Month: September 2026

Is that resignation? A touting? An excusing?

What of recognition? What of a man, drawn outside of himself now, set free from either pride or shame, able to appraise himself as just a ‘thing’ in the hand of God to be used as He wills, making plain statement of truth?

To those who would have made much of him he said…”Who (or what) is Paul?” Just a one used of God by His assigning through whom ‘you came to believe’. Likewise Apollos. 1 Cor 3.

To those who were dismissive, who followed to push themselves forward to take advantage as ‘somethings’ on the backs of others, he recounted the many things he had endured for their and the gospel’s sake…yet…not without admitting to a foolishness. Even some embarrassment at having to do so…’You drove me to it’.

Like ‘any man’ Paul was compelled to face the perversities very particular to man, and in more particular, those personal failings/deficiencies/sins that man in all his lostness (even when ‘coming out of it’) must endure recognizing. (Unless he continues in darkness, thinking himself either in some way exempt or superior.)

We tend to idolize or demean…and sometimes ‘all at once’. And that, with no reason other than owing to perversity. We ‘like’ to decide who deserves, and what.

And until we are brought face to face with all the consequences of all our wrong judgments in that arena, choosing whom to release, whom to condemn, we cannot but remain quite content with what we imagine our discerning. Indeed, we take pride in it…our exquisite palate.

Assuming an occupation of place, which can be born of presumption, is ever with us for overcoming.

This is where the very necessary and O! so glorious encouragement to be ‘of good cheer’ must offset what could not but be the most grueling and grindingly torturous experience of all frustration would prevail. For how could any man know of himself of his rightness to anything? If he assumes himself now wise…he only shows himself a fool. If he begins to think he is something (what metric of success does he use?) he clearly shows himself as nothing…for the very notion of thinking one’s self ‘something’ so adequately does so.

Be of ‘good cheer’. Be of good cheer? In the very place of such tribulation(s)? Of such seeming frustration(s)? Particularly of ‘not knowing’?

How do I know whether I am presumptuous or rightly appraising? How do I allow for good cheer…or joy…apart from that having earned it by being (to myself) right?

I have joy and good cheer when a bet pays off, an investment turns to profit, a labor succeeds. But when I don’t know of outcomes…particularly in the very midst of troubles…when all hangs in the balance it seems…even whether I will be shown most vainly presumptuous in all…well, I haven’t yet ‘earned the right’ yet…to good cheer. To joy. To rejoicing. Have I?

Wouldn’t I even be all the more presumptuous (if given to such) to assume such could be mine? Might I not be asking (should things turn out to disadvantage…) for even more egg on my face? “Look, he rejoiced when he should have been ashamed!”

“We all saw this coming…he obviously…did not.”

Ahhh, there’s the very nub and rub of it all, no?

That occupation with appearing. How to drive the stake through the heart of this dread monster?

Don’t think Paul escaped such considerations.

And again, we face the matter of assumptions and presumptions…for who of us (at least on the face of it) imagine ourselves ‘like Paul’? Well…for one, our Lord Himself. Secondly (and no doubt) Paul himself. The equal footing is what Paul was all about ‘making clear’.

The thing Jesus bequeathed of Himself, through Himself of His Father being our Father, His God being our God, Paul was relentless in proclaiming as being accomplished by one, Jesus the Christ…and that reality being distributed by the same spirit throughout the whole of the body. (When one part suffers…when one part is honored…)

The seamlessness of God’s gift in and through Christ is without withholding to any for ‘you are all brothers’. You are all of one body…and of such one and oneness we are just beginning to discover and appreciate. Not only a mathematical one in the sense of first integer, but an interwoven-ness that neither time nor distance effects.

To us, the ‘last one’ in our sight added to the body, or revealed as ‘of the body’ is in the Lord as always present and ‘inside’ as those whom we might consider the first acknowledged. You are no closer (nor farther) than Peter, Paul, John, or any we might name. No less precious and ‘a part’ than Abraham…and as joined to the Head no less firmly. And the Head has already endured the ‘all’ necessary, sufficient (and over abundantly so) to make each fit, and no less fitting than another…to be that part assigned.

And yes…discovering ‘our place’ is ours for joyous discovery…if and when, even at times (as there must surely be) we sense rebukes or chastening(s) for either presumptions or some residual stiff-neckedness or disregard for the Lord’s authority.

Dare we forget? “As many as I love I rebuke and chasten…”?

Does the Lord do this just to ‘show off’ His power? Flaunt His authority over us? God forbid! It is even to that very point of letting us know…we are loved. That an eye is upon us…not to catch us ‘off base’, but for our good and discipline to a righteousness whose sight has no regret in it. And if, or better when…we are indeed shown to ourselves as ‘off base’ (who will deny?) we are far better served, and the Lord’s glory is not lessened or diminished an iota…to our admitting.

In fact, it is precisely because that power of shame…even of sin to cause us to want to hide it, has been broken by the Lord. And our free confessions make show of the mercy we embrace as having the greater power by far, when all natural inclination is to seek to cover or deny. Besides which we are also learning (by that particular authority of the Lord and His word being all of true) ‘there is nothing hidden except to be revealed’ and that we, even if in any desire to hide learn that is the greatest of vanities…for ‘all is open and laid bare before the eyes of Him with whom we have to do’.

Think of it as ‘catching a break’ of being freed from the (very) dread work of pretense. And I cannot deny how very assiduous I was about that work, and to whatever (unknowing) extent I remain so. Yes…what seems to come ‘most naturally’ as though no effort is expended or required…Christ is able to show as dread burden…and to gratefully be free of.

To hide. To clothe ourselves, to cover ourselves with excuses, reasonings, histories providing explanations, situations owing to defects imposed, circumstances provoking…all the things we seek to justify to ourselves (and then before others) of “why I am the way I am”…when we feel that horrible weight of making excuse or explanation…or to give an accounting for ourselves…and yes…even ‘to ourselves’.

But, by the grace of God, I am what I am.

Be of good cheer?

if we are, in any way ‘waiting to see’ how or where, or according to what in situation we will appear (do I have egg? Will I have egg on ‘my face’?) The order is wrong.

We rejoice…when convinced He has overcome the world…and where, how, to whom and by what measure we are judged by any other than He who raised Him from the dead to show His unwavering and eternal approval ‘of Him’ is made plain to us, and as for us.

Because a vanity we not only ‘can’ do without…but gladly, joyously, freely, even gratefully must be freed from…is ours.

Yes, Paul faced it. A desire to not be put to shame. Phil 1:20.

And yet also knowing that according to certain appearances he could not submit to their power over him to sway or direct.

His great desire for the full growth to a maturity and stature he had (at very lest) been given to see of the man in Christ (by the work of Christ in man) left him not caring how he might appear…at least before others.

Now we pray to God that you do nothing wrong; not so that we ourselves may appear approved, but that you may do what is right, though we may appear unapproved.

“not so that we ourselves may appear approved”

To wish, will, and work for the better of another regardless of how this makes one appear…and not for the sake of ‘showing off’ ones approval…well…is to see our Lord and Christ.

Paul did.

And if even to ourselves the end is not yet…we can practice it for ourselves, by a rejoicing all others (and at times even we ourselves) may either find unseemly, undeserved, out of place…or ‘unearned’. Of course it can’t be. It is a gift!

When we rejoice in His being honored in His work by His God and Father, who is now made ours in Him…we learn something of not only how precious honor is, but how abundantly the Lord has distributed it, for we are free to partake in the faith of believing “when one part is honored…”

We are honored to see that “one” part honored, and how so…suddenly cares about what may appear ‘our own’…rightly evaporate in the light of that glory.

To care about ‘His honor’ is the only relief, deliverance, salvation from all that would mislead us…in seeking our own.

And I tell you without contradiction of heaven…I have surely done so. But…His honor so far exceeds what would try to appear as my shame that really…only rejoicing is fitting in this place.

But by the grace of God I am what I am.

And really…so are you.