Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Romans 12:3 is the one key on my "soul-computer" keyboard that I hit every day. It's the prayer that I pray endlessly from the advice that the apostle Paul gives me:
"I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure [metron, Gr.] of faith."
I can pray the first half easily--"not to think of [myself] more highly than [I] ought to think." No problem. The answer is easy: I am "chief of sinners" (1 Tim. 1:15), "less than the least of all saints" (Eph. 3:8), "an unprofitable servant" (Luke 17:10), etc., etc.
But it's the second half of the verse that perplexes me and is difficult. What does it mean for me to "think soberly" about myself?
What "measure of faith" is a "sober" measure?
Well, it is some faith; no person in the wide world can say in the final judgment that God forgot to give him/her that "measure."
Now, your job and mine from henceforth is to exercise that "measure of faith" which He has already given us. And it will be fully sufficient to take us all the way, hand in hand with the Savior, into His eternal kingdom. No person's faith is weak; God gave it to him/her.
Paul's counsel above is not to humiliate us into the dust; you and I have been given that "measure of faith" that enables us to hold our head high in the world, and yes, high in the Lord's church, too. A healthy, even vigorous, self-respect is the gift that "faith" gives us here and now.
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: August 10, 2006.
Copyright © 2010 by Robert J. Wieland.
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