Boast – an act of talking with excessive pride and self-satisfaction. – Oxford Languages
Boast in the Lord
There’s a running feud between my son-in-law and me. He is deeply afflicted, for he is a Chicago Bears fan. As for me, I prefer “professional” football teams, like the Colts.😉
To ridicule me, he sends me pictures of my precious grandchildren dressed in some profane Chicago Bears apparel. It may be a sock hat with a Bears logo or a Bears t-shirt, or countless other heinous jabs. He’s even gone so far as to coach my grandkids to boast about the Bears and demean the Colts. He merciless since I can’t retaliate; how can I tell my grandson that he should be ashamed of wearing a Bears t-shirt!
Boasting about favorite teams is an integral part of sports. Boasting is also part of our Christian walk. Really? Within our life in Christ Jesus, we are told in 1 Corinthians 1:31, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
Jesus is the Lord
The apostle Paul’s discipline about boasting is within the context of theology. We can tell this from the previous thirty verses of 1 Corinthians, chapter one. But, let’s take a moment to consider Paul’s defense for only boasting in Jesus – by “Lord,” the readers could only understand Christ, already five times thus titled (Expositor’s Greek Testament).
Our boasting in Jesus is not something that is to be considered unimportant or something secondary to salvation. No! When we boast in Jesus, it is not like sports. He is not the best of many, and He has not helped us to be saved. What Paul is saying is the bedrock of salvation. We boast in Christ, for it is Christ alone, devoid of human contribution, by which God created the way for people to be saved. I especially like 1 Corinthians 1:29:
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.
Only Jesus saves
Within God’s plan of salvation, which He planned before His creation of everything (2 Timothy 1:9), there was God’s intent to deny humanity any scrap pride in our salvation. We, as children of Adam, have nothing to boast about. God did everything for salvation; everything except force us to receive it. Only we can receive salvation and then only by faith in Jesus. And let me tell you, that is something to boast about!
Photo by Keith Johnston on Unsplash
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