Author: Ryan Hale

When we consider where we have come from, and how the relationship started, you can begin to get an understanding of how astonishing it is that Paul tells husbands that they should love their wives just as they love their own bodies, even going to the extent to give themselves up for them.

Here is what I mean:

If you look all of the way back to the Fall, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s commandment to not eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we can immediately see where both sin entered the world as well as the problems started between men and women.

God asks Adam whether or not he has eaten from the tree that he commanded him not to eat from. Adam’s answer?

“The woman you put here with me —she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

Did Adam not know God’s commandment? No, of course he knew it. He and Eve both knew God’s command.

So why would it be that Adam would blame Eve for disobeying God’s command? Because Adam felt ashamed and didn’t want to solely take the shame upon himself. He wanted to deflect it onto Eve and to prevent the blame from resting upon him. He didn’t want the punishment that would come from God for what he had done.

Rewriting the story

But of course, this is the opposite of what Jesus did. Jesus didn’t have a reason for shame, and yet instead, he stepped forward to take the blame and the punishment. Jesus knew that it would be too much for his bride to bear.

Who is Jesus’s bride? It is the church. The people that he came to win. He would win them through his sacrifice and they would become his bride. He took the blame and punishment for them even though he didn’t have the shame of having sinned. The bride consists of the church, the people that deserved the shame, the blame, and the punishment.

Jesus, instead of turning to blame his bride as Adam did instead took the blame upon himself and received the punishment that came from God.

Radical love

So now we can begin to see how radical of a statement this is when Paul calls husbands to love their wives. Here is what he says:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.

Ephesians 5:25-32

Clearly, Paul isn’t just saying that we should be nice. Nor is he calling husbands to be a little bit better husbands…maybe we bring flowers from time to time. Paul is calling husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church.

Jesus put himself in harm’s way and took the full brunt of the harm that came so that the church, his bride, would be unharmed. The church, instead, would receive grace and mercy through Jesus’s actions. This is the level at which Paul is telling husbands to love their wives… just as Jesus loved the church. A profound mystery indeed!

As believers in Christ, we are made to be one body, made up of different parts and functions, all under Jesus Christ as the head. Within the body, Jesus has given different types of spiritual gifts and in this chapter, Ephesians 4, Paul lists some of those gifts. Here is what he says:

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Ephesians 4:11-13

I see a few parts here that I think are worth noting:

Christ gave the gifts

Paul starts in verse 11 by saying that it was Jesus himself who gave these gifts. He had descended from heaven and provided these gifts to the believers, those who are part of his body.

Paul says that Jesus did this so that we all could attain the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. So there is something special about these gifts, that they help us and allow us to grow in Jesus.

I think, therefore, that we can say that Jesus himself, as the head of the body, gave us everything that we would need to be able to grow healthfully as the body.

Equipping for works of service

Yes, the gifts are, of course, to be exercised, but according to what Paul says here, they have an even bigger purpose. Jesus gave them to us so that we can go on to equip others in the body. So, what does that mean?

It seems clear to me, for example, that if you have the gift of teaching, you should be teaching. But beyond that, part of your responsibility in the body of Christ is to teach others to teach. By teaching others to teach, you are making it possible for them to do works of service, building them up so that they also can teach and be built up into maturity.

Or let’s take an evangelist. Maybe they are excellent at sharing the Gospel with others. Maybe they understand how to do it in such a way that many decide to follow Christ. Great! But their work is not done. There are others in the body of Christ that need to know how to do this. Everyone should share their testimony, or share the Gospel with others. It is both a natural consequence of the gifting from Christ that they should exercise their gift as well as teach others how to be strengthened in that gift also.

And we can say the same for each of the giftings. Beyond the two already mentioned, the prophet, the apostle, and the pastor all have gifts that they should both use and teach.

The Fullness of Christ

And the main reason for doing all of this is that the body would grow. By serving, by using the gifts that have been given and that are being taught and passed down to others, we are performing works of service, and those works have a way of teaching us, growing us, refining us.

There is nothing like doing, nothing like participating, that makes us grow. We grow very little when we sit and listen, or watch others use their gifts, but we grow a lot when we are taught and we enter into service. As we begin to use the gifts that we have been taught, we can find greater purpose and we begin to be used by Christ within the body in ways that we never had imagined before. Our lives in Christ become utilized in incredible new ways, and now we not only serve but we begin to teach others to do the same… to allow them to experience the same joy of service and doing works that will allow them to mature as well.

