The real me

My father-in-law moved in with us from Michigan. This is rubber-meets-the-road time. At the end of the first two weeks I said to my husband, “I have been kind and tenderhearted toward your father for two weeks now, but what happens when he starts to see the real me?” My husband replied, “So you plan to stop putting on Christ at some point?”

The question of “the real me” is an interesting one. Who is the real me, after all? The surly, moody, and sarcastic me? Or the me who stops to chat, offers a drink, and countenances interruptions to her day?

Convention has favored the negative connotation: “Very soon after the honeymoon, Sally got to see the real Harry.” The expression conjures a toaster flung across the room accompanied by a libretto of non-FCC-approved words.

But for a Christian, self-identification with the baser nature is unbiblical and must be resisted. Paul says, “Such were some of you” (1 Corinthians 6:11). He says, “The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” The Christian is a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17), not in some airy-fairy upper-story sense but “in order that … we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). Not in some far-off dimension but in a way that has implications for women in Glenside living with their fathers-in-law.

Two natures war against each other in your breast, but one is the real you and the other an impostor.

Therefore, to the point-blank question of how we are to consider ourselves Paul says “you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11). Someone is dead; someone new is alive.

Question: Who is this other guy then—the one who says and does rude and thoughtless things? Answer: He is the old man. Question: But you told me he was dead? Answer: He is dead; his only power is the power of the bluff. You become his slave only if you yield to his promptings: “Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?” (Romans 6:16).

This, then, is the correct biblical anthropology of the Christian. Two natures war against each other in your breast, but one is the real you and the other an impostor. “For the desires of the flesh [old man] are against the Spirit [new man], and the desires of the Spirit [new man] are against the flesh [old man], for these are opposed to each other” (Galatians 5:17).

Question: Then why does it feel like the rude and thoughtless person is the real me, and the thoughtful and tenderhearted person is not the real me? Answer: It feels that way because we know the old man better. We have lived with him for a long time. We are used to the rude and thoughtless person we were, and know the way he thinks, his habits, his strategies. So he seems to make a better claim of being the real me.

But if I identify my true self with my Mr. Hyde moments, I abide in despair. For I am thinking all along that I will never be free of Mr. Hyde. My best-case scenario will be periods of white-knuckling virtue repeatedly doomed to revert, as the flame flies upward, to the default reality of my dark side, which is my true self.

Worse than that, my attempts at godly behavior are then not only futile but hypocrisy. Thus I add sin to sin: First, I am a lamentable sinner at heart, but, second, unlike other lamentable sinners, I have not even the modest attribute of being true to my nature. I am endeavoring to act polite, patient, kind, faithful, and self-controlled, when these are not my true identity.

But the truth is I am not my dark side. It is not fraudulent to be slow to speak and gentle of demeanor. To consciously “put on” these godly behaviors is actually a biblical command: Ephesians 4:24: “Put on the new self.” Obedience is not hypocrisy.

It’s new-creation time. I try it on for size and walk around in it. And I foresee no plans to stop at some point putting on the mind of Christ.

Email aseupeterson@wng.org