Two Ways To Receive Criticism

Criticism is inevitable. You can’t avoid it. Make a friend, get a job, get married, take on a leadership role, or have children. How you respond to it will tell you whether you are striving to earn God’s approval (religion) or whether you are resting in His approval in Christ (gospel).

The following is adapted from Tim Keller:

Religion

When I am criticized I am furious or devastated because it is critical that I think of myself as a ‘good person’. Threats to that self image must be destroyed at all costs.

Gospel

When I am criticized I struggle, but it is not critical that I think of myself as a ‘good person’. My identity is not built on my record or my performance, but on God’s love for me in Christ. I can take criticism. That’s how I became a Christian.

To criticize is to indicate someone’s fault. The cross of Christ criticizes you and me. To become a Christian is to receive God’s criticism.

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience-among whom we all once walked in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.  Ephesian 2:1-3

But it is also means that we receive His approval. No longer do we need to overly concern ourselves with any human disapproval.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ-by grace you have been saved-and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

The gospel gives us new eyes to handle criticism. We no longer see the need to maintain a ‘good’ self image or feel threatened when someone criticizes us because God has told us that we are dead, children of wrath apart from Christ and at the same time He has accepted us in Christ. Our new identity far surpasses any good self image we might try to put forth.

We also no longer need to disregard all criticism as a threat to our self image because in Christ we have been both criticized and accepted by God himself. Criticism now becomes a means to grow. As John Piper says, “I try to receive all criticism—from friend or foe—with the assumption that there is almost certainly some truth in it that I can benefit from.”

How are you handling criticism?

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