Who Do You Think You Are?

For by the grace given to me I say to every one among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgement, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. Romans 12:3

This TV program takes celebrities back through their ancestry to see if their forefathers were anything like the person on the program today. There have been many surprises, some good and some not so good and even embarrassing. However, in the Christian life, we know that God has no grandchildren, or do we think of that too lightly?

This verse tells us that we shouldn’t lord it over our unsaved friends in the sense that we are in an eternally superior position, but what about the comparisons we make to our fellow Christians? Divisions can be made by denomination where we write off certain churches, and their people, in one stroke of the pen. Then there are the others, perhaps in our own church, who identify as Christian, but we see them through different eyes. They don’t live the way they should, or to be more accurate, they don’t live the way we interpret the Bible.

The apostle Paul’s words hit home, and straight to the heart if we let them. None of us belong to an elite group or church fellowship. There are good Christian people all around us, living their lives in the light they have been given, or know. As the title says, “Who do you think you are”? Well? I am talking to myself now. Am I in a better position in my Christian life that God will favour me more than any other? Absolutely not, because Ephesians 2:8 says: “we are (all) saved by grace, not of works should any one boast”. I recite the words all too easily sometimes without seeing my own sin. Do I boast? Then that alone says that I think better of myself than I should, and Paul’s words apply. I pray for wisdom and humility, because I need them daily.