Legitimate Boasting

Therefore in Christ Jesus I have found reason for boasting in things pertaining to God. For I will not presume to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me.... (Romans 15:17-18)

Trying to think about boasting is almost a difficult assignment the more I think about it. I suppose some might say that this is because I think I don't have this problem and then accuse me of being a hypocrite. I don't know if that is true or not. But since I have spent very little time in my whole life actually studying the subject of boasting, it is not yet something that is rich with meaning and insights for me.

But the more I look at these verses the more curious I am becoming about this strange creature called boasting. I would like to understand better what is going on in the mind that produces this activity and why people come to engage in it. What does it do for a person? What are the underlying reasons that would lead a person to boast?

Just like every other good thing or activity that God designed for us to enjoy and cause our heart to thrive, Satan always has a counterfeit that is very similar but deceptive in nature. That is just the way life is under the influence of sin in this world. But what comes as a surprise to me is that there is something in God's plan for me that has been counterfeited by Satan in the activity of boasting that we commonly find disgusting in others. Most people do not enjoy hearing someone else produce a litany of their personal accomplishments to promote themselves as better than those around them. But what is the genuine thing of which this is a counterfeit?

I'm not sure of the answers to all of this yet. But that is why I am starting to write about it for I often find that as I write and ponder and explore the various dimensions of an idea that more and more of it begins to become clear to me in the process. I ask the Holy Spirit to guide me in this process of exploration and trust Him to steer me in the right direction and to discover important truths that will be heart-changing and transformative for my own life.

Counterfeit boasting, the kind with which we are most familiar, seems to always be associated very closely with pride. I cannot think of a single instance where the two would not be found together. Pride itself is an extremely elusive and slippery thing that tends to infiltrate every part of our thinking. There are jokes going around that in fact actually contain serious truth, about people who are proud of their humility. This is funny because it is an oxymoron. But humility itself is something that is very little understood by most people and so it is no surprise that pride can affect so much of our thinking.

But since humility is such an extremely important character trait in the life of heaven, and humility is the opposite of pride in the heart, how does that affect this issue of boasting? Is there such a thing as boasting from a true position of humility? Or does that too feed into the humor of the “pride in humility” jokes? I don't think so, though that could possibly be easy to do. Somehow I believe that there really is a true and legitimate activity that is little understood that happens to have the same name as its counterfeit in this instance. That, of course, makes it even more difficult to discuss since there is so much false baggage associated with the word to start with.

But what I see in this verse gives me some very important clues about the nature and attitude from which true boasting can safely be exercised, maybe even encouraged. Paul says that the position from which he is boasting is in Christ Jesus. That alerts me to a number of other very important studies I have enjoyed about what it means to be in Christ which really goes to the core of what it means to be a genuine Christian. This too is a little understood concept so it is no wonder that legitimate boasting is likewise nearly obscure and is not talked about much among professed Christians. Because most boasting is along the line of the counterfeit version it becomes difficult to find examples to examine of the true kind of boasting of which Paul is speaking here.

As I listened to a sermon recently I heard another text from right here in Romans that talks about boasting.

But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the rich root of the olive tree, do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember that it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you. (Romans 11:17-18 NRSV)

When this verse says if you do boast, I am not sure that it is saying it in a negative way. Since Paul himself at times openly boasted, howbeit very carefully and always from his perspective of being in Christ, then it would only follow that he would not condemn others who might follow his example. But a couple verses later he gives a caveat that must be included.

That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand only through faith. So do not become proud, but stand in awe. (Romans 11:20 NRSV)

As I look at more of these verses in reference to boasting I am starting to see a pattern developing here. There are important clues that tell me what good boasting could look like. Let me pull some of them together that I have seen so far.

• Good boasting can happen when I am living in a proper relationship with Jesus, what the Bible calls in Him.

• Good boasting will be about things pertaining to God.

• Healthy boasting can be about what Christ has accomplished through me.

• Correct boasting will not be about me being better than others who are connected to Jesus.

• Healthy boasting will always have the understanding, will be rooted in the fact that Jesus is my sole source of everything good that I have to boast about.

• Good boasting will not lead me into pride.

