“Then when Jesus noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. He said to them, “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor because a person more distinguished than you may have been invited by your host. So the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this man your place.’ Then, ashamed, you will begin to…

Three Great Implications | Steven Lawson [Romans 3]

Each of the 3 Implications have 3 parts: Question Answer & Explanation [18:20]

1.] Implication of Justification by Faith [Romans 3:27-28]      All boasting is excluded.

     Least any of us have a smug attitude that “we’re in” &      others are out. That’s there’s something about us that      makes us better than someone else.

     Least we look down our long-nose at others, from a       self-exalting position because of this doctrine [19:08]

     Paul reminds us this ought to make you so humble.

The anti-christ in his mind, self-exalted himself above all that is God. He who glories (boasts)and commends himself is not approved, but only whom the Lord commends. When people think of themselves to be something, when they are not, then they deceive themselves. Sitting at the best place at a wedding when someone more honorable has also been invited and the one who invited both come and ask you…

Of all the contexts where boasting is inappropriate, this surely heads the list:

…Any genuine experience of God is a gift of his love and provides no basis for us to elevate ourselves. Says Bengal, ‘How dreadful must self-exaltation be if the Apostle [Paul] required such restraint — that God intervened in his life, at the deepest level of his physicality, in order to ensure that he would understand that actually it was in his experience of weakness and inadequacy that his greatest usefulness was to be found. And though he asks, his thorn is not removed, because it becomes the conduit of God’s power.

When I am weak, then I am strong.

Here, I suggest to you, is the principle of all effective service. And this is why some of us will never amount to anything for God. Because we revolt against this principle.

The glory does not lie in our inadequacy, but lies in the adequacy of Christ, which is discovered in our weakness and in our insufficiency.