a story of an eaglet who, by some means, got hatched among some chickens. Growing up with the chickens, he identified himself as one of them; eating what they ate, fearing what they feared, and flying low and short distance as they did. One day, he saw an eagle flying high above and asked his mother hen, “Who is that grandiose and powerful bird flying high up in the sky?” The hen said, “That is an eagle, king of all birds. They can fly but we cannot.” The eaglet was stricken with awe and intense admiration for the eagle.

On another day, after his wings had fully grown, he went out with the chickens and met some eagles who referred to him as their fellow eagle and invited him for a flight. He vehemently denied their claim, proving to them by all means possible that he was a chicken and could not fly. Then the eagles took him to a river where he could see a reflection of himself. When he saw and compared how he looked with the eagles and the chickens, he realised he was an eagle and not a chicken. The eagles then encouraged him to fly high and far with them. After a couple of attempts, he was naturally able to fly with them, soaring high into the sky and into the company of the grandiose and powerful eagles.

This scenario parallels the condition of some believers. Every believer in Christ has been born again with tremendous power, wisdom, holiness, and righteousness from God. We are born again with a brand-new nature and identity in Christ and from God our Father. The scriptures refer to us as children of God, saints, citizens of heaven, royal priesthood, and so on. When we realise and live with these identities in Christ, we are empowered to express the abilities of God in us…

The Bible teaches us that in the beginning, God created humans in His image and likeness to reflect His nature and glory on earth (Genesis 1:26–27). God’s nature can be summed up in holiness revealed through His love, righteousness, and power (1 John 4:8, 16). Humanity was never made to carry any other image and likeness apart from that of God. The root cause of humanity falling short of God’s glory was the desire to become as gods—independent of God; that is, to ‘be’ and to ‘do’ without God (Genesis 3:5–6). By yielding to such a desire, humanity became alienated from God and lost the ability to draw our essence, identity, vitality, and abilities from Him (Ephesians 2:12, 4:18). The resulting dependence on self, as opposed to dependence on God, opened humanity up to the weaknesses of the flesh such as self-centredness, selfishness, and pride...

In Scripture, we see that Moses, Jeremiah, and Isaiah resisted God’s call by presenting their fleshly weaknesses to Him, but God overruled them. Instead, He empowered them and sent them out to live for Him and to do His work (Exodus 4:10–17; Jeremiah 1:6–10; Isaiah 6:5–7). God loves it when His children can reach beyond the flesh to say “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” because it is “Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us” (Philippians 4:13; Ephesians 3:20). Throughout the scriptures, He always showed a special delight in people who could see beyond the flesh to draw their essence, identity, strength, and so on from Him or His word. Such people became well positioned for God to work mightily through them…

The life of the Lord Jesus Himself is the prime example of absolute dependence on God for one’s essence, identity, and strength. Pertaining to his humanity, He was born into a poor and low-class Jewish family (Luke 2:24; Leviticus 12:2, 6, 8). He grew up being known as Joseph the carpenter’s son and became a carpenter (Matthew 13:55; Mark 6:3; Luke 4:22). It is also indicated in John 7:15 that Jesus did not have the kind of training His contemporary Jewish people expected of Him considering what He taught and did (read also Matthew 13:54; Mark 6:2). He knew all these about Himself and others also knew and regarded Him as such. They witnessed Him grow up in their neighbourhood just like any other child and took Him for an ordinary person…

In the face of all these, Jesus did not settle on seeing and esteeming Himself like everyone else did. He did not settle in that identity gained through His earthly family and society. Yes, they called Him Joseph and Mary’s son, the carpenter’s son and a carpenter, and His biological brothers and sisters were known to the people. But above all these, He was THE SON OF GOD (Luke 1:32; Isaiah 9:6), THE HOLY ONE (Acts 3:14), THE CHRIST (ANOINTED ONE or MESSIAH) (Psalm 2:2; Matthew 16:16; John 1:41, 6:69), THE KING OF THE JEWS (Matthew 2:2), THE SON OF DAVID (Matthew 1:1; Mark 10:47), and THE SAVIOUR (Luke 2:11)…

As believers, God sees us in Christ (1 Corinthians 1:30; Ephesians 2:6; 1 Peter 5:14b). Through our new birth, He has changed our nature and identity to conform to that of Christ (Romans 8:29). He desires for us to build Christ-esteem above self-esteem. A good self-esteem is good, but Christ-esteem is far superior. To build Christ-esteem is to find our worth, confidence, and abilities in Christ. It is knowing and accepting God’s judgement of who we are in Christ, which is far better than we can ever imagine (Ephesians 3:20). In Christ, we far transcend our physical fleshly human self into our God-made self.