• Godly boasting will include a sense of awe for God and His amazing ability to use me in His work to help and bless others.

These are all things taken just from the verses that I have looked at so far here. Now I am starting to think I want to take some time to explore other places that refer to boasting to see what else I might find. I suspect maybe God is trying to reveal something to me, something that may be more important than what I currently realize.

(next in series)

The Boasting Priest

Therefore in Christ Jesus I have found reason for boasting in things pertaining to God. (Romans 15:17)

but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things," declares the LORD. (Jeremiah 9:24)

As I think back on the history of Paul in his earlier years among the proud Pharisees and priests, I find it interesting that he occasionally talks in his letters about this issue of boasting. But each time he does so it is always in reference to his relationship with Jesus. And usually the things he chooses to boast about are the exact opposite of what were likely the subjects of boasting before his conversion.

Paul came from a background of high educational achievements, great skill in persuasive abilities and second to none in his ability to maneuver himself around politically. He had all the inside connections to accomplish his goals and used them efficiently to exploit Christians who, in his eyes were the enemies of the nation. He was the champion of his people, fiercely loyal, patriotic and orthodox to the extreme when it came to religion. He was a man insisting on law and order and was more zealous than anyone else in employing every means possible to eliminate all who might pose a threat to the purity and high standards of the Jewish religion and nation.

He followed the path of duty and patriotism far beyond what other men had done who were compromised by corruption and greed. He was educated as a student of the best teachers of the time and took very seriously everything they taught him. He was a student that made his teachers proud and was conscientious in his pursuit of obedience to God. He was so careful to follow all the rules and teachings of the Jews based on the laws given to Moses by God that he felt very confident that he must be on God's side.

But what he overlooked and even repressed repeatedly was the inner voice of his heart that was sending quite different messages to his mind and conscience. Since these were in conflict with everything that he had been taught and firmly believed must be done in order to be saved, he continued to fight off that gentle voice of conviction that refused to leave him alone.

What particularly disturbed him deep inside was the unexpected expressions of peace and even joy on the faces of those that he used vicious force against in his attempts to bring them into conformity to the religion of their culture. They would even pray for him and treat him with politeness while he was arranging their demise. It seemed that no matter how much intimidation and fear he tried to induce in people's hearts by his threats and increasingly violent assaults on this growing band of dissenters and “agitators”, they only seemed to proliferate and spread in popularity. This was very baffling to him since it went contrary to everything he believed about how to bring about unity in the name of God.

The methods he used trying to enforce conformity to the traditions and customs of religion were well established from centuries of practice. Religion was considered by most to be the careful exercise of all the routines and external practices handed down from Moses and the elders throughout the history of their “church”. Everything that was taught was carefully screened through the system of leadership that governed their religion and the greatest goal of the leaders was to bring about unity through perfect obedience to all of God's requirements. What could possibly be wrong with such a noble desire?

Saul, which was his name before he became a Christian, was all too familiar with boasting. Even his name harked back to the very first king of Israel who also was from the tribe of Benjamin, just like he was. Saul was proud of his roots, proud of his tribe even though it was one of the smallest in Israel, and proud of his religious devotion to “the truth”. And he was not alone in his pride. In the halls of power and influence in which he circulated there was plenty of pride and boasting going on among the priests, the Pharisees, the Sadducees and scribes of the law.

Everyone believed that national pride was not only the right thing to have but was extremely important given the oppression and threats to their national identity. The Jews were suffering under the ruthless domination of the Romans, and now a new threat had emerged to undermine and weaken their pursuit of national unity and religious culture. A group of people from within his own countrymen were advocating opposite values than what was generally accepted and were drawing away the hearts and minds of thousands of Jews weakening the influence of the leaders in power and in their minds threatening the stability of Israel's very existence.

But after years of intense pursuit of patriotic fervor and protracted campaigns to achieve national unity through coercion, Paul was finally arrested himself by a confrontation with the real truth that had been keeping his inner heart in turmoil for much of his life. He had tried unsuccessfully to ignore this growing pain by increasing his religious fervor and keeping himself ever more busy in religious activities. But at the most unexpected times and places he would be repeatedly confronted with feelings and compelling concepts that contradicted what he had always insisted had to be the truth. He had tried to ignore these feelings as simply suggestions of the evil one, but finally he came face to face with the overwhelming power of gentleness and love that he could no longer hide from.

