Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.
The poem “Invictus” by the Victorian poet William Ernest Henley ends like this: “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” This well expresses our age’s deep conviction that self-trust is the highest virtue. “Believe in yourself” is taught to children in schools, repeated by celebrities and Instagram influencers, and spoken of by sportspeople as the key to their success. Anything, apparently, is possible if you believe in yourself.
But trusting yourself is pretty close to the biblical definitions of foolishness and of sin. It is the opposite of what humans are designed to do, which is to trust in God above all else (Ps. 91:1–2). We are dependent on Him: He brought us into existence, He sustains us moment by moment, and He has written all our days in His book before one of them came to be (see Ps. 139:16; Col. 1:16–17). We cannot keep ourselves alive even for a second, and we ultimately have no power to determine our futures. All comes from God, and so all creatures must look to Him to provide for them (Ps. 145:15–16).
In Christ, we are helped by the Spirit to resist trusting in ourselves and once again trust in God and in Him alone.
And yet we fall into self-trust all the time. Think of the rich man in Jesus’ parable in Luke 12:13–21: “I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years: relax, eat, drink, be merry.’” He had been duped by his own riches into addressing his soul as if he were his own indulgent uncle, providing infallibly for his own future needs. It’s ridiculous, as the fate of his soul that night demonstrates. He is, as God calls him in the parable, a fool.
Or we can be tempted by our natural abilities to do the same, like David’s son Absalom in 2 Samuel 13–18. Good-looking and charming, he trusted himself to be a better king than his father. For those who are blessed with good looks and talent, and even for those of us who are not, the temptation to think that these things will preserve us through whatever lies ahead can be powerful. Yet as we see in Absalom’s miserable end—killed while hanging from a tree by the beautiful hair of which he had been so proud—the promise of natural abilities is a false one. It is only God who establishes kings, grants or withholds blessing, gives life and takes it away.
Then there is the temptation to trust our own wisdom. Proverbs warns us: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding” (3:5–8). To believe that our own wisdom is sufficient to guide us not only is foolish but is the essence of sin. That belief led the first man and woman to eat the fruit that God had forbidden, for they trusted in their own judgment above the direct command of God. Claiming to be wise, Paul says in Romans 1:22, they became fools—and sinners deserving His wrath.
But our modern belief in the “self” goes beyond even trust in riches, abilities, or wisdom. Henley’s poem is really a kind of hymn to himself, in which he praises not God but “my unconquerable soul.” This is a kind of idolatry that has become the mainstream religion of Western cultures. The autonomous self is worshiped above all other things; my individual freedom is the value that trumps all others. Christians too easily absorb the same attitude. Yet it is utterly foolish and wicked. My self is no more an unconquerable deity than was Baal or Zeus or Artemis of the Ephesians, no more able to help me, and no more worthy of worship.
Christ, of course, never did such things. Though He was utterly worthy of worship, He did not grasp at equality with God. Though infinitely rich, He trusted not in riches; though He had every human ability to the highest degree, He would not use them to save Himself; though He is the eternal wisdom of God, He submitted Himself entirely to His Father’s will. He trusted not in Himself but in His heavenly Father, who was alone able to deliver Him (Heb. 5:7).
He is able to save us from our sinful self-trust. He has fully atoned for it, and by His Spirit He has redeemed us. In Him, we are helped by the Spirit to resist trusting in ourselves—a trust that ultimately leads to death—and once again trust in God and in Him alone.
(The Temptation of Self-Trust)
Dr. Matthew P.W. Roberts is minister of Trinity Church York in York, England, and author of Pride: Identity and the Worship of Self.
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