1 Corinthians 4:1-5

Who are you? Who is the person sitting in your seat? Who is that person you see in the mirror every morning? Who is that person that thinks those thoughts in your head? Who are you? Who are you?

When we try to answer this question, sometimes we respond with our name. Who am I? I’m Larry. I’m Ron. I’m Sylvia. But that doesn’t really capture who we are, does it? We’re more than just a name. Who are you? Sometimes we try to answer by saying what we do for a living. Who am I? I’m an accountant. I’m a farmer. I’m a businessman. I’m a nurse. But that doesn’t really capture it either, does it? That’s not who we are. That’s just what we do. Who are you? You are a man, you are a woman, you are a child, you are a parent, you are a friend, you are human being. You are all of these things.

It’s hard to nail it down, isn’t it? We know ourselves better than anyone knows us, but we still have a hard time explaining who we are. Maybe it’s because we’re so complex. Maybe words can’t capture the essence of existence.

Or maybe we don’t really know. Maybe we find the answer to this question difficult, because we don’t really know the answer. Who am I? I don’t really know. And if we don’t know who we are, then how can we love ourselves? Follow this through. The greatest command that God gave us is to love Him with all of our hearts and souls and minds and strength. The second great command, like the first, is to love our neighbors, to love our neighbors like we love ourselves. Like we love ourselves.

But how can we love ourselves if we don’t know ourselves? “Who am I” has to be answered before we can love our neighbors. And “Who am I” has to be answered before we love our Lord. Does this sound like psychobabble? Like we need to go to California to find ourselves, or something weird like that? Actually, I’m quoting John Calvin here. Calvin begins his Institutes of Christian Faith by saying that we will know and understand God better when we know and understand ourselves better, that the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves are connected, linked. The knowledge of God is connected to the knowledge of ourselves. The love of God, the love of neighbor, is linked to the love of ourselves.

This is a strange, awkward thing to talk about, isn’t it? I mean, if I say, “I love myself,” you’re going to think I’m really full of myself. I’m arrogant. I’m proud. But how am we going to love our neighbors like we love ourselves, if we don’t love ourselves? And how do we love ourselves, but not be proud and arrogant? How do we love ourselves in a holy, Godly way?

God gives us this balance in 1 Corinthians 4. Verse 1 gives us the beginning of the answer to the question, “Who am I?”

So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God.

Who am I? I am a servant of Christ. Who am I? I am someone who was entrusted with the secret things of God. That’s a good beginning, isn’t it? Do you hear the humility, but also the confidence, in this description of you? We are servants, but trusted servants. We humbly serve, but we humbly serve the King of kings, the Creator of the universe.

If this is who we are, we know a strength and confidence that only believers in Jesus know. We know a peace, we know a hope, that only the children of God can possess. But if this is not how we see ourselves, if this is not our definition of who we are, then our love for ourselves starts to unravel. And when we’re not loving ourselves, then we’re not loving each other, and we’re not loving God.

If we don’t see ourselves with the humility and strength of a servant of Christ, we can begin to wander in two different directions. We see ourselves only as humble. We see ourselves as weak. And if we don’t see ourselves with the strength and confidence, the honor of having been entrusted with the secret things of God, we grow afraid. In our weakness and fear, we get defensive. We get loud. We become aggressive and quarrelsome. We grow into cantankerous Christians, because we don’t know another way of being strong. We are afraid for our families. We are afraid for our church. We are afraid for our nation, for our world, for ourselves, so we start barking at anything that looks like a threat. Maybe we feel like people are watching us, judging us for what we’ve done, or what our parents have done, or what our children have done. We imagine people are talking about us, whispering behind our backs. And we grow more afraid, we feel more weak.

Or, we go in the other direction. We have been entrusted with the secret things of God. We really are quite special. We have studied for years, we have figured God out. Just ask, ask about anything God. We could probably tell you. We certainly have an opinion about everything, and our opinions are usually right. Actually, they’re not really opinions. They’re facts, and if anyone disagrees with the facts, as we see them, well that person is quite simply wrong.

And verse 2 brings us back to reality:

Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.

As servants of Christ, entrusted with the truth about God, we need to be faithful, and faithful does not mean arrogant. We are faithful when we are humble. We are faithful when we respect others. We are faithful when we are patient and kind. We are faithful when we can admit we are wrong. Who are we? We are humble servants of Christ. Though we don’t deserve it, though we haven’t earned it, we have been entrusted with the secret things of God.

