Full of Goodness and All Knowledge

And concerning you, my brethren, I myself also am convinced that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able also to admonish one another. (Romans 15:14)

As I have noticed this verse coming up for several days now, my mind has kept raising an objection to what I read here. Something inside of me rankles at the assertion that those Paul was addressing could be said to be full of goodness and filled with all knowledge. Isn't that bordering on blasphemy? I mean, even Jesus stated clearly that only God was good. And to say that someone other than God is full of all knowledge seems to me to be a very serious overstatement at the least.

So when I found myself ready to explore this verse this morning I also found that it was time to ask God directly what He meant when He had this written. Just why does this say here that the recipients of this letter – which by implication includes Christians today – could be considered full of goodness and all knowledge.

Well, I realize that for a skeptic this is material for criticism of the Word of God. But that is not the direction I care to go. But at the same time I want to be open and honest about any questions that come up from deep within because I have learned that God is never put off or upset about honest questions. In fact it is highly important that we feel safe to ask tough questions or we will quickly come to hide our real feelings and questions for fear of being shamed or discounted. That happens all too often in the religious world today but it is not the way God treats us.

So I sat here wondering what answers God might have to my question about this issue of humans full of goodness. And then my eyes wandered up to the previous verse and I noticed a very strong clue to follow that gave good promise of finding the answer. May the God of hope fill you....

Of course! If the Word says that I am full of something then it would be logical to also explain how that came to be. It is the Source of all goodness that naturally would be the one who would fill me with that same goodness, especially when I come to believe in His goodness. In fact, it is my very believing in the goodness of God that opens the door that same goodness to flow into my life and begin to be reflected from me.

And the very same applies to this issue of knowledge. It is totally absurd to even consider that anyone of us might be full of goodness or knowledge by any other means. Mirrors do not inherently contain anything that you might see when looking into the mirror. But a clean, properly formed mirror will be able to pass along the same beauty, colors, brilliancy and information that is in its line of sight.

So now I see very clearly here that the reason anyone might be full of goodness and all knowledge is because they have chosen to believe that the Source they are believing in is full of goodness and all knowledge. And because they are believing and reflecting and focusing on that Source they are empowered, just like a mirror, to become brilliant reflections of all that goodness and knowledge and as such are also able to pass that information on gently to others who need it.

And that is the meaning of this word admonish. In the original it means to put in mind, (by implication) to caution or reprove gently. That is very consistent with the way God relates to us when we understand the truth about His character. God never uses force to accomplish His work of transforming our hearts. He uses gentleness, kindness and attraction. I realize that this sounds like heresy to many and they are quick to point to many stories in the Bible where it appears God engages in violence to get His way. I firmly believed that myself for most of my life. But these conclusions are arrived at without careful consideration of the filters we bring to our reading of these stories. And all of us always have filters over our minds about everything we perceive, and the filters are far more important to analyze and challenge than the facts or details of the stories under consideration. (I have a whole web site that partly relates to this issue.)

So, as we choose to believe the truths about God as revealed in Jesus' life and death, the God of hope fills us with – what? Well, I see here that I can be filled with joy and peace and hope and the power of the Holy Spirit (v. 13). And at the same time I will also be filled with the goodness of God and have access to all the knowledge of God – whatever knowledge I need in the moment to help me reflect His character to others in gentle nudgings to encourage them to believe more in God also.

One more thing in this context needs to be included in the assembly of these things into our lives. The next verse refers to Paul's own motivation for doing this very thing – admonishing in this letter he has written. Paul says that he could be bold in his admonishing because of the grace that was given him from God. If we review the background and history of Paul's life it becomes very clear that Paul was not speaking from a self-righteous attitude. Hardly! That was the original mindset from which he had been delivered when he was confronted by Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus. After that Paul was in the school of humility and his motivation was to share the passion of God with others that had so transformed his own perspective and heart.

Because of grace Paul was full of God's passion to reflect God's goodness and His true knowledge and to mentor others into becoming the same kind of reflectors as he had become. For that is what true admonishing is really all about.

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