Last week, we sang, “All My Boast is in Jesus.” But what does it mean to boast? We might think of people who are very “up themselves” and quick to tell people all about their successes. Here in Australia, where our culture is to barrack for the underdog, we don’t tend to like such people very much. However, we all boast silently: we might not say it, but we’re satisfied with ourselves when we do a good job or help someone out. Boasting in our own minds is still boasting.
The Bible turns all of this on its head. Time and time again we see that we have all gone astray from God’s good will (Isaiah 53:6) and no one is truly righteous (Ecclesiastes 7:20). Jesus sets out the problem in Matthew 5. Even if we keep the commandments, for example, not to murder or not to commit adultery, we still break them in our hearts whenever we are angry with someone or lust after someone. None of us can truly keep the law, so we cannot boast about anything.
The good news for us is that God does what we’re incapable of. Ephesians 2:8-9 contains Paul’s famous statement that “it is by grace you have been saved, through faith… not by works, so that no one can boast.” This is what it means to boast in Jesus: to recognise that anything good that happens to us, and anything good we might do, is not because of us but because God graciously chose to save us through Jesus Christ. When we understand that, we will boast about what God has done, and nothing else!
James.