But as a humble servant of Christ, we are not weak, either. We’re humble, not helpless. We’re the poor in spirit, but we’re not powerless. We are servants of Jesus Christ. We are ambassadors for the King of kings. We have been given a mission, and the authority to carry out that mission, and no one can tell us different. Verse 3:

I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court;

At this moment, Paul is not very well-liked by some of the people in the Corinthian church. Some of the people still love him, the poor people, the insignificant people. But the important people, the movers and the shakers, the people who really are somebody, these people are really quite angry with Paul. Paul has been stepping on their toes. He hasn’t been preaching what they want him to preach. He’s been embarrassing them when he writes to them. And they don’t like it. And they’re pushing back.

And Paul doesn’t give two hoots about these people not liking him, because he knows who he is. He is a servant of Christ, entrusted with the secret things of God. They can talk about him all they want, he really doesn’t care. They can’t touch him. They can’t make him doubt who he is. They can’t shake his confidence.

In fact, verse 3:

indeed, I do not even judge myself.

How much time do we spend second guessing ourselves? How much energy do we spend wondering if we did the right thing? All that second guessing and wondering can put us out of action, so worried about what to do that we end up not doing anything.

Paul’s not having any of that. He’s not going to judge himself. Not that he thinks he’s perfect. Actually, it’s just the opposite. He knows he’s not qualified to judge himself. He’s a little biased, after all. And he’s not holy enough or smart enough to fully know right from wrong, to really know what it means to be righteous. He’s trying to be righteous. He’s trying to be holy. He wants to do the right thing. Verse 4:

My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent.

I want to do the right thing. I think I’m doing the right thing. But I don’t always know the right thing. And since I don’t always know the right thing to do, and neither do the people who are trying to criticize and judge me, I’m just not going to listen to them. I am a servant of Christ. I’ve been given a job to do, to tell people about the gospel. I’m trying my best to do my job as a servant, so, verse 4:

It is the Lord who judges me.

It is the Lord who will correct us. He’ll make sure we’re doing the right thing in the right way. He’ll make sure we’re being the servants of Christ that we’re supposed to be. He’ll speak through friends, fellow servants. He’ll teach through Bible studies. He’ll discipline, sometimes through elders and deacons. It is the Lord who judges us

Therefore, verse 5:

Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts.

Does that scare you to hear? When the Lord comes, He will expose the motives of our hearts. He’ll reveal the truth about ourselves. He will judge us. And the thought of the truth being exposed can curl our toes and make us cringe. There are some things in our past we would just rather kept hid. There are some truths we would like left unrevealed. We don’t want to stand before the judge. We don’t want our darkness brought out into the light.

If this is how we see ourselves, shameful, wretched, revolting, how are we able to love ourselves? And if we can’t love ourselves, then how do we love our neighbor as we love ourselves? The truth is, yes, we have sinned. The depth of our guilt is beyond understanding. Our evil has been monstrous. There is no excuse for our sin. There is only forgiveness. And that’s enough. If you know, if you believe, if you accept the awful wonderful truth that Jesus died for you, He bled with you on His mind, the pain He suffered was supposed to be your pain, if you know this, if you accept this, then the evil, the sin, the regret, the shame is gone. It’s gone. You and I, we’re not guilty anymore. That doesn’t make us arrogant, that makes us grateful. Our innocence doesn’t excuse us to sin more. Our innocence drives us to serve more. Our innocence allows us to be servants of Christ. And our innocence allows us to love ourselves.

What was at the end of verse 5?

wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts…. At that time each will receive his praise from God.

If Jesus loved you so much that He died for you, and God loves you so much, because of Jesus, that He’s going to praise you, He’s going to PRAISE you, when you see Him, do you think maybe you can love you, too? Not because of who you are, but because of who God is. Not because of what you’ve done, but because of what God has done.

Who are you? You have an answer. If you’ve given you’re life to Jesus, you are a servant, you are a disciple of Jesus. A disciple of Jesus is neither arrogant nor weak. A disciple of Jesus is neither proud nor scared. A servant, a disciple of Jesus is loved by God, first, so that a disciple of Jesus loves God, so that a disciple of Jesus loves their neighbor, so that a disciple of Jesus loves themselves. Who are you? You are a disciple of Jesus.