If you want to learn something that will really help you, learn to see yourself as God sees and not as you see yourself in the distorted mirror of your own self-importance. This is the greatest and most useful lesson we can learn: to know ourselves for what we truly are, to admit freely our weaknesses and failings, and to hold a humble opinion of ourselves because of them. Thomas a Kempis, Imitation of Christ

My natural inclination is to seek the good in people. I like giving others the benefit of the doubt. Mainly it’s because I know that I want that same benefit from others about fifty times a day. But I am afraid that my desire to seek the good in others has led to my assuming that people are good. John Locke (the 17th century philosopher, not the character on the best television show EVER), declared that man was a tabula rasa, a blank slate of neutrality which is then conditioned to accept either good or evil.

Sadly, Christians have accepted this view of one another and of ourselves. The culture screams, “I’m ok, you’re ok,” and we like the sound of that. I used to have a rather nebulous concept of sin: I could toe the party line that mankind is in a generally sinful and fallen state, but the concept of daily committing specific sins that needed to be confessed and repented of was foreign to me. I had accepted the idea that God knows I’m a sinner and I’m just here on this planet, doing the best I can til He calls me home. But is that how God views sin? What does that belief say about my view of God?

It is human nature to think pretty highly of ourselves. We can think even more highly when we compare ourselves to those around us instead of to the perfect standard of Christ. But when we view ourselves through the lens of Scripture, when we see the standard of God’s glory and realize we do indeed fall short every day and in every way, it should be humbling. There is nothing that will leave you clinging to the mercy and grace of Christ than to daily recognize your own sinfulness and helplessness apart from Him.

But this is not to be some downer post about the depravity of man; although, our total and complete depravity is depressing. Mankind apart from God is a depressing sight to behold. “But if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation…” (2 Cor. 5.17). The same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives in every believer (Rom. 8.11), and it is that power that enables us to put to death the flesh and its sinful desires. By learning about Jesus, by studying His Word, by discovering what He says about how we are to treat our neighbors and how we are to live, we hide in our heart His word and enable the Holy Spirit to use that Word to defeat the sin that so easily entangles us.

So how to do we see ourselves as God sees us? Through the Bible! It not only exposes our sinful nature and convicts us of it, but it provides the armor of God we are to put on to protect ourselves from the work of the enemy. If you truly want to see yourself as God sees you, measure yourself according to the scale that God Himself provided.