Romans 12:3 says, "For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned."
Let me ask you a question. Think about it for a moment before you answer. According to the verse above, are you to think highly of yourself?
The answer is yes! Why yes? I only need one reason to think highly of myself and that is because Jesus Christ thought so highly of me that He died for me. If I am that valuable in his sight (so valuable that God himself would die for me), then I should be that valuable in my sight.
But! There is a but here and it is critical, Paul says, don't think higher of yourself than you ought. Paul's own words say to think highly of yourself, but not higher than you ought.
There is a fine line between pride and humbly seeing your abilities with sober judgment. The Lord has gifted each of us with a measure of grace and a measure of faith. (Romans 1:5, Romans 12:3, Ephesians 4:7) The grace of God enables us to faithfully be obedient to Him and to use our abilities for good. Therefore, when I take the glory for accomplishing anything in this life (When I say [maybe not verbally but mentally] look at me instead of look at God) I have crossed the line of thinking to highly of myself.
Let me give you an example of what it means to think higher of yourself than you ought.
Recently, at Midtown Church, I had a few volunteers build a wall in a room to make a closet. These guys worked for 14 hours in one day to get it done! If I came in with a paint brush and painted the wall, then preached about the wall I built and all the time I spent on it and how you should be follow my servanthood example, I am speaking of myself higher than I ought. Instead, all I did was finish the wall while the brunt of the work was done beforehand by someone else. (FYI, I didn't do anything on the wall, so don't follow my example) This same principle applies to us when we take the glory for accomplishing any good work in our life. Rather, that glory belongs to God because GOd has prepaed us beforehand to do these good works (Ephesians 2:10).
I am not saying that we utter the phrase, "Praise be to God" after every little compliment we get, rather in our hearts and in our minds we recognize that the sovereign Lord has gifted us and therefore I can boldly say thank you when someone has a genuine compliment, and in my heart praise the Lord for His work in me (although these compliments do create awesome opportunities to spread the gospel).
Last thing, Paul says don't THINK highly of yourself. He doesn't say, don't SPEAK highly of yourself. If we have right thinking we will have right speaking. So it is not just a matter of what you say about yourself but what you think about yourself.
So think highly of yourself! But, keep it in perspective with the fact that God has enabled you to do some pretty awesome things!
Learn more here:
http://www.midtownchurchfl.org/ego-mtc147/
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