“For one look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ!”

This memorable line from Robert Murray M‘Cheyne (1813–1843) has drawn many Christians out of the cellar of morbid introspection. Some of us once lived in that cellar — bent down double, curved concave, scrutinizing, analyzing, paralyzing. For every one look at Christ, we took ten at self.

But then the Spirit began to unbend us, convex us. He sent a friend, gave us a passage, or perhaps used M‘Cheyne’s famous line to lift us up and out to Christ. Self-scrutiny gradually gave way to Christ-scrutiny. We dared to believe that taking ten looks at him was better and safer than taking ten looks within. So, we looked and looked and looked — ten times and more.

I have no desire to discourage such “looking to Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2). At the same time, however, I do wonder if M‘Cheyne’s quote has sometimes been taken in ways he didn’t quite intend. We might read his counsel and think he gave little or no place to introspection — that he countered every inward turn with “Christ! Look to Christ!” And so we might strive for the same attitude.

But for all of M‘Cheyne’s remarkable Christ-centeredness, the man was not afraid to examine himself, and often with surprising rigor. In fact, M‘Cheyne believed that the right kind of introspection could actually serve his sight of Christ. He knew that one good look at self has the potential to make our ten looks at Christ all the sweeter, stronger, and more wonderfully specific.

Godly introspection is a road, not a room, that ever takes us to the same glorious place: Jesus. And as we learn from M‘Cheyne, some of the best sights of Christ come at the end of that road.

One Look Within

“I am persuaded that I ought to confess my sins more,” M‘Cheyne wrote near the end of his life. “I think I ought at certain times of the day — my best times — say, after breakfast and after tea — to confess solemnly the sins of the previous hours, and to seek their complete remission.” He goes on, “I ought to take all methods for seeing the vileness of my sins” (Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray M‘Cheyne, 150).

Those who have felt trapped in the prison of introspection may tremble at such words; we may hear in them the clink of former chains. We might also wonder, Is this really the same man who told us to take ten looks at Christ — the same man who said, “Do not take up your time so much with studying your own heart as with studying Christ’s heart” (279)? Yes, the same man. He treated the command to “keep a close watch on yourself” with utter seriousness (1 Timothy 4:16).

We might imagine that such precise self-examination would leave M‘Cheyne feeling like a constant spiritual failure. But remarkably, it didn’t. Those who read his biography find a man often exuberant with joy, regularly relaxing in God’s love. “Oh, how sweet to work all day for God, and then to lie down under his smiles!” he wrote in his journal (56). His looks at self did not steal his sense of God’s steadfast favor.

How? Well, for one, M‘Cheyne was aware not only of indwelling sin but of indwelling grace; when he looked within, he could notice the ways his life pleased God. But even more significantly, he grasped that seeing self (even the worst parts of himself) was not an end but a means of seeing Christ more clearly, of beholding his glories more intimately and particularly. And so he surrounded his self-examination and confessions of sin with celebrations of Jesus.

Ten Sweeter, Stronger Looks

We need not follow M‘Cheyne’s precise regimen of self-examination in order to learn from his Christ-focused pattern. Scripture doesn’t tell us how often we should confess our sins or how rigorously we should examine ourselves. We will need to find our own way under the guidance of the Spirit and in community with God’s people.

But however often or deeply we consider ourselves, how might our one look at self serve our ten looks at Christ?

1. Make introspection a road, not a room.

For some Christians, introspection leads to paralyzed inaction. Our look within becomes a locked sight, a fixed gaze — a room rather than a road. M‘Cheyne, for all of his inward intensity, speaks of self-examination in dramatically different terms. Yes, he sought to see “the vileness of [his] sins,” and to that end he examined himself carefully (150). But once he saw himself clearly, he did not linger long. He flew to Jesus.

At one point, M‘Cheyne uses the image of the prodigal son among the pigs. He knew how tempting it could feel to sit in his guilt, letting his inward look extend, not daring “to go straight from the swine-trough to the best robe.” But this suggestion, he said, is a lie “direct from hell.” “I am sure that there is neither peace nor safety from deeper sin, but in going directly to the Lord Jesus Christ. This is God’s way of peace and holiness” (151). And so he resolved to let no guilt “hinder me from fleeing to Christ” (152). Rather, he let his guilt drive him to God.

“Godly introspection is a road, not a room, that ever takes us to the same glorious place: Jesus.”

By definition, self-examination and confession require a careful inward look; they call us to know and feel the sicknesses of our soul. But they equally call us not to remain there. In confession, we are like the woman with the flow of blood — knowing our disease, yes, but allowing that knowledge to send our feet striding and hands reaching for the Healer (Mark 5:27–29). As M‘Cheyne’s friend Horatius Bonar wrote, “Complaints against self, which do not lead the complainer directly to the cross, are most dangerous” (Think Again, 107).