When we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, 'Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It hurts you to kick against the goads.' (Acts 26:14 NRSV)

Up to this point he had trusted in the power of pride and boasting to enhance his public image. It was the way of all the world and everything else was considered weakness and timidity. Meekness was scorned as weakness and humility was not even worth talking about. What they believed their nation needed was more boldness and assertiveness and even raw power to overcome their enemies and become the world's rulers as they believed their prophets had promised. They were desperate for God to finally appear in full force to help them conquer their enemies, publicly humiliating everyone who stood against their religion and forever establishing their teachings as the rule of law for all the world.

But after coming face to face with the radical nature of real heart religion through the presence of Jesus on the road to Damascus, Saul, now turned Paul, had to rethink everything he had ever been taught, everything he had ever read in the Scriptures and every assumption that he had cherished about reality. All of his world was now in question and everything he had always thought was of great importance now seemed to be turned on its head. In the face of this overwhelming reversal of what he perceived as reality he had to take significant time to be retooled in the school of Christ. So he spent three years in the desert alone with God to give his heart time to grow and mature and recover from all the years of abuse and suppression and unlearn many of the things he was taught during years of formal education.

The place this likely happened was actually the same place where Moses had spent significant time and where Elijah had gone to meet with God and get his head straightened out. It was in the desert of Saudi Arabia where Mount Sinai sits, where repeatedly God has met with humans to reveal the real truths about Himself. As Paul meditated on the completely new view of reality suddenly opened up to his mind through the eyes of his changed heart, he took on a new spirit, a new attitude, a whole new nature. He learned what it means to abide in Christ.

One of the things that Paul came to realize was his need to avoid at all costs his reliance on boasting to prop up his public image. He was now learning how to be real instead of managing a carefully manicured public facade and this was a whole new experience for him. Learning to live real and from the heart is a terrifying prospect for a person who has spent their whole life in image management. But it is a most important step to take if one wants to truly experience the daily presence of God in their lives. So Paul became very careful to leave off all of his old dependence on boasting and drawing attention to his personal achievements to enhance what people might think about him. What became important now was only what God thought about him and to fix his attention on the amazing realities of the almost unbelievable truths about God's goodness and grace and compassion.

As Paul's heart and mind became filled with awareness of the goodness of God, he also became filled with a completely new motivation that was even stronger than the nationalistic pride and religious fervor that had marked his previous years. He now began to feel the passion that burns in God's heart, a passion that causes a fire in the bones of those who draw close to Him, a desire to cooperate with God's passion to draw confused, deceived sinners back into a saving relationship with heaven. The more Paul's heart became reflective of heaven's spirit, the more he desired to share the real truth about God with everyone he met. And boasting had no place in this new life of passion for God.

But as seen in this passage from Jeremiah, God says that there is one place where true boasting is actually beneficial. And occasionally Paul indulged himself in this kind of boasting. For legitimate boasting involves sharing with others the amazing truths about God's goodness, His lovingkindness, His justice and His righteousness. True religion always points the hearts of people to the heart of the Father in who's image they have been created. And true boasting may at times be seen in one who is filled with devotion, sharing the real truth about God with a world that is swimming in lies about Him.

So even though Paul did not qualify as an earthly priest because he was not born a Levite, he found himself acting as a true priest in the family of Jesus sharing the true good news about God and interceding on God's behalf for the reconciliation of His children with the heart of the Father. This is the true work of a real priest, to bring together the heart of God with the hearts of His children. And this happens to also be the work of Elijah according to the prophecy in Malachi. This is what we will once again begin to see happen with power in these last days.

"Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD. "He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse." (Malachi 4:5-6)

(next in series)

Paul as Priest

...to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, ministering as a priest the gospel of God, so that my offering of the Gentiles may become acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:16)

This is the beginning of a whole section here in Romans 15 where Paul relates some of his own reasons and background for the work he is doing. As I read this verse a few questions came to my mind.

