Matins Devotion: July 18, 2024
Pride is a crafty sin. No matter what position you take on the debate at hand, pride will always try to convince you that this is the position of righteousness, even when you’ve held them both. So in the debate over whether the gentiles needed to become Jews before they become Christians, in the debate over whether they needed to be circumcised, pride would tell those who chose the circumcision party, “look at you! You’re willing to do the difficult work. You’re willing to endure the pain and the suffering in order to serve God. Well done, good and faithful servant.” And then, pride would also tempt those who stood with Paul and the pure Gospel, telling them, “look at you! Look how pure your doctrine is. Look how pleased God is with you for defending His truth that salvation is through faith alone. Well done, good and faithful servant.”
And so it is today. For those who, like the Judaizers, deny salvation through faith alone, for those who rely on their works, pride says, “look how dedicated you are to giving God the life of obedience he deserves. Well done, good and faithful servant.”
But let us not fall into the trap of pride on the other side. When we cling to the truth, when we confess that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone, may we never listen to the sin that tells us, “you’re wiser and smarter than your opponents. You were able to see what was right in front of you when those fools weren’t. Well done, good and faithful servant.”
“For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation,” Paul tells us in our reading from Galatians today. And when you were made a new creation, it is only by the grace of God the Father, the mercy of Jesus Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit. Good works are a gift from God, and the only reason you could offer a single act of obedience to your Lord is because God made you a new creation and freed you to do it. Orthodoxy is a gift from God. The only reason a man can understand pure doctrine is because God has given Him a new heart and new ears to hear and believe that message.
So when you see the Judaizers in a new form today, don’t boast of your superior theology. Boast of the Lord who called you out of the depths of condemnation and made you a new creation.
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