Done well, inward looking leads us to the Lord outside ourselves, the Christ worth beholding with tenfold attention. But what exactly do we behold about Christ at the end of this road? How does our inward look draw out glories we wouldn’t have seen otherwise — or would have seen less clearly? M‘Cheyne describes this sight of Christ in terms of both cleansing and clothing, or washing and wearing.

2. Wash from the infinite fountain.

Consider first the cleansing. When we bring our sins to Jesus, we approach an infinite fountain overflowing with the worth of Christ’s suffering. “In Christ’s bloodshedding,” M‘Cheyne writes, “there is an infinite over-payment for all my sins. Although Christ did not suffer more than infinite justice demanded, yet he could not have suffered at all without laying down an infinite ransom” (151).

M‘Cheyne names some of the sins he felt tempted to consider “too great, too aggravated, too presumptuous” for full, free, immediate forgiveness: “as when done on my knees, or in preaching, or by a dying bed, or during dangerous illness” (152). Does God readily forgive such evils upon sincere confession? Can we bring not just small sins but Goliath-sins to him? He does, and we can.

Hate your sins, renounce your sins, and resolve to forsake your sins. But do not fear to look your sins full in the face. Do not hesitate to call them what they are. The larger they seem, the larger Christ seems when he forgives them. The worse they appear, the worthier he appears when he covers them. “If we confess our sins” — whatever sins — “[God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

We can bring no sin Christ cannot cleanse. And however often we draw from these waters, they remain ever full. So, come wash in the infinite fountain.

3. Wear his many-colored robe.

After the cleansing comes the clothing. “I must not only wash me in Christ’s blood,” M‘Cheyne writes, “but clothe me in Christ’s obedience” (152). And here we get to the heart of how our inward-looking shapes our sight of Christ. M‘Cheyne goes on,

For every sin of omission in myself, I may find a divinely perfect obedience ready for me in Christ. For every sin of commission in self, I may find not only a stripe or a wound in Christ, but also a perfect rendering of the opposite obedience in my place, so that the law is magnified, its curse more than carried, its demand more than answered. (152)

The “robe of righteousness” Christ gives is not generic (Isaiah 61:10). Like Joseph’s many-colored coat, Christ’s robe has every shade of splendor for our every shade of sin. Whatever our misery, he has an excellency to outmatch it. Every guilt finds an opposite glory in him.

For example, lately I have found myself feeling indignant at interruptions and demands upon my time. But then one morning in Mark 6, as an unrelenting crowd disrupted Jesus’s desired rest, I read this: “When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them” (Mark 6:34). Where I am affronted and offended, Christ bleeds mercy. I saw my selfishness in that moment, yes, but I also saw a robe woven with Christ’s own compassion — a robe to wear by faith and to increasingly embody by grace.

And so with every single sin. For our barbed words he has his own bridled tongue, and for our apathy his mighty zeal, and for our bitterness his tender grace, and for our impatience his slow-to-anger love. So, while sin can show us parts of ourselves we feel dismayed to see, sin can also show us parts of Christ we feel thrilled to behold. For our darkness cannot help but show his light — his many-splendored, perfect light, shining from every facet of his spotless human life.

His Unsearchable Riches

To be clear, M‘Cheyne’s ten looks at Christ did not all spring from his self-examination. He spent many hours in simple self-forgetful study, marveling at “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8). But he also knew how to make introspection a means of seeing those riches more clearly.

By all means, then, take ten looks at Christ for every one look at self. Focus not so much on studying your heart as on studying Christ’s heart. But also do take that one look at yourself — and let it inform and shape those ten looks. And let what you see of your own heart show you the worth and beauty of his.

Audio Transcript

Are motorcycles for fools? That’s today’s question. And we’re speaking of recreational motorcycles here, of course — their primary function in the States. And it’s really a question about providence more than anything else. Here’s the email: “Hello, Pastor John. My name is Ian, and I live in the beautiful city of San Diego. My girlfriend and I got into a discussion recently about riding motorcycles for fun. I stated that if we got married, I wouldn’t ride motorcycles because to me it feels unwise to put myself in a greater risk of dying and thus leaving her alone, or if we had kids, leaving them without their father and leaving their mother to support all of them, because riding for us is just recreational. She believes that if I died riding, it was God’s will for me to die anyways, and taking precautions, like not riding, is to live in fear, while for me it feels like a wise decision to not take that unnecessary risk when others’ livelihoods are at stake.