We must equip

Let’s not forget this lesson as we lead others. It is important to keep in mind that it isn’t for us that we are doing the work that Christ has given us to do. Instead, it is for the body of Christ. It is his body that we are working to build up, working to strengthen. Let us make sure that this is a regular part of the work that we are doing so that those that we are leading are being built up into the members of his body that God made them to be.

Now with more than 2000 years of church history behind us, it doesn’t to us seem like much of a mystery. But if you look backward in history and time, you can begin to see what Paul is talking about.

What is more, you can also begin to understand God’s global plan in a much clearer way.

This week, we started a new study with a few people that we have been discipling over the last several months. The long-term plan is that we will do a survey of the Bible so that everyone can understand the story of the scriptures. The entire story, not just a few snippets here and there.

But this week, we started with the big picture: What is the story that God is telling? What is God’s plan, his mission? And how can we know?

We looked at Genesis 1 and saw how God is working to spread his image all across the earth. And then we saw from Matthew 28 that God’s plan remained the same through Christ. And finally, we looked in Revelation 5 and saw that God will complete his plan. If you want to see the whole study, you can read through it – better yet, teach it to someone else! – using this link.

In today’s reading in Ephesians 3, we see a direct reflection of this same idea. Paul says that there is a mystery that God has revealed, and that mystery is that the Gentiles are now co-heirs with the Jews to be God’s people through Jesus Christ:

This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.

Ephesians 3:6

You see, God has, from the beginning, been working to reach all people, working to have every tongue, tribe, and nation know him and reflect his glory. This has been God’s true plan. We might say, “of course” to this statement, but there was a time when that wasn’t understood. And probably isn’t even as well understood, nor practiced, as it should be today.

At the time that Paul wrote these words, he was writing to first generation believers in Ephesus. Gentiles who had received and believed the Gospel. By faith had understood that this God of the Jews wanted them, and that he had accepted them through the sacrifice of Jesus. God had forgiven their sins and had adopted them into his family, just as he had the Jews.

Good enough?

This week, I had a conversation with a friend and talked about how their church was planting other churches and reaching people in their communities. Thankfully, his report was that there were many new believers, not simply generational baptisms from families within the church. So he asked me my opinion…is this good enough?

Not really knowing the church, I didn’t think that I could give a good perspective or insight, but I tried to simply offer my perspective. And that is this:

If we understand God’s mission and plan to reach all nations… If we understand that the Gospel is intended to unite people from every tribe, tongue, and nation… If we call ourselves Christians and believers in Christ… Are we living, both individually and as a community to participate in the plan of the One that we call Lord? Are we acting and taking part in His plan? Or are we primarily doing our own thing? Are we primarily building our own kingdoms?

I think those are important questions regardless of where we are. Regardless of what size of church we are a part of. Small or large, we should insert ourselves into God’s plan to unite his people and usher people into the Kingdom of God, both locally and globally.

This is the mystery that had been revealed through the law and the prophets, that God was using Israel to bring all nations to Him. And now we are part of the true Israel, the spiritual Israel not the nation of Israel, and he wants to use us. Let’s recognize God’s plan and be part of it with Him!

There is something within us as human beings that says, “I can do it.”

There is something in us to drives us to take agency, to want to take control.

“Mine!” is heard throughout the house if you have ever had a couple of toddlers playing in the same place together.

So often, we are focused on ourselves, on our ability to do it, our capacity to overcome. If only we strive a little more, try a little harder, work a little more.

And in some aspects of life, that works well. But it assumes one very important idea… That you are alive.

If you aren’t alive, you can’t overcome. You can’t strive nor try. You can’t work a little more.

Why?

Because you’re dead. And once you are dead, there is nothing more that you can do. You’re done. Nothing more.

Spiritual death

I think that we, in our physical bodies, are so used to sinning that we lose track of the horror that we are committing. Our sin means that we are walking away from God, walking away from our Creator, walking away from his glory and the glorious plan that He has for each of us.

Instead, we are choosing a short-term enjoyment that leads one place: to death. This is what Paul says to the Ephesians:

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins

Ephesians 2:1

Our spirit is dead before God. Our spirit, before him, is no longer able to do anything. We no longer live because we are dead. If we have sinned, we have experienced a spiritual death that is worthy of nothing more than the wrath of God who will destroy everything that is not living spiritually before Him.

What must we do?

