3.2 Stories of Self
© 2019 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
Our greatest difficulty as humans is that God created us symmorphic; that is, God created us to be filled with other persons, specifically, Father and Jesus. God did not design us to live by any self-identity. All humans live out from an identification with whatever each human perceives to be “god” to and in them. All humans are religious.
And you, being [once] dead in your own falling short and your own missing the mark, in which once you walked according to the cosmos of this age, according to the ruler [the source] of the authority of the air, the spirit now energeoing inside the sons of willful unbelief (Ephesians 2:1-2).
To be human is to be energeoed by another spirit, if not the Spirit of God, then by the fallen angelic spirits of this age.
Competing Stories. A heart that is empty of God is truly as Jeremiah described it, “deceitful above all things (more deceitful than Satan) and desperately wicked.” A heart filled with the Lord Jesus Christ as the knowledge of Father is something entirely different.
To better understand the stories of self competing against each other inside of the Christian mind, however, we must go back to our earlier model of the human soul as a bubble of self-awareness containing a story of words. Consider that your skin is the largest organ of the body, and one of its jobs is to protect from all that is hostile to living flesh. Without the protection of your skin, you would be a short-lived walking infection. In fact, no human would survive a week out of the womb without that wall of skin.
Our Wall of Protection. Apart from putting on the Lord Jesus Christ, Christians can have no protection from the false story of a sinful self.
But just as God gave skin to our bodies, so He also places around our bubble of self-awareness a wall of protection meant to prevent false entities from entering into our bubble to violate our persons. God Himself will never ever violate the respect and honor of any individual person; God cannot force His knowledge on anyone. Such an idea never comes into God’s mind. And God has given to every human being a strong wall of protection meant to keep what is false outside of their story of self. No entity can pass through that wall except through that person’s express permission.
Giving Jesus Permission. This is why Christ Jesus lives inside our hearts ONLY through our faith, that is, through our willing permission. By replying to every Word God speaks with “Let it be to me according to Your Word,” we are giving Jesus permission to be that Word now written all through our hearts. We are giving Jesus as that Word our joyous permission to be all that we are. But just as the skin can be cut and infection can enter through open wounds, so our wall of protection can be shattered in a way that forces the story of sin into our minds and mouths.
Of God you are inside of Christ Jesus, who has become as us wisdom from God and righteousness (1 Corinthians 1:30). Inside of Christ, Christ our righteousness is our full protection.
Vulnerable. Yet, as we have seen, another story entirely has forced its way into the minds of so many Christians. Because humans are symmorphic, we are compelled to identify what we perceive to be our source, and in that knowledge to draw from our perceived source a story of who and what we are. This need, inherent in our design as humans, to draw our identity from something outside our immediate selves, then makes us vulnerable.
And it is this vulnerability that the abusers of this world, whether human or angelic, use to force their way in, to force their ideas and their control into our story of self. Christians then receive those non-Christ ideas because they believe it is God behind them, speaking those ideas at them.
One Seamless Story. You see yourself as one with the Lord Jesus Christ, every Word God speaks; all that you are in your humanity is inside of Him and all that He is has become you. You KNOW that you are coming out from God’s thoughts concerning you, spoken as the Lord Jesus Christ now becoming you and written in Person as Spirit Word all through the pathways of your heart. You see your whole life as one seamless story of Christ.
Then, you look at another Christian, and you are careful not to worship, for you see the Lord Jesus filling their hearts and you see them as altogether glorious in person and in expression. Their humanity, their ups and downs, their ins and outs, you simply enjoy as the visible expression of Father’s vast Person.
Disconnect. Then, going into the story of their minds, you see that the bottom line of their story of self, how they see themselves, is that they are on their own and fallen short. The disconnect between their reality and their imagination is staggering.
Yet you also see them as better than yourself. Thus you, together with Father, never think about forcing the knowledge of God into them as if hammering a nail into a board. Your entire job, then, consists of connecting them with the Jesus already living in their hearts, so that through their knowledge of His Person inside of them, He might dissipate all the darkness of their false story, one word at a time. When you have done that one task, your service is no longer needed.
Knowledge “About” God. The great dilemma into which every human is thrust as they enter into the world is that God cannot be known by created perception on the one hand and that God cannot sin by forcing His knowledge into anyone on the other hand. Humans are created to contain all that God is, to KNOW the Father within, and to reveal God to all as His image. Yet because God holds us in such high regard, He has given us a wall of protection that He will never cross except through our express and willing permission, that is, through faith.
The greatest enemy, then, of the knowledge of God inside any Christian, is knowledge “about God.” For knowledge “about God” will always substitute itself as if it is “God” in the human mind. – We know God only by heart.
In What Story Will You Live? Yet no human can live except by a story of words inside of their bubble of self-awareness. The question facing every human, and especially every Christian, is – What words make up your story of self? That is – By what story do you live? And because of this inherent human need to live as a story of words, each one of us seeks for those words of which we “approve,” that we might live inside of that story.