“I’m having trouble reconciling the sovereignty of God in our lives, but also making wise decisions. It’s true that God oversees every event that happens in our lives, regardless of our precautions, but in my mind I feel like decisions that we make will also impact our future. But aren’t crashes and misfortune in the hand of God, too, making precautions like these worthless? Am I living in fear? Or am I being prudent and wise in not wanting to ride motorcycles? Thank you, Pastor John!”

There are two sentences in Ian’s question that I think need some correction. And in the process, perhaps I can clarify a way of thinking about God’s sovereignty and our risks and our fear that will shape the way he and his girlfriend and all of us make our decisions. One of those sentences expresses Ian’s opinion, and the other one expresses his girlfriend’s opinion (at least the way he articulates it).

All-Governing Sovereignty

Let’s take Ian’s sentence first. He says, “But aren’t motorcycle crashes and misfortune in the hand of God, making precautions like these worthless?” Now, I’m not sure Ian really believes that — that God’s sovereignty over motorcycle crashes makes precautions like not riding a motorcycle worthless — because he had just said in the previous sentence, “It’s true that God oversees every event that happens in our lives regardless of our precautions. But in my mind, I feel like decisions that we make also impact our future.” So, it sounds to me like, Ian, you’re waffling. Precautions make a difference in our future, and precautions seem worthless in making a difference in view of the sovereignty of God.

So, we need to think for a minute. We need to ponder what’s going on here in that ambiguity and what is the truth here. And I think we can settle quickly that, according to the Bible, God governs the smallest details of nature and human activity — including motorcycle riding, including all accidents and non-accidents — as well as the greatest events in government and history and the universe, the solar system, the galaxies.

Jesus said, “Not one bird will fall from the sky apart from your Father’s will” (see Matthew 10:29). That’s tiny, micro providence. Proverbs 16:33: “The lot [dice] is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.” Isaiah 40:26 says not one of the stars is out of place because of God’s power. Ephesians 1:11: “[God] works all things according to the counsel of his will.” James 4:15: “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” So, the sovereignty of God over all things is not at issue.

“The sovereignty of God over human events does not make human choices about those events worthless.”

I think Ian agrees with that given what he says. But he does not seem to be as sure that taking precautions makes any difference in the outcome of our lives if God is sovereign over everything. That’s where he seems to be waffling. He says, “But aren’t motorcycle crashes in the hand of God, making precautions worthless?” Now, the answer to that question is a clear and emphatic no; they’re not worthless. They are not. The sovereignty of God over human events does not make human choices about those events worthless.

Over Ends and Means

The reason is very simple. God not only predestined the events that he wills to come to pass, but he also predestines the means by which those events come to pass.

If God predestines that there be a building, he also predestines that there be builders who build it. If God predestines that a person not starve to death, then he also predestines that they have food and that they eat it. If God predestines that you do not fly off a mountain cliff on your motorcycle, he also predestines that you not enter the curve doing 80 miles an hour. If God predestines that a nail be driven through a two-by-four, he also predestines that someone hit it with a hammer. If God predestines that someone be saved, he also predestines that someone bring that person the gospel.

It doesn’t make any sense to speak of God’s all-governing sovereignty as if it only designed the ends and not the means to those ends. It wouldn’t be all-governing if that were the case. Why would we think that? If he governs all things, he governs all secondary causes, all means to ends.

For the loss of a nail, the shoe was lost. For the loss of the shoe, the horse was lost. For the loss of a horse, the battle was lost. For the loss of the battle, the war was lost. For the loss of the war, the nation and the kingdom was lost. Every one of those causes, secondary causes — going all the way back to the nail that fell out of the horseshoe — is in the hand of the Lord just as much as the final outcome of a nation that falls. He sets up nations, he takes down nations, and he governs the billions of causes that develop over decades to bring a nation up or take a nation down. Any one of those causes may alter the outcome of our lives, depending on whether God wills it to be so.

So, it’s just wrong to say that because God governs final outcomes, our efforts to promote or hinder those outcomes are worthless. That’s just wrong. That would be a great, unbiblical mistake. God ordains means as well as ends, and our action is part of those means. So, not riding a motorcycle is a very good way not to be killed on a motorcycle. There is a real, causal connection between not riding motorcycles and not being killed on motorcycles.

Fearless Precautions

Now, the other sentence in that question is not Ian’s statement, but the one he says his girlfriend spoke. He says, “She believes that if I died riding a motorcycle, it was God’s will for me to die anyway and taking precautions like not riding is to live in fear.” Now, there’s more than one problem with that sentence, but we’re just going to take one — namely, the one about fear. She says, “To take precautions is to live in fear.” I doubt she really said that. I think he’s reporting it not quite exactly right.

