10.10 | Decrease/Increase

John 3:22-36

“He must increase, but I must decrease.”

John 3:30

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We are drenched to saturation in a narrative of the self.

From primary school onwards, the messaging begins:

You are special. You are unique. Be whoever you want to be. Express yourself. Live your dream. Be the hero/ine of your story. Speak your truth. Create your identity. Fulfil your desires. You do you.

So entrenched is this story among us that we both find it hard to see, and have believed it to be the pathway to flourishing (or, in biblical language, to salvation). In our minds and hearts, we suck in the notion that happiness is found in a world where we are at the centre — our rights, our desires, our self-expression, our choices. Much therapy, self-help advice, life hacks, lifestyle gurus, thousands of books, podcasts, memes, and quotes, all uphold and celebrate this basic centrality of the self. We have built (or attempted to build) our rickety Western morality upon this very basis.

And our souls are crumbling.¹

John the Baptist today points us in the way. In seven words he turns our cultural narrative inside out:

He must increase, but I must decrease.

John the Baptist has been a big name. He’s had a huge following, with speculative wonderings about just how significant his identity is for God's people. He’s built a following and a platform. In the thoughts of many people, he has become the centre of the story.

And yet, John knew something different. He knew that his life and his ministry and his identity and his purpose were found not in the promotion of himself, but the promotion of Another. He knew that his fullness did not come in his endless increase, but that his significance was found in decrease. He knew that freedom was found in surrender and security was found not in self-actualisation, but self-denial. He knew that the upward road leads downwards, and that the doorway to the Kingdom is found in the floor, and that you find your life by losing it. John is the first celebrity religious leader of the New Testament, and yet he models for us a radically different way that the ancients have repeatedly called humility.

This cuts to the heart of our culture. This cuts to the heart of how we view leadership, celebrity, influence and significance. And it cuts to the heart of our very wellbeing, flourishing, and life. For so often, when we feel fearful, when we feel insignificant, when we feel insecure and forgotten and overlooked and unimportant, those ideals of our culture make us start grasping for the promotion of ourselves. The fear of insignificance makes us start grabbing for a plastic version of significance in the shouty narcissism of the wounded ego. St Augustine told us that sin was, in essence, incurvatus in se — ‘a life turned inwards on itself.’ We live in an incurvatus society. John shows us the way out.

He must increase, but I must decrease.

Friends, true life and security and joy and peace is found in a different way. True purpose is found in a different way. The answer to so many of our insecurities, vanities, anxieties, and the crushing pressure of endless self-promotion is not in a greater focus upon the self, but a greater focus upon the Saviour. It is only when our eyes, when our hearts, when our purpose, when our fullness, turns consistency and radically and daily to Him, that we find our truest freedom. 

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Reflect:

In my heart: Where can I decrease? Where can He increase?

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Pray:

Lord Jesus,

Where my focus has become

Me

Help me to decrease.

Liberate me from the obsession with my

Self;

Heal me from the flawed solutions of 

Self-actualisation.

Save me from the false ideologies

That my salvation is found in my anxious endeavours of increase.

Lord Jesus,

Let my focus become

You:

Your cause;

Your words;

Your agenda;

Your glory—

That I may decrease,

Unto your increase,

In the eternal liberty of 

Self-forgetfulness

And a life turned back outwards to

You.

Lord Jesus,

In Your Name,

Amen

Old Testament: 

For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:

2 Chronicles 26-28 | Psalm 119:1-16

1. This has not always come from a bad place. Emphasis on individuality has been a response to where individual freedom has been denied. It is reactive against societal inequality, silencing, and disempowerment. But reaction to distortion tends to create new distortions. We are not called to the game of reaction, but of restoration. The solution to the abuse and silencing of our world is not found in self-defensive self-expression, but in a return to the world for which we were made.