What does it mean to minister as a priest?

What is involved in his offering of the Gentiles?

Why is it important that this offering become acceptable?

What is meant by this offering being sanctified?

I'm not sure I have enough knowledge or education to fully answer the first question. However, I once heard a definition of the work of a priest that left a deep impression on me that I believe may give some important insight.

A priest is a person who's assignment is to convey the truths of God to other people. In addition, it is also his responsibility to take upon himself the burdens, problems and sins of the people that he ministers to and bring them to God. In so doing he is both mediating as well as training the people by example how they are to become free from the destructive influences of the sins that enslave them. So in essence, a priest is a very close friend of God and is to also be a very close friend of the people – very much like a Friend of the Bridegroom. However, his first loyalty is always to his God.

When I went to look up some of these words in the original I noticed that in the KJV this reference to priest is completely missing. However, when I looked up the Greek word for ministering the idea of priest is very clearly a central part of the meaning of this word. But for whatever reason those translators for King James decided to leave out any reference to priests here. But I think it has significant bearing on what Paul is trying to get across.

In the many functions that God ordained for priests, there was a lot of offering going on. Most of the time we generally only think of the blood offerings where a priest was to take an animal sacrifice that a person brought to the sanctuary and offer it up to God on the altar after the sinner killed the animal. This was to make it clear in the mind of the sinner the terribly and deadly effects that sin always has on our lives and the need for their reconciliation and reconnection with their only Source of life. The role of the priest was to offer up this sacrifice to God as a symbol of the atoning sacrifice that would happen in the death of Jesus on the cross.

But the sacrifice mentioned in this verse is not that kind of offering. I noticed in the original language that this offering was specifically mentioned as a bloodless offering. That is different than the blood offerings for sin in the sanctuary services. This was more along the line of offerings of food, grain, oil, etc. There were specific instructions for each of these offerings and the symbolic significance for each one is not so clear in most of our minds as the blood offerings. But one thing is clear – every offering brought to God was to be sanctified or made holy in order to be acceptable in God's presence.

This is noted later in this verse where Paul mentions his desire for his offering of the Gentiles to be made acceptable by the sanctification of the Holy Spirit. In fact, the Greek word for Holy, as in Holy Spirit, is almost identical to the word for sanctified. So in reality, whatever it is that needs to happen to make an offering acceptable will align it with the characteristic that is the very identity of the Spirit of God. (For more on the real meaning of the word holy, see my home-grown dictionary page.)

So, given the context of the work of a priest, what is in Paul's thinking when he talks about offering Gentiles to God?

In the first part of this verse he makes it clear that he was a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles. Just like a priest was to be a representative for God to the people, Paul felt strongly that God's purpose for his life was specifically to be God's representative to people outside the Jewish culture and religion who knew little to nothing about the true God of heaven. This he elaborates on further in this chapter. So part of Paul's passion for reaching out to people who knew almost nothing about God was to enlighten their hearts and minds about God and attract them to become part of a sanctified offering to God themselves. Paul was simply an agent for Jesus Christ, a channel through which Jesus could accomplish His desires to draw all people unto Himself. Paul's part in this activity was partly to help organize this offering for God, to introduce people to God's heart by revealing the love and passion that God has for them which is the essence of the gospel, the good news.

But why is it important that the offering of Gentiles be made acceptable to God? What does that say about God?

This is precisely where a person's inherent biases about God will most likely surface. The reasoning behind our assumptions about what it means to prepare to meet God reveals what we really think God is like, whether He is angry, indifferent, moody, fickle, looking for excuses to punish, or whether He is consistently loving, kind, patient, just, fair, good and full of joy and peace. Generally our concept of God is a strange mixture of these things, an amalgamation of sorts that is derived from our childhood, our religious prejudices and assumptions and our life experiences. But our present beliefs about God will strongly influence what we are willing to consider seriously when new information comes our way.

I am at a point in my life where my internal picture of God has gone through radical transition. But there are a number of new (to me) understandings that are becoming firmly rooted in my mind and heart about what God is really like. These new understandings about God are in sharp contrast with much of what I was taught and mentored growing up, but I find them much more consistent with what I read from the Bible and even what seems fair and right in my own heart. So the answer that I sense to this question is very different now than the answer I would have supposed a number of years ago.