I don’t think she really believes that, because that is certainly not necessarily true. And if she’s thought about it for five seconds, she’d know it’s not necessarily true that to take precautions is to live in fear. I take precautions by locking my doors every night. I take precautions by putting the car in the garage. I take precautions by backing up my hard drive on my computer. I take precautions by wearing a seatbelt. I take precautions by praying for protection before I go to bed at night. I take precautions by having health insurance. And on and on and on.

“God ordains means as well as ends, and our action is part of those means.”

The actual experience of fear in my life is almost totally absent. I don’t even think about it. It does not dominate my life. I hardly even give a thought to those things. Fear is rarely a conscious experience in my life. So, taking precautions doesn’t have to mean that you are living under the domination of fear. I have no intention of owning a motorcycle or going skydiving, for example. I don’t give them a thought. They don’t affect my fear level at all one way or the other.

What Risks Are Right?

So, the question that Ian and his girlfriend face regarding the motorcycle is this: What risks in life are wise and loving? So, instead of answering that question, which I don’t have time to do now, I’m going to send you to APJ 1446, where I do answer that question. I spent a whole session on it. The title of that episode is “How Do I Take Risks Without Being Unwise?” And I give six criteria there for answering that question — how to be wise, how to be loving and yet take appropriate risk. Because we all do every day. Life is a risk, right? You cannot not risk.

But the two main points here are (1) the sovereignty of God does not make precautions worthless, and (2) taking precautions need not imply that we are living in the grip of fear.

As a type-A, calendar and to-do list kind of person, I like to remember that those who plan act a little like God.

We resemble, in some small measure, the Maker who built his world from a six-day blueprint. We share a likeness with him who “planned from days of old what now I bring to pass” (2 Kings 19:25). We embody in creaturely form the ways of him who acts beyond whim, against randomness, and always according to a “definite plan” (Acts 2:23). We are made in the image of a planning God, and those who plan act a little like him.

But wait a minute. As a type-A, calendar and to-do list kind of person, I need to remember something else too: sometimes, those who plan act a little too much like God.

Sometimes, we plan as if we were not vapor and mist, flower and grass, here by morning and gone by night. Sometimes, we reduce planning to prayerless reason and pro-con lists, tools of self-reliant minds. Sometimes, we don’t even say under our breath, “If the Lord wills . . .” (James 4:15). We are made in the image of a planning God, and those who plan sometimes take the image and forget the God.

So, as another calendar closes, and a year of blank days falls open before us, how might we reflect our planning God without planning as if we were God?

1. Plan like a mortal.

Whenever we plan, whether for next year or next week, we bring something of tomorrow into today. We run ahead on the trail of time, charting courses and planting flags, considering what we might do now to reach goals then. In the process, however, our imagined tomorrows can feel more real than they really are; we can find our hearts already inhabiting our future plans. But as James reminds us, we “do not know what tomorrow will bring.” We are “a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14). We are mortal.

Partly because eternity rests in our bones, and partly because lingering folly does too, we often fail to plan like mortals. We are mists who dream like mountains, lilies who plot like oaks. As we mentally walk the trails of tomorrow, deciding where we’ll go and what we’ll do, we forget that such trails may never be. Humility gives way to type-A “arrogance” (James 4:16).

Rightly felt, a sense of our mortality does not discourage planning, but it does chasten and reframe planning. When eternity presses close, we live (and plan) more wisely in time. We also remember what our best plans really are: drawings and rough drafts, penciled sketches at the mercy of God’s eraser. So, even as we think and scheme and dream as if we may have months or years ahead, we stamp every plan with mortal wisdom: “If the Lord wills” — and not otherwise — “we will live and do this or that” (James 4:15).

2. Plan like a child.

Pride can take several shapes in our planning. It can appear in our quickness to say, “I will . . .” rather than “If the Lord wills . . .” It can appear also in a prayerless reliance on our own reason.

I often need help remembering that Christian planning is never a matter of mere common sense. Of course, common sense holds great value (as much of Proverbs testifies), and most of us could stand to have more. But our world is too complex a place for pro-con lists to master. More than that, God’s own priorities are often too counterintuitive for worldly wisdom to trace.

Planners like me would do well to heed the words of John Newton: “It is a great thing indeed to have the spirit of a little child, so as to be habitually afraid of taking a single step without leading” (Letters of John Newton, 184). We are not only mortals — our time short, our days numbered. We are also children — our wisdom small, our foresight fallible. So, as those who know our own ignorance, who sense our utterly limited perspective and our proneness to plausible folly, we plan in the presence of God. We saturate planning with prayer.

