A Good Rule to Live By
Scripture Reading: Galatians 6:11-16
One thing that stood out to me in my early Bible College years was the amount of chest-thumping that went on among the students. We were all required to be actively involved in some sort of ministry and we were expected to give regular reports and updates on what we were doing. Naturally, human nature being what it is, and pride being rooted in all of our hearts to some degree, many of my classmates were prone to exaggerating the impact of their ministries.
During one of our ministry report sessions, one student in particular, a guy who informed me that “you gotta have a gimmick nowadays to get people’s attention,” and who lived by that philosophy with his Elvis schtick, informed our professor and his classmates that the previous Saturday he had attended a pool party. According to him he got everyone’s attention with an Elvis riff and proceeded to share the gospel. Then, his story was built to a crescendo, he gave an invitation and there were at least 120 people who were saved.
We were all awestruck. I thought he might just be right about this gimmick theory. But then, he concluded his otherwise marvelous report by admitting that no one made any kind of public statement that they had just come to faith in Christ but that he knew over a hundred did because, well, just because of faith or something.
Another student who did street evangelism kept a tally of conversions on the flyleaf of his Bible. The tally was kept with those markings where you draw four lines and the fifth crosses the previous four so that you can easily add up the amount by counting in fives. He had hundreds of conversions. I went out with him a few times to do street preaching. I have no issue with that. But I did notice that a pair of kids, a boy, and a girl who were siblings, were “converted” multiple times and nevertheless got more than one mark in the Bible.
A similar experience was noted in the homeless ministry I was helping with for a while. The guy who led it was under a great deal of pressure from higher-ups (I don’t mean God) to show some results in terms of baptismal numbers. So, if a guy showed up at our service one Sunday and wanted to be baptized even though he had been baptized on previous Sundays, it was okay.
When Paul concludes his letter to the Galatian churches he puts his finger on the pulse of the Judaizers. They were motivated, at least in part, by a prideful desire to be able to boast about numbers. They wanted to make a good showing, give a good report, and have something tangible to show for their efforts. Paul then gives us the rule that he lived by:
“Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ…”
You see evidence of this in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians in which he said he hadn’t baptized any of them, but then corrects himself and mentions a couple of people he had baptized, and then clarifies that he can’t remember if there were any others. Paul is not minimizing the value and importance of baptism, the fruit of conversion through faithful gospel preaching, or even rejoicing in or reporting on numbers (see the Book of Acts for that).
Instead, what Paul is doing is showing us a better way. He is giving us the key that helps us keep our pride locked up. He is giving us a sword by which we can slay the all-too-common desire to make more of ourselves than we ought. The secret sauce is to make boasting in the cross your only true boasting.
May we join Paul in being able to truly say, “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Amen