Day 21: Proud to belong to Jesus - 1 Corinthians 1:26-31
26 Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. 27 Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. 28 God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. 29 As a result, no one can ever boast in the presence of God!
30 God has united you with Christ Jesus; for our benefit God made him to be wisdom itself. Christ made us right with God; he made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin. 31 Therefore, as the Scriptures say, “If you want to boast, boast only about the Lord.” 1 Corinthians 1:26-31 New Living Translation.
It seems that many Christians in Corinth were still full of pride and considered themselves better than others. Intellectualism appears to have been highly thought of among the Greeks. So what does Paul remind them about in verse 26?
We see there that a person does not have to be a top student or come from an ‘upper-class’ background to be saved. In fact, says Paul, God delights to save ordinary people to put to shame those in the world who think they are so clever. (vs 27) And He chooses people who are weak (weak in power and influence, weak in their own opinion of themselves, and perhaps even weak in faith) to put to shame those who brag about how strong or important they are. Why does God do that? (vs 29).
It’s obvious that God doesn’t want us to be full of ourselves, but to rather take pride in all that He has done for us in and through Christ Jesus His Son. And vs 30 tells us how much He has done. (I counted at least five wonderful things there!) No wonder Paul concludes as he does in vs 31.
There’s a lesson here even for brand new Christians. When we get saved we can become puffed up with pride and think we must teach all the older Christians. We often want to run with self importance before we’ve learned to walk with humility. It’s also common in life to meet people who love to brag about their favourite football team, or how well off they are, or how knowledgeable they are on so many things. Do we ever let them know that what we are most excited about is knowing Christ Jesus as our Redeemer?