On the day of Pentecost, when Peter told the Jews that they had killed the Messiah, the Jews responded: Brothers, what must we do? They were in big trouble, and they realized it. They knew that their sin would produce a punishment from God that they wouldn’t be able to bear.

In fact, there was nothing that they could do. Their entire relationship with God was based on obedience to God’s law that neither they nor any of the Jews before them, nor after them, were able to fully keep. As a result, they also had sinned. They also were dead in those sins and there was nothing more that could be done to merit God’s forgiveness. They couldn’t make God owe them for the good works that they had done. God didn’t owe them anything except punishment.

The only thing that they could do is repent and believe in the Messiah that they had killed, and have faith that God would have grace and mercy upon them.

Made alive

Only by God’s grace and mercy can we be made alive. Paul goes on to say that God has had grace and mercy upon the Ephesians, and upon all people who believe in Jesus. This grace, this mercy that he has had upon us, allows us to be resurrected, to be made alive once again after having experienced our spiritual death.

Jesus took the punishment for our sins as he was nailed to the cross and killed there. He didn’t deserve God’s wrath because he hadn’t sinned. He was fully alive before God, in his physical body and in his spirit, but yet God both sent him and then killed him as a sacrifice for our sins. A perfect sacrifice that would be done once for all sins, for all people, for all time.

And by doing this, God did the work that would allow us to be made alive once again. But it is not because of what I, or any of us, have done. Instead, it is only by the grace and mercy of God through Jesus Christ that this is made possible. Without him, I am dead. With him, I have been made alive again.

It is clear that Paul’s work was not just Paul’s work. He saw his work as a catalyst for a much greater final work that would involve people from all over to be involved and be part of what he was doing.

In Romans 16, by my count, Paul tells the church in Rome to greet at least 27 people, not counting those that are in the households of those that Paul names. And these aren’t people that Paul has heard about. It seems that he knows these people personally, and it also seems that they have come from many different locations but have now moved to Rome, or moved back to Rome for whatever reason and are now part of the church there.

So I think that it is fair to say that Paul has been not only evangelizing, but he has also been making disciples and building up leaders, then sending these different leaders as part of the work that he has been doing to spread the Gospel everywhere. Here, he names 27 different leaders, amongst them 7 are women, including the first two that he names.

As leaders and catalysts of the church of Christ, we have a choice in how we will do our work. There may be additional variants, but we can choose between gathering people around us or sending people to do the work. We can either be the center of the work making people dependent on us, or we can equip them to do the work, teaching them to hear from God and do what he has called each of us to do. In the extreme, I would also say that we can create our own kingdoms or we can unleash the Kingdom of God.

A network of relationships and churches

Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ send greetings.

Romans 16:16

As he wrote this letter, Paul has now created a network of churches across Galatia (central Turkey), Macedonia (northern Greece), Achaia (southern Greece), and Asia minor (southwest Turkey) through three different missionary journeys. What is more, the disciples that he has made are now going on to make disciples and plant churches in those areas and far beyond, leaving Paul to say back in Romans 15 that he doesn’t have any further place to work in these regions and he is ready to move on to Spain with his work of the Gospel.

Paul has left a legacy of disciples and churches in his wake that we should learn to imitate. He has, of course, been the leader. No one would dispute that. But he hasn’t set up a hierarchical organization with himself at the head. He has equipped and sent, equipped and sent, and those that he is greeting in this chapter are those that have worked alongside of him, or even those who enabled him to do his work as he mentions in the case of Phoebe who evidently helped support Paul’s work along with the work of several others.

This is the way that the Kingdom of God is intended to grow. Jesus sent his disciples to make more disciples and each of those disciples were intended to fully become the disciples that Jesus intended them to be. Yes, there are different giftings, but there are no limitations. Paul followed Jesus’s example in making disciples and would go on to do the work, not simply come to be part of a church community, but be engaged and deployed in the work of taking the Gospel to the front lines where people have not heard and then making disciples of Jesus amongst those people.

So, let’s pray for more catalysts. Let’s pray for more equippers. Let’s pray for more people that will teach and send and care for others as they do and let’s be about the work that Christ has called us to do. We should no longer “go to church”, we should go to be the church in the places that need to hear, and as we do, we will see the body of Christ grow in numbers and in depth of connection to the head, Jesus Christ because they only, and fully, belong to him, not to us.

This jumped out at me today while reading Romans 15:

May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Romans 15:5-6

Paul is encouraging the Roman church to move forward, to persevere, to endure and encourage one another. In fact, he says that, as they are doing this, they should have the same attitude of mind that Jesus had.

