Romans 10 is about Paul’s concern for the Jews because of their spiritual ‘lostness’. Interestingly, when I read verses 2 & 3, I observed that those verses can likely be applied to other religiously zealous people beyond the people of Israelites. Listen to verse 2-3: For I can testify about them that they are zealous for [g]od, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness.
Many people are religious and even zealous for god (I use a lower case ‘g’ because in our world ‘god’ can mean many different things). It is not merely our zeal for ‘god’ or our ‘spirituality’ (another popular word in our culture) that finds God’s reward because zeal can be misguided. It is when our zeal is coupled with the one true God and His righteousness which comes by faith in Jesus, not by our works. It is this faith in Jesus of the Scriptures that results in true righteousness.
It seems to me that Paul is echoing Proverbs 19:2: It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the way and applying it to religious observance. Zeal is great when it is coupled with knowledge…
These thoughts create a ripple effect in my inner being. Do I possess both knowledge of God’s truth and zeal to follow it??? This calls for some introspection.
Another ripple travels like this. Can I grow in heart and skill so as to be able to help those with misguided zeal to find true righteousness in Jesus?
Lord, Your Word is bursting inside of me… increase my zeal, increase my knowledge that I might live for the praise of Your glory. In and through Jesus… Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment