Is Your Boast in Christ?
Some News You Can Use from Shelby Center
What is your claim to fame? It’s the thing or person by which you want others to know you.
Your name, reputation, hopes, enjoyment, and passion are all attached to it. You talk and boast about it, and perhaps without realizing it that person, pursuit, or possession has become your identity. You compete for it.
The Corinthian believers were making their boast of men they follow, and Paul calls them back to Christ: In Whom we all can boast, and nothing can compete. He echoes Jeremiah’s words to make his point:
He that glorieth let him glory in the Lord. His life verse may have been, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” or “I am crucified with Christ nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ”.
Friend, if your identity is tied up in anything other than Jesus Paul calls you back to what matters most. The world’s wisdom, wealth, and might can’t compete with a life that glorifies Jesus. (From 1 Cor. 1:25-31):
1. Get Back to Your Calling (26-29)
· Before you make your claim to fame or create controversy with some doctrine, standard, or practice remember your calling: saved, sanctified, saints, servants by the same Saviour’s cross (v. 2, 9-10).
· Saved by an “m”! Not (m)any instead of not any! God uses the foolish, weak, obscure, insignificant, and despised things, the not many, the nobody, and nothing special (Lk 16:15). For example:
God uses babies for praise, the jawbone of an ass to slay a thousand, and a stone to topple a giant; a slave with some rags to save a mired prophet; He put enemies to flight with hornets; and an army with a pitcher and trumpet; Peter’s foolish little boast to break and reshape him into a great man of God; He can use you too!
With two sticks, a little flour and oil He caused a famished widow to flourish until the famine passed, fed 5000 with a few loaves… And God will take care of you.
When He came to save the lost, God came in every way inconceivable to man’s concept of the gods. God became flesh, born in a smelly stable, poor, average, a suffering servant, stricken, smitten, afflicted, and cruelly mocked, while yielding to a shameful death.
Foolish! Weak! They cry. But unto us which are saved it is the power of God! O glorious victory that overcomes the world!
2. Go Boast in Your Christ (30-31)
· Life in Christ through the new birth makes weak men mighty, poor men spiritually rich, foolish men wise, sinful men holy, and profligates pure and prized. All this you owe to Jesus (Jer. 9:23-24).
· When you see Jesus, you’ll only want to talk about, brag upon, and glory in Him alone! So do that now. Make Paul’s motto your own (1 Cor. 2:2, Gal. 6:14, 2 Cor. 10:17). One song writer captures it:
· “My worth is not in what I own, not in the strength of flesh and bone; but in the costly wounds of love, at the Cross. My worth is not in skill or name, in win or lose, in pride or shame; But in the blood of Christ that flowed at the Cross… I will not boast in wealth or might, in human wisdom’s fading light; But I will boast in knowing Christ, at the Cross… I rejoice in my Redeemer… My soul is satisfied in Him alone.”
With an identity rooted deeply in Christ you’ll seek no attention of your own and get back to your calling and make your boast in Christ.
Paul said it best, “And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.”
If your identity is tied up in anything other than Jesus Christ and Him crucified, Paul calls you back to what matters most.
The world’s wisdom, wealth, and might cannot compete with a life that glorifies Jesus and lives by the motto, Yet not I but Christ! For Christ’s sake and gospel’s go – and make Christ your boast.
Your name, reputation, hopes, enjoyment, and passion are all attached to it. You talk and boast about it, and perhaps without realizing it that person, pursuit, or possession has become your identity. You compete for it.
The Corinthian believers were making their boast of men they follow, and Paul calls them back to Christ: In Whom we all can boast, and nothing can compete. He echoes Jeremiah’s words to make his point:
He that glorieth let him glory in the Lord. His life verse may have been, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” or “I am crucified with Christ nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ”.
Friend, if your identity is tied up in anything other than Jesus Paul calls you back to what matters most. The world’s wisdom, wealth, and might can’t compete with a life that glorifies Jesus. (From 1 Cor. 1:25-31):
1. Get Back to Your Calling (26-29)
· Before you make your claim to fame or create controversy with some doctrine, standard, or practice remember your calling: saved, sanctified, saints, servants by the same Saviour’s cross (v. 2, 9-10).
· Saved by an “m”! Not (m)any instead of not any! God uses the foolish, weak, obscure, insignificant, and despised things, the not many, the nobody, and nothing special (Lk 16:15). For example:
God uses babies for praise, the jawbone of an ass to slay a thousand, and a stone to topple a giant; a slave with some rags to save a mired prophet; He put enemies to flight with hornets; and an army with a pitcher and trumpet; Peter’s foolish little boast to break and reshape him into a great man of God; He can use you too!
With two sticks, a little flour and oil He caused a famished widow to flourish until the famine passed, fed 5000 with a few loaves… And God will take care of you.
When He came to save the lost, God came in every way inconceivable to man’s concept of the gods. God became flesh, born in a smelly stable, poor, average, a suffering servant, stricken, smitten, afflicted, and cruelly mocked, while yielding to a shameful death.
Foolish! Weak! They cry. But unto us which are saved it is the power of God! O glorious victory that overcomes the world!
2. Go Boast in Your Christ (30-31)
· Life in Christ through the new birth makes weak men mighty, poor men spiritually rich, foolish men wise, sinful men holy, and profligates pure and prized. All this you owe to Jesus (Jer. 9:23-24).
· When you see Jesus, you’ll only want to talk about, brag upon, and glory in Him alone! So do that now. Make Paul’s motto your own (1 Cor. 2:2, Gal. 6:14, 2 Cor. 10:17). One song writer captures it:
· “My worth is not in what I own, not in the strength of flesh and bone; but in the costly wounds of love, at the Cross. My worth is not in skill or name, in win or lose, in pride or shame; But in the blood of Christ that flowed at the Cross… I will not boast in wealth or might, in human wisdom’s fading light; But I will boast in knowing Christ, at the Cross… I rejoice in my Redeemer… My soul is satisfied in Him alone.”
With an identity rooted deeply in Christ you’ll seek no attention of your own and get back to your calling and make your boast in Christ.
Paul said it best, “And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.”
If your identity is tied up in anything other than Jesus Christ and Him crucified, Paul calls you back to what matters most.
The world’s wisdom, wealth, and might cannot compete with a life that glorifies Jesus and lives by the motto, Yet not I but Christ! For Christ’s sake and gospel’s go – and make Christ your boast.
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