What Do You Boast In?
Photo by Dylan McLeod on Unsplash
How do you define yourself?
There is a great temptation to define ourselves by anything other than Jesus. We know this, even if it’s tough to admit. Our sin-nature tempts us to define ourselves by our career, knowledge, appearance, skills, stuff, or even our children’s athletic or academic performance. The only problem is that none of these things are valid indicators of our worth or identity.
In Galatians, the Apostle reminds us of the only true source of our identity.
In Galatians 6:14, Paul writes,
“But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” Paul introduces the idea of boasting.
The meaning of the Greek word for boast is what you’d expect: “To show off, to brag, or to take pride in something.” Why did Paul feel the need to mention what he boasted about?
Paul wrote Galatians to confront the Judaizers, Christian Jews who felt the need to saddle Gentile converts with the Law. Not only were they leading people astray, they were boasting about their converts. Against this backdrop, Paul says he's had enough. Paul could have listed his own bona fides, and the "Hebrew's Hebrew" would have shut down any of their boasting. But he didn't. He went in a different direction.
Paul made a statement that to his original audience would have caused them to stop in their tracks. Why? Because the cross of Jesus Christ was scandalous to the Roman world. The average Greek reading this would have been shocked at what Paul was saying.
The thought that you would willingly identify with a cross was radical. The Latin word for cross was “crux.” One writer notes that this word, crux, was to the Romans what four-letter words are to us. It was a crude, vulgar word you would never say in polite conversation. And yet Paul says I only boast in the cross. Dr. Timothy George, whose commentary on Galatians is a masterclass, writes, “Paul chose something utterly despicable, contemptible, and valueless as the basis of his own boasting.”[i]
The Roman cross was a brutal, low-brow, low-society means of torturing the absolute bottom-feeders of society. It carried with it tremendous shame. And Paul says this is my boast. Above everything else in the world, this is the ONLY thing I will brag about. Give me the cross!
Why would Paul say this? Because at that moment, Paul understood something generations have come to understand in the centuries since: that the cross is the linchpin of all of creation.
Paul lived in awe of the fact that Jesus, the Son of God, the crown Prince of creation, would take on the means of death reserved for slaves and disgraced criminals so that we might live. Paul would later write, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus, the promised Messiah, the Son, the second person of the Trinity willingly embraced the cross, the very symbol of shame to the world so that He might win the world. Augustine said, “For by the worst of deaths, Christ has destroyed all kinds of death.”[ii] Why wouldn’t Paul boast about that?
By boasting in the cross, Paul was making a stand. He was rejecting the way the world wants to assign glory, honor, and fame. He was embracing the way of Jesus, which is the way of sacrifice, service, and, above all, deep-reaching, far-seeking, perfect, unconditional love. Paul says I boast in this. I identify with this.
But Paul goes on to say something equally profound. Paul says I boast in the cross because it’s the means by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. What does this mean exactly?
Centering our lives on Christ and the cross empowers a right perspective of the world and our place in it.
Paul looked at the cross and understood that what happened there changed everything about who he was and what he valued. On the cross, Jesus crucified the value system of a fallen world. He put to death the allure of the world. One writer said, “To be crucified to the world is to be dead to worldly concerns, isolated from worldly pursuits, indifferent to worldly temptations.”[iii] On the cross, Jesus reordered our desire to base our value, identity, or reputation on anything rooted in this world.
Paul could look at the world and honestly say that it had been crucified to him.
He sacrificed his image, his social standing, and his reputation at the foot of the cross. What about us? There is no better reward than knowing that Jesus loves you and saves you so that you may JOIN Him in advancing the Kingdom.
How do you define yourself?
This article originally appeared in Volume 23 of my free newsletter, Good For You.
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[i] Timothy George, Galatians, vol. 30, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 436.
[ii] Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, vol. 2 (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997), 339.
[iii] Kenneth L. Boles, Galatians & Ephesians, The College Press NIV Commentary (Joplin, MO: College Press, 1993), Ga 6:14.