In the Old Testament sanctuary services and instructions there was a lot of emphasis on things being done correctly and everything utilized in those services being sanctified for that use. At the initiation of the sanctuary in the wilderness, everything was sprinkled with blood to set it apart in everyone's minds from the other things of everyday life. It was set apart exclusively for service to God, which is what the word holy means. Likewise, the priest's were also set apart for God's service and as the service continued to operate for hundreds of years the offerings brought to the sanctuary were also sanctified or set apart before they could be properly offered up to God. If this was not done the consequences could be fatal which did happen at times. Think of the stories of Nadab and Abihu as well as Uzzah.

Many people would point to these stories as prime examples of the reality of an angry God who had no patience for people who made mistakes or worse yet who might be somewhat unpredictable or very demanding in His requirements. This causes many to believe that the God of the New Testament is very different than the God revealed in the Old. But contrary to these assumptions, I am now seeing much more clearly in these stories our need to understand properly the real danger of not becoming synchronized with the immense power of God's passion before coming close to His presence. God never changed. It is not a matter of anger or impatience on God's part but a matter of respecting the intense power inherent in His nature of passionate love and absolute purity.

We have little problem understanding our need to deeply respect the dangerous power of high-voltage lines that carry thousands of volts of electricity across our countrysides. We would consider it the height of stupidity for someone to think they could just touch these lines with impunity without regard for the laws of electricity. But when it comes to God's presence and the protocol that must be respected if we are to be united with the greatest Source of power in the whole universe, we seem to have an inherent reaction of rebellion and resistance to God's requirements. Of course, resistance is our greatest enemy when dealing with electricity and likewise I am learning that resistance is also our greatest danger when dealing with spiritual realities.

I believe that Paul had a much better grasp of all this than most people today, which is why he knew that his desire to bring Gentiles close to God would require that they be sanctified or made holy in order for his offering to be safe in God's presence. And the way to make something or someone safe to enter the presence of intense power, whether it be high-voltage electricity or the even higher voltage of God's presence is to align them properly, especially at the heart level, with the way God thinks and operates. For an offering to be safe in God's presence it most importantly must become disconnected from “ground”, from the world's way of thinking and reasoning and to become synchronized with heaven's way of thinking, the assumptions and attitudes that pervade the presence of the angels and all the unfallen beings throughout the entire universe.

What was startling to people in Paul's day was that he was so bold as to believe that Gentiles could participate in this presentment to God right alongside Jews, God's chosen people, who before this time were considered to be the only people “safe” enough to come into God's presence. God had chosen Paul as a special envoy to open up the narrow box that had so long restricted the thinking of religious people and show that anyone anywhere could be a part of God's true family if they were willing to become molded and re-formed in the image of God.

The distinction between Jew and Gentiles is almost a non-issue for most people today. But we have our own versions of prejudice in religion that is along the very same lines. The denomination we belong to or even the sub-group within that denomination can become a very important barrier in our thinking to the much grander plans of God for His children. Our nationalism can also be a means of prejudice in our hearts without our realizing it. It disturbs me many times when we ask for prayers for our troops but never even think of equally praying for our enemies troops with the very same fervor. But this betrays our failure to live in harmony with the teachings of Jesus that we claim to be following.

Lord, prepare me for encountering Your presence by cleansing me of all resistance to Your ways of thinking. Fill me with Your unconditional love and re-form my heart to be reflective of Your perfect ways. Write Your laws upon my heart and fill me with Your Spirit and Your perspective – for Your name's sake.

(next in series)

The Ruler

Again Isaiah says, "THERE SHALL COME THE ROOT OF JESSE, AND HE WHO ARISES TO RULE OVER THE GENTILES, IN HIM SHALL THE GENTILES HOPE." (Romans 15:12)

I want to go back to this verse and examine something that stirs a little discomfort inside of me. Whenever I feel some dissonance inside it alerts me that something is needing to be exposed and resolved and that I should not simply stuff it out of sight as I have most of my life. Getting things out into the light is the best way to heal and to grow.

