“The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves. Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart.” Hebrews 10:1, 22a

(This second week of devotionals from the book of Hebrews was originally published in March 2021 and aligned with the sermon series “Jesus, the Radiance of God’s Glory.”)

Self-confidence is not something I’ve traditionally had a lot of. I could come up with reasons for that, but those reasons aren’t why I’m bringing this up.

The reason I am bringing this up is that over the years, I have actually become grateful for that minimal self-confidence. Why? Because I now understand that had I been as self-confident as I wished, I would have been misplacing my confidence. After all, there is only one sensible, helpful, wonderful being in whom to place confidence, and it’s not myself; it’s Jesus.

I used to envy people who were confident in themselves. Now I realize that what they had was “only a shadow” (v.1) of genuine confidence in God.

Our Hebrews scripture isn’t addressing self-confidence per se. But I can see a correlation between the self-confidence that is prized today and the self-drive required to fulfill the Old Covenant requirements that was prized back in that day. We learn that some folks ended up feeling mighty good about their righteous compliance to the Law. (Think Pharisees here.) That is what we call “self-righteousness.” (Do you see how self-with-a-hyphen sneaked in there?)

Righteousness is a good thing. Confidence is a good thing. In fact, both are things meant to develop in us early in life. Lacking either is problematic.

The people’s confidence in their obedience to the law and feeling righteous because of it were good to a point. They got the people started with a mind-set of obedience to God. Their confidence and righteousness were only good to a point, though. That point was when they began to add self-with-a-hyphen to them.

In our day, we don’t require confidence and righteousness so we can obey the Old Covenant requirements. But life—and, specifically, faith—do still call for confidence and righteousness. Because of that, the temptation to add self-with-a-hyphen to them—even if what that gets us is weak confidence and obnoxious righteousness—is still strong. 

We don’t have to succumb to that temptation. We can leave off that self-with-a-hyphen and instead “draw near to God with a sincere heart” (v.22), putting our confidence in—and absorbing our righteousness from—Jesus.

Have a talk with Jesus about your relationship with self-confidence. In what area of your life these days is Jesus encouraging you to put your confidence in Him? Let’s pray that as a church our confidence in Jesus will grow, readying us for what God has in store in the days to come.