Loving The Skin You're In
“3 Don’t be concerned about the outward beauty of fancy hairstyles, expensive jewelry, or beautiful clothes. 4 You should clothe yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God.” 1 Peter 3:3-4 (NLT)
by Alexandra Copeland
When you’re trying to understand your
Christ identity, a balanced self-esteem can be a very tricky
thing to keep in check. On the one hand we can’t beat
ourselves up constantly about our shortcomings, and on the
other hand, we have to keep it humble 24/7 to maintain
Godliness and not let arrogance cause our heads to swell.
For someone who isn’t quite seasoned in the Word this can be
very confusing. Even us older hands are thrown by it from
time to time. Somewhere in the middle of
“I’m not so bad”
and “I’m ALL that and
a bag of chips”, you might think we’d find a happy
median, or at least that’s what we tell ourselves. The truth
is, we’re receiving so many messages regarding what we
should and shouldn’t feel towards the masterpiece we call
“ME”, that even a happy median seems unachievable. Romans
8:7 tells us that the carnal mind is an enemy of God, and
Jeremiah 17:9 (KJV) says,
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who
can know it?” Whewww!!! That’s coldblooded, right?!
We’ve got a carnal mind and the potential for a heart that
is deceitful and desperately wicked. So when you think about
this and stack it on top of a poor self-image to begin with,
how in the world can you love the skin you’re in?
God said in Jeremiah 29:11 (ESV),
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for
welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
In no way has God been cloudy about how we
should feel about ourselves. He loves us to pieces and we
should love ourselves as well. God also knows our propensity
to go too far to the left sometimes or too far to the right.
He knows that we can go through stages where we do nothing
but put ourselves down, and there are also times where we
believe ourselves to be the bee’s knees. Heavenly Father is
a God of order, so it is important for us to get this right
and know His heart regarding issues of healthy self-esteem
and well-being.
Loving the skin we’re in doesn’t mean
that we fall head over heels in love with ourselves in an
egotistic way. First and foremost it means that we
understand we are being perfected in Christ. Moment by
moment, day by day, we should be learning to lean more and
more upon the spirit of Christ that is at work within us.
We’re going to make mistakes as we journey forward
spiritually; that’s a given, and it is completely wasteful
to beat ourselves up over them. Romans 8:1 tells us that
there’s no condemnation in Christ Jesus, and that’s good
news indeed! So we can be free of our self-imposed
definition of what perfection is, because just as we don’t
have it within our capability to define what love is—what it
does, and how it looks; the same can be said of being
perfected in Christ. We don’t define it, our Lord and
Savior, Jesus Christ, does.
In Matthew 16:24-25 (ESV), Jesus Christ
told the disciples,
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and
take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his
life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake
will find it.” Here, we have a very clear
picture of love. Jesus Christ said that when a person comes
after him and follows his ways, mission, and example, they
will find the true definition of life. This allows us to
strip back all the other stuff that is peddled at us through
the world, and zoom-in to focus our minds and hearts on how
God wants us to love ourselves.
1 Peter 3:3-4 (NLT) will help us put a
new stamp on self-love. It says,
“3 Don’t be concerned
about the outward beauty of fancy hairstyles, expensive
jewelry, or beautiful clothes. 4 You should clothe
yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within,
the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is
so precious to God.” One of the ways that God wants us
to love ourselves is by focusing on beauty from the inside
out. It may sound a bit cliché-ish, but this doesn’t take
away the profoundness of its truth. All the good stuff that
we could ever aspire to attain comes from God’s gifts of
spiritual treasures, and these are housed inside us, in the
innermost part of our beings.
God has told us that beauty indeed
comes from within, and then radiates outwardly, but we can
never forget that this is a choice. We came to God as we
were, but He loves us too much to allow us to remain that
way. One of our most important missions as followers of
Christ is to acknowledge that we need his help. We get into
trouble by thinking that we can do things on our own. Jesus
told us in John 15:5 (NLT),
“Yes, I am the vine;
you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them,
will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do
nothing.”
God doesn’t define us by our flesh. Our
bodies are His temple. They house the most important part of
us, which is the gift of indwelling Holy Spirit. We are
spiritual beings, and as spiritual beings God’s love becomes
our new skin; we’re to wear it like a glove, every moment of
each day.
1 John 3:1 (NLT), declares, “See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children,
and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this
world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because
they don’t know him.” God loves us so much and we are
indeed His kids. We’re made in His image and drenched in His
love, but not everyone will see us this way. The world
doesn’t recognize us as God’s beloveds, but instead it tries
to bombard us with distractions and messages that keep us
from loving ourselves in the way that He intends. We have a
choice, and we don’t have to let this happen.
There are those who define perfection
by the way a person looks—by the clothes they wear, or by
hairstyles or makeup. In their eyes, everything has to look
perfect on the outside, and as long as it does, perfection
is achieved. This attitude and mindset promotes the notion
that only those that are perfect in every way deserve to be
loved or adored. We’ve been set free from this kind of
bondage. Galatians 5:1 tells us,
“Christ
has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand!
Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.”
Our worth is determined by
God, and He loved us so much that He gave His only begotten
son to die for our sins.
God knows that we
have not yet reached the place where we’re going to be in
Christ, but with every Godly decision and choice that we
make, we can move ourselves closer to his example. We
haven’t always been the Christians we are today. It took
time, patience, endurance, and most importantly, God’s love
for us to move through life with the courage and confidence
we’ve cultivated. And as we progress forward, we’ll be
better tomorrow than we are today; not because of any power
or love that we have on our own. God’s Word and love has
transformed us!
So loving the skin
we’re in requires us to let go of the limitations that
constrain us and seek to place us in a box. The key to a
healthy self-image is renewing the mind to what God says
about us, and He says that as born again men and women we
are new creatures in Christ! Old things have passed away,
and we can strip them off and let’em go. Just as Jesus
Christ was a child that grew into a man, we are growing and
evolving into the men and women that God has called us to
be. Christ endured growing pains just as we do, but he
continued on from grace to grace, always pleasing the
Father. He taught us how to love and please the Father as
well, and that’s truly all you need to love the skin you’re
in.■
Scripture quotations are from the
Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001, 2007
by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used
by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked (NLT)
are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation,
copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House
Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights
reserved.
Scripture taken from the New King
James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used
by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture taken from The Message.
Copyright ©1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by
permission of NavPress Publishing Group.
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