This is the great jeopardy in which all humans live. Which words will you choose? In what story will you live? What story do you tell yourself about yourself? In the end, there are only two stories – Christ my life, always connected to Father – versus – I my life, alone and fallen short.
I Will NEVER Leave You! Let’s return to the picture in the Song of Songs regarding the Christian who, not knowing the Lord Jesus inside her heart, imagines that He is gone from her, and thus goes looking for someone to show her the Jesus who already lives inside of her.
I opened for my beloved… I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer. The watchmen who went about the city found me. They struck me, they wounded me. The keepers of the walls took my veil away from me (Song of Songs 5:6-7)!
The purpose of the watchmen in the church is to give warning when the wall of protection God placed around each one of His own is about to be breached by false words. Their job is to show each one the Jesus who is their only story of self.
Stripping Away Protection. And many preachers do that. Even in their limited knowledge of Jesus as He is, still, when dear ones look to them to know a Jesus not yet fully known, they point to Him in some way.
It seems, however, that the majority of preachers do not do that at all. Instead, they beat the believer in Jesus with a story of self that is not Christ, even to the extent of ripping away their veil, God’s very means of protection from the false words. Paul told us what motivates these “watchmen” in our picture. – All those who wish to put on a good show of appearance in flesh compel you to {cut away your flesh – the veil}… And not even these… themselves keep the law; but they want… [to] boast in [their victory over] your flesh (Galatians 6:12-13).
Receiving Not-Christ Words. I want to talk briefly about this great vulnerability found in every Christian, that they would be subject to bullies who would plant inside of them the words of a story of sin, of falling short and being disconnected from God instead of the Words that are Jesus Himself, their only true story.
Here is the human problem. Yes, God gave us a wall of protection – BUT – words must come through that wall by which we form our human identity, our story of self. For that reason our walls are fragile. They can be overwhelmed such that false words and even false persons can enter.
Nonetheless, the only way the enemy of Christ can place his false words inside the Christian soul is by their express permission. The Christian must believe it is “God Himself” behind those non-Christ words.
Keeping out Christ. Inside of his bubble, Christian is a mixed-up mess of confused but repetitive, and thus very familiar-to-him thoughts, a story of self drawn from all sorts of different experiences over the course of his life. Whatever those thoughts might be, and from wherever they may have come, Christian regards them as himself, as who he is, and will fiercely defend those thoughts, regardless of where they came from, as rock-solid “truth.”
In fact, this religious self-defense is entirely God’s design of him, though darkened by ignorance. God means for him to protect himself from others, including you. And that is the problem, for his God-given wall of self-protection meant to keep out Christian spiritual rapists, also works to keep out Christ.
A Confidence Game. This is the problem Jesus faced. The Pharisees were God’s gift to the Jewish people. The Pharisees were their wall of protection against the assault of idolatry coming at them from every direction. Without the Pharisees, there would have be no Scripture-believing people left to whom Jesus could speak.
Yet that same wall of safety, given by God for protection, also turned against the word Jesus was speaking into them, that it also might not enter.
A trickster can shatter someone’s wall of protection but only after gaining their full and implicit trust. In crime, it’s called the confidence game, or “con-man” for short. And a Christian gives his or her trust to a con-man only if they first believe that they are giving it to God.
Contrary Stories. Now, we are NOT bringing salvation to any fellow Christian; they already live only inside of Jesus. For this reason, we have no need whatever to force words into our brothers or sisters in Christ, for Jesus, every Word God speaks is already written all through their hearts.
One thing only prevents any Christian from being right now all the fullness of Christ revealed in all that such a thing could possibly be. That one thing is that they do not think so. Yet their minds and their contrary stories of self are filled with Bible ideas and statements, with ideas “about” God and “about” Christ and “about” themselves, all contrary to the personal and living knowledge of a real Jesus already Sent into them.
Do Not Pull out the Tares. Jesus’ parable of the tares gives us the understanding we need.
The good wheat of Christ is planted all through Christian’s thinking. But other thoughts contrary to Christ, even “Bible” thoughts, are also planted all through his thinking. And these two sets of plants have sent their roots deep into every crevice of Christian’s self-story. All through his story of self, you will find the tiny root hairs of Christ woven tightly together with the tiny root hairs of anti-Christ.
Just as the thoughts of Christ are rooted deeply in Scripture in Christian’s argument, however, so also are the roots of the false thoughts. And if you jerk out one set of roots, you WILL be jerking out the other. That’s why Jesus said not to be pulling out the tares (Matthew 13:29).
Christ All First. Here is God’s answer to this dilemma. – And then lawlessness {that is, those thoughts that contradict Christ our life} will be unveiled which the Lord Jesus will eliminate with the breath of His mouth and will render inoperative by His presence made visible [and known] (2 Thessalonians 2:8).
As we, through tender kindness, show them the Bible verses that place Jesus as their Savior alive inside of them, loving them, keeping them, carrying them through death and into life, Jesus now their only life, Jesus as every Word God speaks written all through their hearts – then the false will simply disappear.
– Christ must be all, first, before anything not Christ could ever vanish away. – Jesus inside of you and you inside of Him is all that Salvation is and means.