Stop Obeying Your FALSE Self (The Broken Mirror, 4 of 7)
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There's a voice in your head that never shuts up. It wakes you up at 3:00 a.m. replaying the conversation that made you look stupid. It tells you that you're falling behind, that everyone else has it figured out. It demands that you prove yourself again because yesterday's success already expired. You've tried to silence it. You've tried to argue with it.
You've tried to drown it out with noise or numb it with distraction, but it always comes back. What if I told you that voice doesn't need to be managed? It needs to be buried. That's what the cross was for. In this sermon series, we've been talking about the perfect mirror, Jesus, and how he came to show us who we are. But today, we have to answer the hardest question. Why did the perfect mirror have to shatter?
Now, before I go further, let me say that this sermon is the fourth of a seven-part series based on my book, The Broken Mirror: Rediscovering Our True Nature in Christ. If you haven't seen the other sermons yet or listen to them, I suggest you go do that first. It'll make this make more sense. [snorts] Now, I go into a lot more detail in the book, so if you like what you hear, click the link in the video description to pick up a copy in either paperback, hardback, Kindle, or audiobook format.
Now, most of us have a very transaction-based answer to the question of why the perfect mirror had to shatter. We think, well, I did bad things. God is angry about bad things. Someone had to be punished. Jesus took the hit. And that is true. He absolutely paid the price for our sins.
Scripture is clear on that. But if we stop there, if we only see the cross as a courtroom transaction where a fine was paid, we miss the deepest, most liberating reality of what happened on that hill. A transaction changes your legal standing. It doesn't necessarily change you. You can have your debt paid and still be a slave to the same old patterns. You can be forgiven and still be miserable. You can be legally free but internally bound.
The cross wasn't just a payment for bad behavior. It was the execution of a false identity. Think again about the mirror metaphor. What went wrong in the garden? It wasn't just that Adam and Eve ate a piece of fruit. It was that they decided to be autonomous. They decided they didn't need the source.
They tried to become their own son. That instinct, that deep clawing drive to be independent, to define our own reality, to generate our own light, is what scripture calls the flesh or the old man. It's the false self.
The false self isn't just being bad. It's actually a survival strategy. It's the armor you built to survive in a world where you felt unsafe. It's the mask you crafted so people would like you. It's the resume you polish so you would feel valuable. It's the part of you that's terrified of not being enough so it performs. It's the part of you that's terrified of being hurt so it builds walls.
It's the part of you that's terrified of being out of control so it manipulates. For years, my false self was obsessed with being the strong one, the one with the answers, the defender of the truth. When someone questioned or criticized me, I felt this surge of panic and defensiveness. I wasn't defending truth. I was defending an image. I was defending a fortress I had built because I was scared to death of being vulnerable.
Maybe your false self isn't the strong one. Maybe yours is the helper. You burn yourself out fixing everyone else's problems because being needed is the only way you feel valuable. Or maybe you're the victim. You only feel safe when your pain is someone else's fault. Or the achiever, you're only alive when you're winning. And the moment you stop winning, you start dying inside.
Whatever shape it takes, that false self is like a layer of hard, opaque paint covering the mirror. As long as that pain is there, it doesn't matter how much you want to reflect God. You can't. You can't just wash that paint off. It's baked in. It's part of the structure of the old life. You can't send the false self to church to learn better manners.
You can't discipline it into holiness. Now, hear me carefully. I'm not saying you are worthless. I'm saying there's a parasite attached to you that's been pretending to be you. The false self isn't your true identity. It's the squatter that moved in after the fall. God doesn't want to destroy you.
He wants to evict the impostor so the real you can finally live. So what did God do? He didn't just give us a cleaning cloth. He gave us a funeral. When Jesus went to the cross, he didn't just carry your sins. He carried you. He took that old independent self-generating nature, that mirror that insisted on being the son, and he nailed it to the wood.
The Apostle Paul says something in Galatians chapter 2 20 that is so radical we usually just skim over it. He says I have been crucified with Christ. Not I watched Christ be crucified and not I appreciate that Christ was crucified. I have been crucified. Past tense done deal. Romans 6:6 confirms this. Our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with.
That we should no longer be slaves to sin. This is the hard news. But it's the only news that heals. The false self can't be fixed. It has to die. We spend so much of our lives trying to prop up this false self. We defend it when it's criticized.
We feed it with praise. We protect it with cynicism. No wonder you're exhausted. You've been trying to keep a corpse alive. The cross is the mercy of God saying, "Stop. Let it die. Let the part of you that needs to be right die.
Let the part of you that needs to be admired die. Let the part of you that's addicted to control die." Jesus used a powerful image for this in John 12:4. He said,"Most certainly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit." Think about a seed. To the seed, being dropped into the dirt feels like the end.