Jesus’s attitude

What was that attitude that Jesus had? It was the attitude of not living for himself, not living to please himself. Paul had just been speaking of how we should live in love for one another, which may mean living in sacrifice in order to show love for other people, whether they be believers or unbelievers.

In this way, just as Jesus did, it is not for us that we live, working to gain everything for ourselves and living in a way to please ourselves, but it is for the other person that we live.

Jesus did this, initially, just by existing as a human on earth. Think about it. The God of the universe, the God that created all things, is now humbling himself to come to earth as a human being. Is he living for his own good, to please himself and enjoy his time on the earth? I’m sure that there were many times of joy and happiness, but how humbling would it be to do what God had done through Jesus? He is the King of the Universe, the King of kings, and yet he places himself in this very low position as a human being.

We could continue to tell this same story throughout Jesus’s life in multiple ways, but if we skip foward, it is extremely clear that Jesus didn’t live for his own pleasure. He lived for his people.

Jesus came not to be served, but to serve. Yes, he was announcing and demonstrating his Kingdom. Yes, he would be taking his rightful place as King. But he would be doing it by paying the price for his people that would enter his Kingdom. Blood was required to pay for the sins of his people. No one would be able, however, to pay that price, so Jesus pays it on their behalf through the cross. Jesus takes the punishment for each of us, and in so doing, pays the price for each of us, allowing us to enter into his Kingdom.

An example to live by

So this gives us an incredible example of a servant who lives for the other person, for their good and their benefit, rather than our own. This is what Jesus did, and this is what Paul is calling us to do as well. To live sacrificially. To live for the other person so that they will know God through Jesus Christ.

And ultimately, there is one reason for this, and it speaks to the reason that we live. Paul says that the reason that we would live this way would be so that we may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We live so that our lives will glorify God.

It is important to understand the distinction that Paul is drawing here. Typically, as we live, our lives are all about us. Me. What I want. What pleases me. These are the things that we think about. These are the things that we pray about.

But this is the opposite of what Jesus lived for, and this is also the opposite of what Paul says that we should live for as well. Our lives are designed by God to live for others so that they will know him through Christ, and by doing this, we will glorify God.

Living out our faith together as a community of believers, we can find that there are different interpretations and beliefs on various issues. Some of these differences might be based on questions related to the scriptures, whereas other differences are related more to cultural contexts.

In Romans 14, Paul addresses some of these issues using examples such as eating meat or celebrating specific days.

Eating Meat

It is possible that Paul, when speaking of the issue of eating meat, itself not necessarily an issue from the perspective of either Jews or Gentiles except that which has been considered “unclean” for Jews, is speaking of the issues of meat that has been sacrificed in temples of Greek gods.

Here in Sicily, we can still see the temples that were built to offer sacrifices and worship the Greek gods such as Zeus, Juno, Hercules, and others. In fact, the picture for this post is the Temple of Concordia, one of the temples where these sacrifices had been done that had been standing in the southern part of Sicily near Agrigento for around 400-500 years by the time that Paul wrote the book of Romans. In that place, many different animals were slaughtered as a worship sacrifice to the particular Greek god for which the temple had been built and the mean was then available either for distribution or for sale.

Of course, this would have raised a question for a Christian who serves the One true God: Should I eat meat that has been sacrificed to another God?

Paul says here that each person should do it according to his own conscience and should be convinced that he is doing what is right. What is more, that person should not eat the meat if it will cause another person to stumble, meaning that it would scandalize their faith to see someone eat that meat because they believe the opposite.

That doesn’t mean that they are correct, necessarily, so they shouldn’t be allowed to preach or speak against the eating of that meat, but it does mean that we should act in love and keep our convictions between ourselves and God instead of forcing others to believe and act in the same way that we do when it is, instead, a secondary issue that isn’t worth causing problems over.

In this way, because we are not causing someone else to stumble in their faith and instead act in love and abstain from eating something that prevents them from entering or remaining in the Kingdom of God, we are acting as to the Lord.

Special Days

Paul uses another example in this chapter related to the question of celebrating specific days. This is actually an issue that we have run up against here in Sicily. Here, the Catholic church has had a strong influence for thousands of years and we have found that the Evangelical church has protested against practices of the Catholics.

An example of this is that the Catholic church has many different types of special days and someone that observes those special days is considered to be “faithful” to God through their observance. Here in Catania, for example, someone who participates in the Festival of Sant’Agata is considered to be part of the “faithful” to the adopted saint for the city.

