...than he should think

" For by the grace given to me, I tell everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he should think. Instead, think sensibly, as God has distributed a measure of faith to each one." (Romans 12:3, HCSB)

I have been contemplating this verse for several months now and had even started an in depth study of Romans 12 in an attempt to get a better understanding of it. For awhile I had hit a wall in the study and had got to the point that I was avoiding it.
The wall that I had hit can be summed up in the concept of self esteem. Today we have a warped understanding of self esteem, when we hear that spoken of it has all of the negative connotations of the “I’m ok, you’re ok” movement. As Christians we understand that God tells us through Paul that (I’m paraphrasing) “there is no good thing in me”. And that is true; our righteousness is filthy rags in Gods sight. On the other hand that does not mean that we do not have value. Our value is that which God has placed on us and our self esteem is built around that value.
Self esteem could also be expressed as self respect. If one does not respect oneself then that person is opening themselves up to all kinds of false thinking and will get caught up in all kinds of ungodly things.
I recall a quote from Dr. James Dobson that went something like this “If I could give a gift to all of the girls in the word it would be a healthy dose of self esteem”. When I consider this quote in light of my observations of young ladies that frequented the Army bases that I have been stationed at I understand what he means. They did not respect themselves and had no concept of what real love was as a result they ended up debasing themselves in an attempt to obtain value. As a result of this the thought of a loving God was totally foreign to them. They simply did not have a frame of reference that could incorporate the thought of non-meritorious value.
In the army we had a saying “know yourself and seek self improvement.” This is part of “not thinking more highly of yourself than you ought to”. It is understanding your strengths and being humble enough to ask God to control them and knowing your weakness and allowing God to work through them. As we come to know God and apply that knowledge to how we see ourselves the result will be “I must decrease so that Christ can increase.” It is easy to say that Christ is everything and I am nothing, it is quite another thing to live that way.
My mind is still not settled on this. The more that I learn the less that I find that I know.