Sin, not Self -- and Christ, not Our Efforts

Selfishness - self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt. (Big Book, pg. 62)

All of this talk about self-centeredness just makes a man. . . self-centered!

The more that I tried not to be self-centered, the more self-centered I became! Paul had a similar experience:

"I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.

"For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:

"But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

"O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Romans 7: 21-24)

Paul identified the real problem -- sin -- and its attending results, condemnation.

Worse yet, our very efforts aggravate the very sins that we are trying to stop:

The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law." (1 Corinthians 15: 56)

How do we forget ourselves, then? How do we break free from this bondage? We receive the life of another: Jesus Christ! Paul explains oh so gloriously:

"I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin." (Romans 7: 25)

Paul write the same to the Corinthians:

"But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Corinthians 15: 57)

Christ becomes our new "Self", our new identity. We are hid in Christ (Colossians 3: 3), and Christ lives in us (Colossians 1: 27). He is the life of the believer, too (John 14: 6):

"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2: 20)

We do not strive to be obedient, we do not strive to get rid of ourselves, something which we cannot do, but rather we are dead in Christ, free from all ordinances of the Law, and live through His Spirit:

"Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)" (Ephesians 2: 5)

and

"Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6: 11)