The word that triggers me a little bit is this word rule. Of course, the discomfort comes from the typical associations that I have had with this word and my own experiences with people who are perceived as rulers. The very word conjures up for me ideas of abuse of power, exploitation and selfishness. Of course not all rulers have to be this way but it seems to be the trend among rulers. So when I see this word applied to a prophecy of Jesus it seems to be a contradiction with the very nature of what I have been learning about Him over the past few years.

Now I realize that there are many better definitions of this word rule than what I have just mentioned and many would point that out. I agree. But what I am referring to here is the feelings and gut-level definitions that are inside of me, not my knowledge-based definitions that I try to believe from the head. And our gut-level beliefs are the ones that are much closer to what we really believe when the pressure is on. So every chance I get I need to bring those deeper beliefs to the light and have God address the truth or falseness of them so that I can move closer to what is really true.

So as I always like to do when I read something disturbing, I went back to the original language to look for clues as to what else it might be saying. In this case I found that very rewarding. Both the words translated rule and Gentiles have very interesting and different connotations than what they seem to convey in the English.

What I get from this sequence of words is quite interesting. It conveys the idea of someone standing up, raising up (from the word for arises) or even lifted up (think John 12:32) with the result that they will become the first in importance, in political rank or power, the most significant, to rule or reign over a race of foreigners (translated Gentiles).

With the background of what I have learned about the three false foundations that make up what we know today as civilization, I see something interesting in this passage that shows me how God is working to undo those counterfeits while at the same time addressing them within our context. One of the counterfeits is the whole idea of distinctions between people and the artificial values we assign to them. This includes the whole notion of hierarchy in politics and every other means of discrimination. It also creates the context for viewing races differently as more or less important than others. And it is inherent in the typical concepts of what it means to rule.

But this is all antagonistic to the real kingdom of heaven (which is not really like any kingdom we think of because of the connotations we have about what the word king means). But since we can generally only think in terms of earthly models and assumptions, God has to use our language and our logic to communicate with us until we grow enough in maturity to begin to think more along the lines of His logic and His assumptions. And that is what I detect a little bit in this verse.

If I read these verses from the context of what I have been learning about the true character of Jesus, I see something very different than a person who is seeking to rule or dominate others like we usually see in a ruler. God's system of governing relationships to our perception is almost always up-side-down and therefore makes very little sense. I believe the reason so much of the gospel sounds confusing to us is because we unconsciously intermingle our models with God's logic and come up with amalgamations that only corrupt the truth of the Word of God. We must be constantly seeking to have our assumptions challenged and updated so that as our whole library of internal definitions becomes more closely aligned with the thinking and attitudes of heaven that God's ways and thoughts will become more clear and more rooted in our hearts.

So instead of Jesus looking for power and influence to control others like we think of in the word ruler, Jesus is destined to become the most important person in the hearts of all those who choose to accept heaven's ways of thinking, which is living selflessly from the heart to bless others. In God's system of government, the ruler is there not to dictate to others as to what they should do, but to inspire by example and empowerment everyone who wants to imitate their spirit and life. What I see in this verse is that this Root of Jesse will arise to become the most important person in the hearts of all who once were foreigners. And foreigners is the description that includes every one of us including Jews, because every human being has become foreign to the ways that heaven operates and interacts.

I notice one more phrase that I don't know if it is intentional or just coincidence. But the words in Him remind me of the discourse that Jesus had with His disciples in the upper room just before He died. He spent considerable time instructing them about the extreme importance of abiding in Him. (see John 15) Whether or not this verse is alluding to that, I believe it is vitally important to understand for anyone who wants to be part of those who live under the reign of Jesus Christ in their hearts. Each person must have a much better understanding of what it really means to abide in Him and for Him to abide in us.

And as I look one last time at this verse I see that as I learn to abide in Him that the result will be hope growing in my heart and mind. This is the relationship that links me to this God of hope that wants to fill me with all joy and peace in believing. That is the kind of experience that I want for myself. That is the choice that I want to continue making every single day.

