A Proper View of Ourselves

March 24th, 2025
by Lance Waldie

Romans 12:3 For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.

In Romans 12:3 Paul speaks of both the grace given to him by God and the faith God has measured to him. It is grace, God’s first gift to man, that opens the door to His second gift: faith. Faith, used 244 times in the NT, is obviously a very important word throughout the Bible, for it is the only avenue for salvation. In its verbal form (pisteuo) it means “to believe; trust.” As a noun (pistis) it can mean belief, faith, or trust. As an adjective it signifies faithfulness. In Romans 12:3 it is a genitive noun explaining what “measure” is: …as God has divided a measure, which is faith. In other words, the faith that God has measured out and given to His elect is the standard by which they are kept from pride among themselves, thinking too highly or too lowly of themselves. So, “measure of faith” should be compared in this passage not to the various spiritual “gifts” that God grants to Christians, explained in vv. 6-8, but to the one common grace from which they originate: saving faith. In short, the faith that saves is itself a gift from God.

Although faith is the individual’s personal response to Christ, that response is made with a renewed will by the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit who initially transforms unbelievers into believers, permitting us to believe and express faith in Christ. God does it all! The reason that one’s faith must never lead to arrogance is due to the fact that the determinative element in faith is not the believer but the object in which they believed, namely Christ. Therefore, a proper view of oneself concerns knowing oneself as a sinner saved by the grace of God, recognizing that in Christ alone both God’s judgment of sin and His mercy on sinners is revealed. Christians therefore can only use the true measure of saving faith to measure themselves and others.

Now since faith in Romans 12:3 is saving faith, given to all believers in equal measure, and if Christians have been commissioned to be transformed by the renewal of their minds (12:2), then the faith God has given is a seminal faith—one that can and must increase. It is a seed God has planted within His elect. As a seed can grow only after it dies, so too can we grow after we die to self. Paul said as much in Romans 5:1-5. For having been justified through faith, believers are declared righteous. We are then ordered to rejoice in our tribulations that, in turn, produce perseverance which produces character which produces hope. Note also the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14-30) where the faithful servants put their talents to work in order to grow their inheritance. The unfaithful one who failed to do so was thrown into the darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth! In the Romans 12:3-8 context, spiritual growth, stemming from saving faith, concerns serving God through the various avenues He has provided for worship.

Food For Thought
In our day of pop-psycho-babble and psychotic meds, consider what professor William K. Kilpatrick writes in his book Psychological Seduction, the Failure of Modern Psychology: “Extreme forms of mental illness are always extreme cases of self-absorption. The distinctive quality, the thing that literally sets paranoid people apart is hyper-self-consciousness. And the thing they prize most about themselves is autonomy. Their constant fear is that someone else is interfering with their will or trying to direct their lives.”

So, if change begins with the renewal of our minds (12:2), and it is the task of the mind to think (12:3), then let us reject worldly ways (Rom. 1:18-32), for the mind set on the flesh is hostile to God (8:6-8). Let’s look away from ourselves and look directly at Jesus Christ. He alone is our righteousness. We don’t need pills or psychology, just Christ. Him and Him alone.