He Came To Himself

In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the turning point in the story comes when the Prodigal Son "came to himself." I believe that sometimes we think that to repent and become more like Christ means to become less and less like our true selves. We assume that, as fallen creatures who must put off the natural man, we must become something more than or at least different from what we are now if we ever want to become true saints through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. But we have it all backwards. Becoming more like Jesus means becoming more like ourselves, not less. C. S. Lewis said it best, "At the begin­ning I said there were Per­son­al­i­ties in God. I will go fur­ther now. There are no real per­son­al­i­ties any­where else. Until you have giv­en up your self to Him you will not have a real self. Same­ness is to be found most among the most ​“nat­ur­al” men, not among those who sur­ren­der to Christ. How monot­o­nous­ly alike all the great tyrants and con­querors have been: how glo­ri­ous­ly dif­fer­ent are the saints. But there must be a real giv­ing up of the self. You must throw it away ​“blind­ly” so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real per­son­al­i­ty: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own per­son­al­i­ty is what you are both­er­ing about you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to for­get about the self alto­geth­er. Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are look­ing for it. It will come when you are look­ing for Him. Does that sound strange? The same prin­ci­ple holds, you know, for more every­day mat­ters. Even in social life, you will nev­er make a good impres­sion on oth­er peo­ple until you stop think­ing about what sort of impres­sion you are mak­ing. Even in lit­er­a­ture and art, no man who both­ers about orig­i­nal­i­ty will ever be orig­i­nal: where­as if you sim­ply try to tell the truth (with­out car­ing twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become orig­i­nal with­out ever hav­ing noticed it. The prin­ci­ple runs through all

life from top to bottom. Give up your self, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Sub­mit to death, death of your ambi­tions and favourite wish­es every day and death of your whole body in the end: sub­mit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eter­nal life. Keep back noth­ing. Noth­ing that you have not giv­en away will ever be real­ly yours. Noth­ing in you that has not died will

ever be raised from the dead. Look for your­self, and you will find in the long run only hatred, lone­li­ness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him every­thing else thrown in." (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity). An eternal being has no beginning and no end. Therefore, the version of ourselves that we are striving to become, perfected, glorified, exalted, has existed since before our birth on this Earth and will continue to exist for all Eternity. When we repent and come unto Christ, just like the Prodigal Son, we are coming to ourselves, to our real selves. When we "lose ourselves" for Christ's sake, what we are losing is all of the parts of us that are not real. We abandon our weaknesses and frailties and the sins that easily beset us and come closer and closer to who we always have been and who we always were meant to be, not rebellious sons and daughters who waste our inheritance on riotous living, nor starving and destitute pig feeders, nor even the disowned servants of our Father's household, but sons and daughters of a loving Father Who has been watching from a long way off for us to come to our real selves as true and full members of His royal family.