Father, fill me with hope, with all joy and peace, and place within me a believing heart. Fill me with Your Holy Spirit today and make me a more effective channel of Your selfless love and kindness to attract others to Your reign through my example and spirit. Thank-you for these words for my heart this morning. Thank-you for the power that comes through Your Word. Remind me of Your thoughts for me today.

(next in series)

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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Believing

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)

There is just so much to learn and assimilate in this one verse that I can't do it in just one or two days. What I want to ponder and listen about now is this idea of believing and the implications that it has on the surrounding elements in this passage.

What I have been learning and reinforcing in my mind and heart over this last week is the surprising truths about God's forgiveness and salvation that were never so clear to me before. When I realize from various texts in the Bible the unconditional nature of these things that God has revealed to us through Jesus and His sacrifice for us, I begin to experience the kind of amazement that draws me into that salvation. At the same time I become more disillusioned with the false teachings that I grew up with that makes us the centerpiece of salvation and the focal point of the universe. While we are certainly an important part of the issue, the great war does not really revolve around us like we have so long supposed. The real center of all the commotion is the accusations against the real truths about God Himself.

God is the center of all attention in this trial for everyone who knows anything about what is really going on in this war. God's character reputation has been maligned, distorted, blasphemed, and displaced with lies and insinuations by His archenemy who used to be His closest created comrade and friend. The part that us humans have in this battle of the titans is only as witnesses to testify in His trial. And our testimony that is required and that every person will give whether they claim to know God or not is this, Can God accomplish in the hearts and lives of fallen sinners what He claims He can do or is it all a ruse?

The ninth commandment given on Mount Sinai is the requirement that we are not to witness falsely against our neighbor. But I believe that even more importantly we must experience God's transformation in our hearts so thoroughly that we will not falsely witness in God's trial about His desire to work in our lives.

We can present a false testimony in God's trial in different modes. We may claim outwardly and intellectually that God is good and kind and powerful but not allow those truths to transform our hearts. Then it will be our spirit and influence and symptomatic behavior that will be testifying against the claims of God contrary to our professed claims.

But even more common is the embracing and teaching of some or many of the lies about God that have so long been assumed to be true. This clearly becomes an endorsement of the false charges against God that Satan insists are true. But no matter how many centuries these lies have been accepted and promoted by millions they are still lies and will never stand the test of full exposure to the light of real truth.

The problem for us is that we were born in this sea of lies as well as taught many of these lies about God and therefore have little frame of reference to even know that they are false. The very nature of deception is that one does not usually even know they are deceived. The things they believe are in their mind completely true and they are simply embracing what they have assumed all their lives to be the path of integrity while not realizing they are promoting insinuations about God that inhibit them and others from coming to Him for life. And the fact of the matter is that every single one of us finds ourself in this condition to start with.

For many years I was mystified by Jesus' repeated statements about our urgent need to believe. John seemed to pick up this theme particularly and amplified it in his other epistles. But what I could not figure out for a very long time was just what it was that we are supposed to believe. Sometimes He would say that we were to believe on the Son of Man. Other times it was to believe that Jesus came from the Father. Sometimes He simply said that we were to believe with seemingly little hint as to what that meant, at least from what I could tell from the context and my perspective.

This used to greatly frustrate me and even fed into my secret suspicion that maybe it was another scheme by God to keep me from being saved. (Yes, that kind of picture of God was a very real part of my life growing up, sadly to say.) I wondered for years why God did not make it more explicit just what it was that I was supposed to believe so that I could fulfill this additional requirement so as to get “saved”, whatever that meant.

But a few years ago when God began introducing Himself to me personally and began to seriously challenge my many fears and false assumptions about Him with the truth of His goodness, kindness, compassion and all the other unconditional truths about His character, it began to dawn on me that what Jesus was really saying to people was this: I want you to believe that what you see Me doing and how I relate to you and treat you is the same as the way the Father feels about you. My kindness, gentleness, unconditional forgiveness and my passion to lift you up, heal you and love you is exactly the truth about both Me and the Father that has been hidden from you by all the lies you have believed.