It feels like burial. It's dark. It's crushing. It's lonely. If the seed had a voice, it would be screaming, "This is a disaster. I'm being destroyed." But the gardener knows the truth.
It isn't a burial. It's a planting. The outer shell, the hard casing that kept the seed safe but isolated, that has to break open. It has to die so that the life inside can finally be released.
We are terrified of the dying. We're afraid that if we let go of our control, our reputation, our rights, there'll be nothing left. We think if the shell breaks, we'll disappear. We grip the shell because it's all we've ever known. But the promise of the empty tomb is this. On the other side of that death is a life you cannot imagine. Look at what happened to Jesus.
He died. He was buried. The perfect mirror was crushed. But three days later, he rose. And notice this. He didn't come back as a ghost. He came back with a body.
He ate fish. He could be touched. Resurrection means our human nature isn't discarded. It's upgraded. It's filled with indestructible life. Consider the difference between the battery power of the false self and the resurrection power of the true self. The false self runs on a battery.
It needs constant recharging. It needs validation. It needs success. It needs control. And when the battery drains, when you don't get the praise or the plan falls apart, you crash. You spiral into anxiety or depression because your power source has been cut off. The true self, the new creation is plugged into the grid of God's own life.
It doesn't need to be right to be okay. It doesn't need to be in control to be peaceful. It runs on a source that cannot be depleted.
A life that doesn't have to prove itself. A life that doesn't wake up at 3:00 a.m. and panic. A life that can be wrong without falling apart. That's the true self. When Jesus rose, he was the first fruits of a new kind of humanity. A humanity that has passed through death and come out the other side.
No longer driven by the need to be the son, but perfectly, effortlessly reflecting the father. So, you don't have to fight the old you. You just have to acknowledge that it's dead. You have to stop giving it CPR and turn your face toward the one who is alive. And that one, the risen one, lives in you, as we've discussed. The same life that walked out of the tomb is the life that now powers the new you. So, how do we practice this?
How do we stop operating from the battery and start living from the grid? Well, we have to recognize when the false self is trying to take the wheel. These arc types we talked about, they each have a panic button. The achiever's panic button is often anger. You attack the threat before it exposes you. The helper's panic button is often people pleasing. You frantically try to fix everyone so you feel safe.
The victim's panic button is often withdrawal. You hide in your cave until the threat passes. Identify that behavior. Give it a name. That isn't you. That is you digging up a corpse and asking it for advice. When that feeling rises up this week, when the false self shows up with its demands, I want you to do something physical, I want you to open your hands.
Unclench your fists. It's hard to hold on to control with open palms. And as you open your hands, I want you to pray this.
This part of me was crucified with Christ. I release it. I don't have to obey it anymore. Say it out loud. This anxiety was crucified. This need to be right was crucified. This fear of rejection was crucified.
Open hands. That's the posture of someone who stopped trying to be the son. Now, a word of warning. The first few times you do this, the voice might not stop immediately. The anxiety might not vanish in a microcond. That's okay. You aren't doing a magic trick here.
You're retraining your soul. You're not trying to silence the voice through willpower. You're reminding yourself and it that it has no authority over you anymore. You're agreeing with the verdict of the cross. You're letting the grain of wheat fall. Remember that voice, the one that wakes you up at 3:00 a.m. The one that tells you you're not enough.
That voice belongs to a dead man. You don't have to answer it anymore. That false self that insisted on being the son has been shattered. Let it go. The true mirror restored to reflect the glory of God is rising. Let this be our prayer. Aba Father, we confess that we have spent so much energy trying to keep the false self alive.
We have protected our egos and defended our pride. Thank you for the mercy of the cross. Thank you that you loved us too much to let us stay stuck in the trap of independence. We agree with your judgment today. Our old self was crucified with Christ. Give us the courage to let it die daily and give us the faith to walk in the new indestructible life of the resurrection. We are free in Jesus' name.
Amen. I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my book, The Broken Mirror: Rediscovering Our True Nature in Christ. Readers call it a fantastic book where you will feel yourself discovering your identity in Christ. One reviewer praised it as five-star material for the spiritual mystic or group Bible study. It's time to escape legalism and shame. Discover you're already God's beloved child with divine nature flowing through you with what reviewers describe as excellent writing style and elegant pros like a campfire discussion with a knowledgeable and gifted recon tour. Journey from Genesis to Revelation uncovering your true identity.
This book shows how to access God's peace, wisdom, and strength from within. Your struggles become opportunities for divine light to shine through. Available in hard coverver, paperback, Kindle, and audio book. The link to the book is in the video description. May God bless your journey along his path for you.
