Therefore, if anyone is
in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 2
Corinthians 5:17
There must be a real giving up of the self.
You must throw it away 'blindly' so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a
real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as
your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him
at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your
real, new self (which is Christ's and also ours, and ours just because it is
His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are
looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know,
for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good
impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of
impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about
originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth
(without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine
times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle
runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find
your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of
your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in
the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life.
Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours.
Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for
yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair,
rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him
everything else thrown in.
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