The Paradoxical Concept of Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is perhaps one of the most paradoxical concepts effecting the Christian soul.  On one hand, we are unambiguously to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow Jesus; on the other hand, we are to love others as ourselves.  In Old Testament Law, no blemished lamb is to be sacrificed; only an unblemished lamb is sacrificed.  Likewise, no soul can be denied before it is first deemed worthy of unblemished sacrifice; denying self is a sacrifice, and only the unblemished/redeemed (washed in the blood of Christ) sacrifice is acceptable.  Only when we get it right, when a healthy version of our soul emerges, do we then sacrifice that soul/self in order to attain something transcendent.

It is clear that we are made for something more than what this lifetime in mortal flesh offers.  Only by denying our full privileges here on earth are we promised full privileges elsewhere.  A true and knowledgeable esteemer of self would forgo its immediate fulfillment while yet mortal and wait to fully orb after their self is transformed and robed in immortality.  Faith and patience of the saint are required and is contrary to the fear and impatience of carnal flesh.  Indeed, “Look at the proud one, his soul [self] is not right within him, but the righteous will live by his faith [in the true God]” (Habakkuk 4:2).  Faith and patience are required because where God is taking us is well beyond the boundaries of our mortal lifespan and understanding; patience because we are yet within the boundaries of time, and faith because the revelation is larger than our present capacity to grasp it.  Denying self is not an end in itself, nor is God being masochistic requiring it from us.  Just as a parent knows better than a child the perils of eating candy with impunity, so God knows pitfalls we humans cannot yet comprehend.           

As C. S. Lewis so wisely put it, “The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself.  We are told to deny ourselves and take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.  If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith.  Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised to us in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.  We are far too easily pleased.”

The Image of God in the Full Expression of Man

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).

Man is the undifferentiated word used to describe both the male and female expression of mankind.  It takes both the male and female expression to represent the whole of human experience and fully epitomize the human condition.  Just as Jesus Christ represents El Shaddai, the father/mother God, and must be replicated in mankind to save them, so Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein monster, drawn from both her female imagination and the dead male flesh of the monster, so is the full expression of our human condition outside a salvation experience with Jesus Christ.

Throughout ancient literature and Holy Scripture feminine beauty is that beauty which is derived and defined from a masculine perspective.  This is no commentary about the equality /inequality of the sexes, except to distinguish mankind’s posture from God’s.  We are the bride of Christ, and we need His masculine posture to define our feminine one.  Our eternal beauty is only a reflecting one of His.  He beautifies by His love; we are worthless, unloved, and without our own internal beauty without Him first loving us. This is an unequivocally established principle throughout Scripture and much ancient literature.

I believe George Gordon, aka Lord Byron, in “She Walks in Beauty,” is saying exactly this; the innocent heart at peace within the seat of emotional man is best described as “she” in the “tender light” of “the night” which the “gaudy day denies.”  She walks in beauty which walks in less than the full light of enlightenment, and the feminine posture is the posture of faith—that posture we must all walk in (both male and female)—if we ever expect to arrive at our gender specific and individual destiny (which is only found in context with—and relationship to—God and others).         

The Wicked Land

“Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” (Romans 9:13).

“A prophesy: the word of the Lord to Israel through Malachi.  ‘I have loved you,’ says the Lord.  But you ask, ‘How have you loved us?’  ‘Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?’ declares the Lord. ‘Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his hill country into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.’  Edom may say, ‘Though we have been crushed, we will rebuild the ruins.’  But this is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘They may build, but I will demolish. They will be called THE WICKED LAND, a people always under the wrath of the Lord.  You will see it with your own eyes and say, ‘Great is the Lord—even beyond the borders of Israel!’” (Malachi 1:1-5 NIV).

Malachi—the consummating book of the Old Testament/Covenant—closes out with this enormous revelation concerning Jacob (loved) and Esau (hated).  But how many understand it?  Too few in my experience.

The doctrine of election, easily derived from the words of Romans 9:10-13— “Rebekah’s children were conceived at the same time by our father Isaac.  Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad—in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls—she was told, ‘The older will serve the younger.’  Just as it is written: ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated’”—is, I believe, mostly misunderstood.  Sure, God prevails in sovereignty over every person and every will.  He alone is Lord over destinies. 

However, just as Paul used Hagar (Law) and Sarah (the freewoman) as types, so I see types in both Jacob (spirit—Zion/Jerusalem) and Esau (flesh—Edom/the Wicked Land).  Until our full redemption is realized, we walk about in a body of death (flesh—Edom/the Wicked Land).  God hates the works of the flesh!  Likewise, God hates all things birthed by flesh.  Thus, the first Adam is cursed; Esau/Edom is cursed; finally, Amalek is cursed.  Everything derived/birthed from the stock of the first Adam is red, bloody and cursed; ONLY the born-again experience places the soul in the bloodline of blessing.  ONLY the Second Adam (Jesus, and everything derived/birthed from His stock) is blessed!

Now looking at Amalek, Esau’s son, we learn the extent to which God hates Esau (and all that he births). 

