·
Gal. 2:19: We glorify God by living to Him. That sounds strange. Your translation might say “living for God” (e.g.
NIV). We believe there is little doubt the
correct translation is that we live “to” God.
So, what does that mean?
o First,
note the entire verse. Literally it
reads, For I through law to law died in order that (hina) to God I
should live. In the context Paul is saying
that through law-keeping he died to the law or law-keeping. Attempts by humans to keep the law of God on
their own are always doomed to failure.
We cannot have a right standing by keeping it ourselves. Coming to this place of failure was important
for Paul, because it brought him to the place of living to God.
o We
now ask, what does it mean to live “to” God?
The answer is that, whatever it meant to die “to law” is what it means
to live “to God.” Paul was trying to
live according to the law, and through that to have life. But the law only brought about death; it
could not give him true life. Now he has
come to Christ and been justified; he now looks to God for what he formerly
looked to the law to provide. The result
is that he lives!
o How
do I know this? The answer to that
question comes from the next verse. Paul
says, “I live – though I was crucified with Christ – but it’s not me (I already
failed trying in my own strength) but it’s Christ living in me! I live by His faith. My faith in Him who trusted the Father all
the way to the cross. When I quit living
to self and live to God, this glorifies God.
·
Eph. 3:19: We glorify God when we are filled
with His fullness. “Fullness” is a key
term in Ephesians and Colossians. As we
noted in an previous post, the prayer to be strengthened in the inner man so
that (hina) we will come to know the full love of Christ, in all its
dimensions, is a prayer so that (hina) we might be filled with the
fullness of God. The point is this: when
we come to a full, experiential knowledge of the love of Christ then we will be
filled with the fullness of God. That,
being God’s ultimate plan for us, is how we glorify Him.
o We
should be sure we understand how we come to know Christ’s love. It cannot be known through studying of great
books on love or even great commentaries on the Biblical definition of
love. We cannot know Christ’s love from
seeing it in others, although this could be helpful for us. No, we know Christ’s love when we experience
His love and we are changed by it. We
learn the depth of His love when we experience his forgiveness and healing deep
in our souls. We learn the length of His
love when we see it over the long haul of our lives or of some lengthy
trial. This is why we must be first
strengthened in the inner man, lest by impatience we take shortcuts or detours
that deprive us of the opportunity to experience His love.
No comments:
Post a Comment