# The balance between focusing on self and on others in the process of repentance and mortification



## Me Died Blue (Mar 26, 2006)

Today in my Sunday-school class, we finished discussing Chapter 15 of the Confession. Section five reads, "Men ought not to content themselves with a general repentance, but it is every man's duty to endeavour to repent of his particular sins, particularly." Among other things, it was discussed why we need to focus so specifically and intently on sin (and sins) in our lives.

One person then brought up the question of whether it is possible to focus _too much_ on one´s own repentance to the detriment of focusing on serving those around us, and helping fellow brethren in Christ with similar issues of their own. I was thinking about how there certainly needs to be a _balance_ between our focus on our own sanctification and on the helping of others through that same process. While there are of course _many_ separate and interconnected biblical (and thus practical) reasons one could give for that principle of necessary balance being fully biblical, logical and natural (such as the sin of selfishness and neglecting service being one sin necessary to turn from in order for our own repentance to be consistent, and a firsthand knowledge of and experience with Godliness and sanctification being necessary in helping others toward those things), I particularly thought of one reason that parallels our relation to God:

In Matthew 22:37-38, Christ said "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment." In the very first pages of Calvin's _Institutes_, he explains that there is a sense in which "without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God" (because, as he says, "we cannot seriously aspire to him before we begin to become displeased with ourselves"), and likewise that "without knowledge of God there is no knowledge of self" (because only in comparison with God´s perfection will we recognize our finite and corrupted nature for what it is). Hence, we see that in order to fully know God so as to be able to truly _love_ Him and therein obey the first great command, there is an absolutely necessary _balance_ between the knowledge of, and thus the focus on, God on the one hand and ourselves on the other"”granted, they are focuses of a different nature (the former being a focus of exaltation and the latter one of debasing), but they are both there nonetheless.

In short, we see that in order to fulfill the great command that deals with our love for _God_, we must have a balance between our focus on _Him_ and on _ourselves_. Therefore, particularly when that truth is considered in light of man's reflection of God's image (Genesis 1:26), it is only natural to expect that the second great command, which deals with our love for _others_, would similarly necessitate a balance between focus on _them_ and on _ourselves_.


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