I will say that, having gone to the Festival and seen what is happening, it seems to me to be idol worship. In fact, there is even an idol that is paraded throughout the streets of Catania, sponsored by the mother church of the city, specifically for the purpose of paying homage to Agatha.

I can, therefore, understand when the Evangelicals say that they don’t want to celebrate special days because they don’t want to follow the example of the Catholic church as they have experienced it here locally. However, we have found that this protest can also be taken to what we would consider to be an extreme position in that, even in the times of Christmas or Easter, the celebration or even remembrance of the time of year would not be mentioned in a time of worship in church, despite the fact that many people will then return home to celebrate the holidays there.

So, according to what Paul has said, to criticize the church for not celebrating specific days would be wrong. But to be considered wrong for celebrating Christmas or Easter as a remembrance of Christ’s birth or death and resurrection would also be wrong.

Instead, Paul says that the Christian life has nothing to do with any of these “religious” types of practices, but instead it is the life by the Spirit that makes all of the difference:

For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and receives human approval.

Romans 14:17-18

Let us live in righteousness, peace, and joy in the Spirit. May God guide us so that we please him, living to the Lord, not just live to please and impress others with what appears to be our righteousness through our religious practices.

Paul says that we should not let any debt remain outstanding except our debt of love:

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

Romans 13:8-10

What does that mean? A debt of love? How can we have a debt of love?

As I tried to show in my last post, God chose his people and even supplied to them the faith that they would be able to have to trust him and believe his promises.

What is the promise that God gave that we are trusting? It is the promise that Jesus’s blood is the payment for our sins. God sends Jesus – who is in fact the human representation of God himself – to take the wrath and punishment for our sins.

Jesus, in fact at the last supper, said that his blood, represented in that case by the wine in the cup that he handed to his disciples, is the blood of the covenant. This is the new covenant, the new agreement that God is making with his people. Those that put their faith in that blood will have their sins forgiven.

So God showed us an incredible love. He paid for our sins with the blood of Jesus, who was God himself. That is a love that humans cannot begin to understand. Even though we refused and rejected God, he still loved us. He still came for us. He paid for our sins. The holy God loved us enough to come for us.

In fact, this reminds me of another verse that I really like back from Romans 5. It says:

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:8

So as God’s people, we have received his love, and we received it even though we were sinners. It wasn’t after we had decided to follow him. It wasn’t when we “cleaned ourselves up”. He sent Christ to die even while we were sinners. This is the demonstration of an incredible love from the only holy, righteous, and blameless God, showing love, mercy, and grace to his people that he has chosen.

So this is where our debt comes from. God showed us love even though we didn’t deserve it. He showed us love even though we had rejected him. He saved us even when we had no merit for ourselves to be saved.

Now, because we have received this great love, we must go on to do the same for others. We have received a great love from God, and now we must give love to others. We do not simply try to follow the law. That is much too simple. We follow God’s example to love others even when it is not merited. Even when I don’t feel like it. Even when the other person doesn’t deserve it. We love others because God loved us.

Paul had just finished his discussion in Romans 11 saying that the Gentiles had been grafted into the tree of faith. The tree in that case represents God’s people, so while it had started with the people of Israel, God then placed the Gentiles within the tree, although establishing them there as a graft into the tree following what had originally come through the nation of Israel, not rooted themselves as their own tree.

All of this is based on God’s gift of grace and mercy and that mercy is given based on his sovereign choice. Indeed, in Romans 9, Paul spends a lot of time and shares several examples to talk about how God chooses his people, even if to us it doesn’t seem “fair”. He gives the example of Isaac as Abraham’s child, even though Abraham already had Ishmael. He gives the example of Jacob and Esau, that God chose Jacob, the younger twin, instead of Esau the older. And then he also gives the example of Pharaoh, that God used him to show his power to the nations by destroying him.

So, God is choosing those who will be his people. He is selecting them, showing his intentions, even from a human timeline perspective, prior to the existence of those he has selected, such as in the case of Jacob.

Given this, we could then reason that we, as human beings, could accept God’s choice by faith, and there are many scriptures that suggest that this is how our relationship with God works. However, then this morning as I was reading Romans 12, I noticed this:

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.

