Boasting

 

DEVOTION

THE 1^ST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS

BOASTING

1 Cor 1:26-31

26 Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things — and the things that are not — to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God — that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.   31 Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord."  

NIV

It doesn’t take much to think of what we were before, or at the time we were called. We were sinners, in fact, we could have been considered the chief of sinners. However, Paul is asking us to remember or think about our position in life when we were called. We were not anyone with any influence in society at all. We have no position of authority. We were just ordinary people of low ranking in our society. Oh, sure, we were trying to make our mark, so to speak, but we still were of no consequence in the grand scheme of life. In the culture of the Corinthians, it certainly was a class system, as Paul includes those of noble birth as well as those who must have been the wise, or educated, scholars or philosophers of the day. And, of course, there was the political or ruling class, but again, those might have been the ones of noble birth. It does seem odd that today we do have people from various classes of society who believe in Jesus. But in comparison to the world in general, the mainstream thinking of those who influence our culture, we were and still are just a very little insignificant cog in a very big wheel. However, God called us, he chose to call us, who are lowly, or at least far lowlier than all those important people, the politicians, the entertainers, the multi-billionaires, and the like. Although it is possible some of them have decided to follow Jesus, it seems, for the most part, money and power are their gods. But, here we are, still a small cog in the sense of the grand scheme of things, but God has given us His wisdom. We certainly cannot boast about any of our accomplishments, or achievements in this society. We cannot boast about our life at all. In fact, any training or skill set we once had, has been set aside, so that who we are today and any gifts that we may exhibit are all the result of God working in our life. We can only boast about how God took us from where we were and brought us into where we are. This includes both moving us from the city of darkness and death into His city of light and life, and from what we thought should be our vocation to a calling He has put on our life that requires us to rely totally upon Him, for without Him, we can do nothing. We can boast that Jesus is our righteousness, for without him we have none at all. We can boast that Jesus is our holiness and our redeemer. We could and still cannot do anything to be worthy of being holy and blameless before God. However, in Christ, we are all of that and more. We have the right to be called children of God, co-heirs with Jesus. It just cannot be any better than that. We have been risen from poverty, into being a royal priesthood, a holy nation before our God. God has transformed us and we, who once belonged to the evil one, now belong to God. How great is this? We have been taken from the wisdom of the world and given the wisdom of God. All the world’s wisdom means nothing compared to that which God has bestowed upon us. Praise God, although we cannot boast about ourselves, we can certainly boast about God.