Great Information on "Self Esteem"

Read more articles by Tom Brown My goal in this article is allow God to create within you the right self image based on the gospel. The gospel reveals what God did for us and what He says we are in Christ. Through the sacrifice of Christ and through the words God has spoken over our lives, we can create a right “in Christ” image of ourselves. When sincere and seemingly good Christians have different yet very dogmatic views on the subject of self esteem, the best thing to do is to go back to the Bible. See what it has to say. The scripture that speaks loudly on this is Romans 12:3: For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. The Bible warns us not to think more highly than we ought. It does not forbid us to think highly of ourselves, but simply not to think more highly. The word “more” deals with quantity. The issue is not whether you should think well of yourself, but whether or not you have gone too far. Paul makes this clear in 2 Corinthians 10:14, “We are not going too far in our boasting.” The issue is only a matter of degree. To those who see self esteem as a new, great virtue, they can’t imagine it is possible to think too highly. They believe the only error is to think too lowly. Yet this is not the biblical warning. It is a funny thing what alcohol can do to someone’s sensibilities. They can’t reason, right? This is what Paul attempted to teach us. By using the word sober he wanted to impress upon us the need to not exaggerate our prominence like drunks are so prone to do. Does this mean we should go to the other extreme and put ourselves down? No, because the passage does not say to think “lower” of ourselves than we ought! It says to think of our self based on the measure of faith that God has given us. Again, the word “measure” speaks of quantitative and should relate to the word “more” highly. In other words, we should accurately base our self image on the truth of the real measure of our faith that is demonstrated through our gifts.