We might, for example, root our planning in Paul’s prayer for the Philippians:

It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ. (Philippians 1:9–10)

Rightly done, planning is a way of looking at the competing claims for our time and attention, and approving not only what is good or worthy, but “what is excellent,” what is best. And approving what is best calls for more than common sense. We need nothing less than abounding, discerning love, a gift that comes from the Spirit in response to prayer.

3. Plan like a worshiper.

Praying as we plan may guard us from the pride that James warns so strongly against (James 4:16). But what about the next day, the next week, the next month, when we wake up with plan in hand, calendar filled, to-do list ready? How will we protect ourselves, in an ongoing way, from acting like immortal adults rather than mortal children? We can plan like worshipers.

Worshipers remember that, among all priorities, “one thing is necessary” (Luke 10:42). Among all requests, “one thing have I asked of the Lord” (Psalm 27:4). Among all ambitions, “one thing I do” (Philippians 3:13). Sit at Jesus’s feet. Behold his beauty. Press on toward heaven.

Worshipers not only saturate their planning with prayer; they also plan to saturate their days with prayer (and God’s other means of grace). Pursuing God becomes one of the main parts of their plans. What will Bible reading look like this year? When, where, and how will I commune with God in prayer? In what ways will I deepen my fellowship with brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers in my local church?

“Above all priorities, prioritize worship. At the heart of all plans, plan to pursue God.”

When we daily pursue God according to a prayerful, thoughtful plan, we will have a harder time taking our to-do lists too seriously. God’s providence, not our plans, will seem like our great unshakable guide. We will also find ourselves more attuned to when our priorities should change. As we seek him, the discerning love of God will often lead us to approve some excellence other than the one we had planned.

So, above all priorities, prioritize worship. At the heart of all plans, plan to pursue God.

4. Plan like a dreamer.

Can creatures of dust craft five-year visions? Can mists like us dare to imagine not just tomorrow but a thousand tomorrows? As long as we live like mortals, pray like children, and pursue God like worshipers, yes, we can. And indeed, sometimes love will compel us to do so. God created us “in Christ Jesus for good works” (Ephesians 2:10), and some good works are so wonderfully audacious, so beautifully complex, they reach beyond the pages of this year’s calendar.

Consider a remarkable passage near the end of Romans, where Paul outlines his travel plans:

I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain, and to be helped on my journey there by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a while. At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem bringing aid to the saints. For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints at Jerusalem. (Romans 15:24–26)

In a time when traveling from Achaia to Jerusalem to Rome to Spain would have taken months and perhaps years, Paul outlines a surprisingly complicated, long-range plan. Of course, we know from Acts that Paul remained sensitive to God’s redirecting hand (Acts 16:6–10, for example), but he did not for that reason stop planning. With Christlike love burning in his heart, he set his sights across years and seas.

Some good works call for far-seeing vision, bold ambition, and the willingness to embark on a path whose end lies over the horizon. Global missions and church planting are two such good works. We could mention many others: adopting children, evangelizing a city, starting a God-glorifying business, ending abortion, even raising a child in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Often in Scripture we find the wicked laying wicked plans (Esther 8:3; Psalm 21:11; 33:10; 62:4). Will not the righteous lay counter-plans for righteousness? Will we not think on our beds, and dream with open calendars, and dare to fill future days with penciled plans for good?

5. Plan like a sub-planner.

Perhaps the best test of a planner’s heart comes later, outside the moment of planning, when we realize that God’s plans were different from ours. “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand” (Proverbs 19:21). And sometimes, even often, the purpose of the Lord undoes our plans.

Our God is the great intervener, the great redirector, the one who “frustrates the plans of the peoples” (Psalm 33:10) and who sometimes, for kind and wise reasons, frustrates our own plans as well. Our wisdom in such moments is to receive the frustration of our plans without frustration, to hold our torn to-do lists with humble, trusting hands — and in the more trivial cases, maybe with even a self-deprecating laugh.

Every ruined plan is an opportunity to remember that we are sub-planners, planners with a lowercase p. God gives us the dignity of dreaming — and sometimes too the gift of seeing dreams come true. But above that dignity, he gives the assurance that even when our plans fail, he folds the failures into his own plans for our good (Romans 8:28).

So far as we know, Paul never made it to Spain. And so with us, some of our most seemingly God-glorifying plans will not come to pass. But those crossed-out hopes, those unchecked boxes on our to-do lists, have the potential to push us deeper into our mortal creed: “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that” (James 4:15). They can bid us to say with more sincerity, “Not my plans, but yours, be done.” Best of all, they can teach us to receive God’s interruptions as better than our best-laid plans.