Most of us work pretty hard to make ourselves acceptable to the rest of the world. We want to present a public self that others will value. We dress up, we carry titles, we label ourselves with one of the many labels our society offers us, or we put on a mask of respectability.
The problem is that we can mistake our public self for our real self, the person we are underneath it all. Our real self is often vulnerable and needy, having experienced pain and rejection in the past. So we keep our real self hidden.
In Paul's letter to the Romans for Sunday, he writes, "Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."
His argument in the letter is that through Christ's death we have been restored to right relationship with God. Nothing we can do will make us reconciled to God. Nothing we do will erase our sins that alienate us from God. But through the grace of God, Christ has reconciled us to God, and therefore we are at peace with God.
We are at peace with God and we no longer have to pretend to be something we're not. We are at peace with God, and therefore we don't have to put on a false front. We can admit our failures and our defeats -- as Paul himself does -- and still be at peace with ourselves and with God.
We are loved unconditionally by God. We are accepted totally by God. All we have to do is let ourselves be loved. We can drop the mask and be our own authentic self, living at peace with ourselves and being at peace with God.
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