Romans 12:3

I’ve always liked this verse a lot because I like that Paul calls us to humility. We should understand and live under God’s grace and mercy, not living as if we have earned God’s favor and he owes us and should allow us to have eternal life. But instead, we should live under the knowledge that God has given us grace, and grace is unmerited, undeserved.

Still, we could then say that we accept his grace and mercy by faith, but here we see something different. Instead of our faith, we see that there is a source of our faith.

Note that I say source of our faith, not the object of our faith.

Here, Paul says “in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.”

Hmm… That’s different than what I thought. So, my faith is placed in Christ’s sacrifice as a payment for my sin, and it is placed in Christ’s resurrection that I will live eternally, just as he will live forever. As a follower of Christ, I also follow him in his death and resurrection.

However, the source of my faith, the reason that I have faith in the first place to place in Jesus’s death and resurrection is because God has distributed it to me. I am not the source of my own faith, but instead God is the source of the faith that I have in Christ. He has given this faith to me and I am the conduit through which the faith flows back to Christ.

So, this makes God’s choice completely sovereign. It is his choice, not mine, so I have nothing that I can brag about, and as this verse says, certainly nothing that I should think of myself more highly than I ought. Instead, God has done all of the work of salvation and, for those who believe, is also the author and source of our faith in that salvation.

Paul has been talking about his own people, the Jews, as he discusses the fact that the Jews have been cut off from God’s favor, his mercy and grace, as a result of their disobedience. In Romans 10, he talks about the fact that the Jews are zealous for God, but they didn’t understand who God is, nor what he was saying to them. Their understanding wasn’t based on what God had said about them, but what they had said about God.

Specifically, here is his statement:

For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.

Romans 10:2-3

My experience with Muslims

Very frequently, I find this to be the case with the Muslims that we work with. At least in the times that I sit and talk with them, they have little understanding of the history of their own faith. For example, they will frequently speak of Adam, of Abraham, or Moses, but they have never read or understood the actual stories of these people. They will say that they have heard the stories from the Qur’an, which they say is the same as that of the Torah – although it is not at all! – and so they think that they understand.

The Qur’an, meanwhile, points adherents of Islam back to the Torah and the Injeel to “gain wisdom”, but few ever do. So they remain ignorant of the truth of the story, a story that, if they understood, could radically change the course of their lives!

So, I find that this statement from Paul seems to ring true to me in my experience of working with Muslims. They might be zealous for God, but their zealousness is not based on knowledge. For most of the people that I have worked with, if they had knowledge, of what God has said, they should have been led to a different conclusion than what they have come to up to now.

In fact, instead, Paul goes on to say that because they didn’t know the righeousness of God, they go on to invent their own. Many of the Muslims that I have worked with have explained to me how God will judge people. They talk about an angel standing on our shoulders and a demon standing on the other shoulder beckoning each of us to either do something good or to do something bad. Then on the judgment day, they have told me that God will count up the good deeds or the sins (the “mistakes”, as they have said) and this will be the basis for determination upon which God will make his judgment to allow them into paradise or not.

But as Paul says above, they are establishing their own sense of righteousness, their own sense of what it means to be righteous. Instead of listening to what God says about who he is and the definition of righteousness according to him, my Muslim friends are instead inventing their own.

And us?

But are we, as a people, any better? Don’t we establish our own sense of righteousness as well? Aren’t we also acting without knowledge? Are we not also acting in ignorance?

Yes, we do this by determining our standing in our society based on our relative goodness as compared to other people. “I am a good person”, we might think. “I haven’t killed anyone or even seriously harmed anyone. I’m not like those other people.”

And that may be true, but we are establishing our own sense of righteousness in that case. We are speaking and acting not based on knowledge of what God has to say but instead based on what we have to say.

And this is, I believe, the core of the problem. We, as people, shape and mold God into our image. Instead of remembering that God has made us in our image, we make him into ours.

Instead of understanding what he has to say about our relationship with him, we instead choose to believe what we have to say about our relationship with him.

And so our understanding becomes flipped, completely 180 degrees off of what is true, and upside-down, because we hold ourselves up as the knowledgable ones. We determine that we know how our relationship with God works. We are prideful and say that we can determine how God will see us, when what we have missed all along is understanding what God has said about us.

So I believe that we need to continue to return back to the Word of God, to understand what God is saying about who we are, who he is, and how he desires to relate to us. If we do this, then we are no longer establishing our own righteousness, but instead we are living according to true righteousness, that which comes from God and not from ourselves. We will now live based on knowledge and any zeal that we have will be based on a true understanding of our relationship with him.