From PJMedia.com
We live in a personality-driven society. We give a lot of clout to celebrities, sports figures, and politicians. Celebrity pastors, worship leaders, and even important theologians and scholars get the pedestal treatment. People fete the self-styled “experts” and people with advanced degrees for their knowledge and expertise.
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Also, to be honest, sometimes it’s easy for us to think highly of ourselves for what we know a lot about. I have to fight the temptation to lord my knowledge over others or bow up when somebody challenges what I know or insults my intelligence.
This is an issue that’s been around for a long time — even going back to the Bible. At church, we started a series a few weeks ago called “Messy Church.” It’s a series through the book of 1 Corinthians, and the premise is that the church in Corinth had plenty of issues that the church today faces.
One of those issues that reared its head in the first chapter of 1 Corinthians was a series of cliques that centered on important personalities in the church. Paul chastised the church in verses 12 and 13: “What I mean is that each one of you says, ‘I follow Paul,’ or ‘I follow Apollos,’ or ‘I follow Cephas,’ or ‘I follow Christ.’ Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?”
These factions came together because people liked certain speakers for their eloquence, while others remained loyal to the men who baptized them. Our churches are that way today; members can find themselves drawn to particular leaders who preach or teach in a way that resonates with them, or churchgoers can gravitate toward personalities or theological strains.
Paul reminded the church in verse 18 that Christians shouldn’t put too much stock in earthly wisdom or eloquence. He wrote, “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
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He continued:
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.
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For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
It’s easy to boast in human wisdom or find ourselves drawn to human eloquence. The wisdom and eloquence of others — whether it’s a local pastor, a theologian hundreds of miles away, or a family member — is nevertheless fallible. The same goes for our own laurels that we rest on; we’re human, so we’re born to fail on our own merits.
“Salvation in Christ is not a human self-improvement scheme, but a radical rescue from a form of slavery out of which one cannot earn or buy one’s way,” Alan F. Johnson quotes Ben Witherington as writing. “Paul must establish this theology of grace at the very outset of his arguments because it is on the basis of that theology that he will undercut all factors that promote factionalism.”
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“In Roman society your value was determined by your education, wealth, and breeding,” Johnson writes. “Paul shows that you cannot become an insider in the world’s status game by becoming a Christian, but you can become an insider in God’s eyes by finding your status in Christ.”
Paul’s admonition echoes Jeremiah 9:23-24: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’”
May we seek to boast in nothing else than Jesus. May we only trust in Him.
All articles possibly rephrased by InfoArmed.com