The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness

The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness
By: Timothy Keller

It's only 46 pages but it addresses an important aspect of what it means to follow Christ that we all struggle with. The truth is: neither our sins nor our accomplishments are connected to our identity. The bad things we've done or the great things we've achieved have no bearing on our worth or our purpose! That is great news! (And you can read about it in like 20 minutes!)

He makes a good point that virtually every other religion says performance leads to the declaration of your salvation or your 'justification' but Christianity says- no, performance doesn't lead to a favorable verdict in the courtroom of goodness; in fact, we aren't even in the courtroom. We have already been declared justified the moment we believe Jesus went to the courtroom for us and took our punishment, paying off the debt of our sins. The 'performance' or rather, the freedom to obey and the grace when we don't, comes AFTER the verdict. We don't need to live every day on trial, wondering if what we're doing is good enough.

He also reflects on the way society tries to blame our self-esteem: our bad behavior is a cause of either too high self-esteem or too low. But what if it's not our self-esteem at all. True humility is not thinking less of ourselves or more of ourselves, but just thinking about ourselves less . Our identity is not formed from how we think about ourselves but how we think about God and what He says about us.

As someone who struggles with pride, this is a great, quick read to help me refocus on the right things and to recognize when my thinking becomes self-absorbed.

'Self-love' is the pulse of the world, but Jesus wants us to be ‘self-forgetful.’