One of the problems we have is that we usually think about ourselves too much. Yet the solution Paul offers is not to stop thinking about ourselves entirely but instead to start thinking about ourselves in a right way. We are to think of ourselves “with sober judgment.”
One of the problems we have is that we usually think about ourselves too much. Yet the solution Paul offers is not to stop thinking about ourselves entirely but instead to start thinking about ourselves in a right way. We are to think of ourselves “with sober judgment.”
In discussing right relationships, there are two possible errors in self-evaluation, and Paul suggests both of them in what he says: first, to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think; and second, to think too lowly of ourselves, which is to have a false humility. Today I want to spend time talking about the problem of thinking too highly of ourselves.
It is a matter of handling first things first: first, the matter of my relationship to God; second, a proper evaluation of myself; and third, a right relationship to other persons.
The Lord Jesus Christ took it upon Himself to prove that God’s will was indeed good, pleasing and perfect, even though it involved the pain of the cross, which in itself hardly seemed good, pleasing or acceptable.
We need to prove by our experience that the will of God is indeed what Paul tells us it is, that is, that it is good, pleasing, and perfect. We need to check it out. Moreover, it is by checking it out that we will begin to find out what it actually is.
The will of God that we are talking about is good, pleasing and perfect. In other words, it teaches about the nature of God’s will for us as well as the fact that God has one.
In this verse “will” is to be interpreted in its context, and the context indicates that the will of God that we are encouraged to follow is the general will of offering our bodies to God as living sacrifices, refusing to be conformed to the world’s ways, and instead being transformed from within by the renewing of our minds. It is this that we are to pursue and thus find to be good, pleasing and perfect, though, of course, if we do it, we will also find ourselves working out the details of God’s specific will for our lives.
Canadian Committee of The Bible Study Hour
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