I am sad to admit that this process of changing my opinions about what God is like has been extremely slow and full of resistance due to the lies about Him that are so deeply rooted in my psyche. These lies appeal for justification to the continued belief of them by most people in the church and by misreadings of the Scriptures and other inspired writings. These lying spirits are irreconcilable with the Spirit of God and the only way I can relate to them effectively is to expel them forcefully from my heart and mind as they come to my attention in the light. There can be no compromise with them. There can be no shared mind space between the real truth of God and the poisonous counterfeits that are dedicated to drawing my heart away from Him.

But a very interesting aspect of this thing called believing is the element of free choice. While it is amazingly true that God's forgiveness is permanent and has been in place since eternity (it is a description of what God's heart is like), and His salvation is also a permanent fixture and has been gifted to every human being whether they know it or not, it is completely up to each one of us as to whether we will experience all the benefits of engaging or synchronizing with these unchangeable facts of reality. It is very much like two gears that are near each other, one with power in it and the other in need of power. It is only as the powerless gear chooses to move close enough to the powered gear to engage its teeth with the stronger gear that any power can be transferred into itself and it can begin to turn.

What I see in this verse right now is something along the line of this analogy. The teeth of the gears could be likened to these two important descriptions in this verse: joy and peace. It just so happens that those who have been studying the brain recently have discovered that these two things are the most important experiences that the brain needs in order to grow and thrive and mature and bond with other minds. These two experiences form a cycle that is crucial for the mental health of every individual. We need to experience joy together with others followed by times of peaceful togetherness and quietness, which is then followed by more experiences of the more active experience of joyful togetherness which is followed....

So I find it quite compelling that in the heart of this verse describing in essence the process we experience in salvation that the two most important ingredients for mental health are the same things that our God of hope wants to fill us with when we choose to believe in Him. So what is it that constitutes our choice to believe? What is it that we can choose to believe that will allow God to fill us with this energizing, life-giving joy-peace cycle?

I believe that what we need to choose to believe is in the surrounding context of this verse. We are to recognize and believe the truth about Jesus and His servant spirit (v. 8). We can glorify God for His mercy and praise Him in our joy and singing (v. 9). We can rejoice together with His people (part of the actual definition of the word joy – v.10). We can believe that God is the kind of God that will inspire hope in our hearts and instead of motivating us through fear (v. 12, 13).

Any amount of resistance to believing in any of these things betrays hidden lies and false spirits still lurking within my heart. And it is that resistance that is trying to prevent me from making the choice to believe. But choosing to believe is the permission that God must have in order for Him to enter into my heart and accomplish all that the power of His Holy Spirit is waiting to do in me.

If I choose to believe and keep choosing to believe, then God is given the permission that He needs to expel these lying spirits from my heart, to expose the secret fears and apprehensions I have harbored all of my life in the light of His love so that I can release them and become even more free from my slavery to fear. It is this point of belief that is the most crucial and pivotal point for each one of us in our role as witnesses in God's trial. For if we choose to believe the truths about Him as He reveals them to us instead of resisting them, our lives can bear a truthful testimony that God's word is true and that He indeed can do what He says He can do in us. And according to Romans 4:1-5 when we believe that God can do what He says He can do it is credited to us as righteousness.

I choose to believe the real truths about God and what He is like that He has been progressively revealing to me over the past few years. I know that there is much more that I need to know about Him and even more that my heart needs to embrace. But I am so glad that He is the one in charge of this process of transformation and lie exposure. I am coming to actually appreciate the fact that I come under conviction on a regular basis because that indicates that God is at work in my heart. I want to have the lies about him exposed that have hidden inside of me all of my life, because they have been the roots that have produced so much bitterness, dysfunction and sin in my life and my relationships. I want the God of hope to fill me with joy and peace in believing. So I choose to believe and keep on choosing that option, because I know that my choice to believe in the goodness of God is the door that allows Him to continue His work in my transformation. And the real purpose for my transformation is so that in His trial I will be able to give a truthful testimony about His character.

I know that I will be called upon to give a character reference for God in His great trial in the day of His judgment. But I also realize that I am daily called upon to testify about what He is really like. So I choose to believe the truth about Him as He continues to reveal it to me so that He can reproduce that same truth about His character in His image that He created me to be. (Gen. 1:26, 27)

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