Amalek means “a people that licks up” or “exhausts,” and they are a people derived from the stock of Esau (“red-man”; from the cursed bloodline of Adam).  Jacob, the second born, the supplanter, is loved; Esau, the first born, the first of his father’s strength, is hated.  And such it is throughout the divine pattern of revelation.  “It is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants” (Romans 9:8 NASB).  It is not Jacob, but Jesus, who supplants our red-blooded and fallen Adamic nature.  Two principles of God’s economy are: (1) “first...the natural, then the spiritual” (1 Corinthians 15:46 HCSB), and (2) “The older will serve the younger” (Romans 9:12 NASB).  As the Lord answered Rebekah many years ago in response to her inquiry concerning the turmoil and struggle inside of her, so the Lord answers us today: “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated” (Genesis 25:23 NIV).   

“For the desires of the flesh are opposed to the [Holy] Spirit, and the [desires of the] Spirit are opposed to the flesh (godless human nature); for these are antagonistic to each other [continually withstanding and in conflict with each other], so that you are not free but are prevented from doing what you desire to do” (Galatians 5:17 AMPC).  “This is a divine revelation...‘I loved you,’ says the Lord.  ‘But you ask, “How did you love us?”  Wasn’t Esau Jacob’s brother?’ declares the Lord. ‘I loved Jacob, but Esau I hated.  I turned his mountains into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the jackals in the desert.  The descendants of Esau may say, “We have been beaten down, but we will rebuild the ruins.”  Yet, this is what the Lord of Armies says: they may rebuild, but I will tear it down.  They will be called “the Wicked Land” and “THE PEOPLE WITH WHOM THE LORD IS ALWAYS ANGRY [emphasis mine]”’” (Malachi 1:1-5 GW).

THE PEOPLE WITH WHOM THE LORD IS ALWAYS ANGRY is simply our outer-man (our flesh!).  The Galatians are those that started in the Spirit but ended in the flesh.  To them, the apostle, declared, “If I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor” (Galatians 2:18 KJV).  Likewise are those born of Esau, who, like Esau’s son Amalek—though already ruined by God Almighty—redouble their effort to “rebuild the ruins” rather than follow the Holy Spirit all the way out to a complete victory in a city and a home not built with human hands.

“The people with whom the Lord is always angry” and with whom “the Lord will have war with...from generation to generation” are those who defiantly live according to their flesh.  Adam, Esau, and Amalek are linked by sinful nature.  ONCE BORN-AGAIN OF THE SECOND ADAM, TO LAPSE BACK INTO THE FIRST ADAM IS TO “REBUILD THE RUINS” OR LIVE AGAIN IN “THE WICKED LAND.”  So malevolent and unrelenting is the spirit behind “the Wicked Land” of the flesh that it never tires.  Indeed, not until the sun sets on our days in this “Wicked Land” (days lived in our “body of death”) will it cease.  “So it came about when Moses held his hand up, that Israel prevailed, and when he let his hand down, Amalek prevailed.  But Moses’ hands were heavy.  Then they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it; and Aaron and Hur supported his hands, one on one side and one on the other.  Thus his hands were steady until the sun set” (Exodus 17:11-12 NASB).  Only true worship—true surrender to the Spirit (and practiced until walking in the Spirit is habitual)—prevails against the strident and incessant Amalekite flesh that never ceases to lick us to exhaustion. 

“Remember what Amalek did to you along the way when you came out from Egypt, how he met you along the way and attacked among you all the stragglers at your rear when you were faint and weary; and he did not fear God.  Therefore it shall come about when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your surrounding enemies, in the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven; YOU MUST NOT FORGET [emphasis mine]” (Deuteronomy 25:17-19 NASB).  Note the strategy of this cowardly spirit!  It was “stragglers at the rear,” the most “faint and weary” of the children of Israel that were targeted by the enemy.  Therefore “YOU MUST NOT FORGET”—especially after “you rest from all your surrounding enemies, in the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance to possess”—to not only remove all Amalekite influence, but also, all Amalekite remembrance.  Amalek represents—above the many individual works of the flesh—the whole of their corporate strength.  Amalek, therefore, must not only die in reality, but also die in imagination or memory.  It is more often the memory of past sins—and not the sins themselves—which lick us to exhaustion.  The idea that “They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts” (Galatians 5:24 KJV) is a propositional truth rather than an experiential truth for most of us.  Indeed, most of us often forget (but we MUST NOT FORGET) that we were “purged from [our] old sins” (2 Peter 1:9 KJV).

Regrettably, Israelite and church history are replete with failure.  Nonetheless, our Lord’s victory is indomitable and transferrable; we are MORE THAN CONQUERORS because our victories are inherited rather than bloodily fought for.  At least they become so whenever we learn to rest in our faith rather than strive in our flesh.  The battle is the Lord’s—not ours!  The younger (Jacob) supplants the older (Esau).  First the natural, then the spiritual.  Jacob represents the second Adam (Jesus); Jesus supplants (digs out by the roots the previous tree of unrighteousness [Adam] and plants a tree of righteousness [the Second Adam]—Himself—in its place in the human spirit).  Though THE WICKED LAND still enrobes us, we are not to rebuild on that cursed ground.  Only the redemption of our body—at the consummation of this age (at the final Judgment)—destroys THE WICKED LAND.  Meanwhile, we must mortify the works of the flesh by the Holy Spirit.