Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:
1Brothers, the pleasure of my heart and the prayer toward God of them are into salvation, 2for I testify to them that they have zeal of God, but not according to knowledge, 3for, being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own, they were not submitted to the righteousness of God, 4for Christ [is the] end of law into righteousness to everyone believing.
I wish the whole world could read verse 2 and take it seriously. “For I can testify about them that the are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge.” Oh, wow. Prov. 19:2 says, “It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the way.” Any older adult can see that young people are often filled with zeal for this or that, but so often simply foolish. A friend of mine once said, “Youth is wasted on the young.” I look back on my own life and can say I spent an enormous amount of time and energy on a lot of things which I now realize were a complete waste of time.
I used to puzzle over Jesus’ words, “For without Me, you can do nothing” (Jn. 15:5). At the time, I was rushing hither and yon doing this and that, thinking I was serving the Lord, yet I didn’t really take the time to be sure what I was doing was God’s will and not just my own. Now I can see how little was accomplished for all that effort. “Zeal without knowledge.” “It is not good to have zeal without knowledge.”
This first of all brings us back to where we ended the last post. What is knowledge? Where do we get truth? Christian people should answer quickly, “from the Bible.” That is true, of course, but look at the case in point. We’re looking in Romans 9 at the Jewish people. Did they have the Bible? Of course they did. Not only that, but they thought they were champions of Bible study. Jesus said of them, “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life…” (Jn. 5:39). We have before us an entire people group who not only had the Scriptures, but also studied them, and, according to Paul, were even “zealous for God.” Yet he could say of them, their zeal was “not according to knowledge.”
“How can that be?” every Christian should ask themself. I would suggest we are back to our simple little adage, we have to “let it say what it says.” The Pharisees may have been diligent students of the Bible, but they went to that Bible with their minds already made up. The passages they did not like, they simply ignored or derived fanciful interpretations to explain away. And where did that get them? It made them “zealous for God,” but as Jesus warned His disciples, “A time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God” (Jn. 16:2). Not only did they kill the disciples, they even killed the Messiah Himself!
Wow, is it not good to have zeal without knowledge!
The challenge to us born-again believers is to be sincerely trying to go to the Bible prayerfully, to be humbly asking the Lord to give us light, seeking to understand what it says, then simply believing it, embracing it, and seeking to live it. And I want to assert here that this isn’t some daunting assignment. The Lord didn’t give us the Bible to confuse us. He didn’t make it hard to understand. I am personally amazed at how simple it is – if we simply let it “say what it says.” We may often run across passages where we can’t figure out what they mean, but I would suggest there will always be plenty that will be “all too clear,” and it’s on those things we should build our faith. God’s Holy Spirit is more than able to “lead me on level ground” (Ps. 143:10), to be that voice behind us saying, “Here is the way. Walk ye in it” (Isa. 30:21).
What a shame it is to see our
whole world filled with zeal in so many ways, yet to see it so misplaced. The
radical Muslims think they’re “zealous for God,” then reign in terror. Look at
how horrifically the Taliban and the Iranian government treat their people. It
would seem their favorite pastime is murder. Their hatred and cruelty may be
obvious to the rest of the world, but they actually think they’re “zealous for
God.” Then we can say, they may be one of the worst examples, yet the whole
world is filled with people trying to be “religious” yet completely missing the
way. Our world is full of “zeal without knowledge.”
We could multiply examples of people sitting on top of poles or cloistering themselves away. We could point out the Hasidic Jews or the Amish or Buddhist monks or whoever is the latest cult following. However, I fear we American Christians need to look much closer to home, if we would profit from reading Paul’s words here. We need to ask ourselves how much of what we call our “faith” is really based on the Bible and how much of it is just more of the “traditions of men?”
I suppose the real question comes down to, “Do I know God?” Jesus said, “For this is eternal life, that they might know You…” (Jn. 17:3). Do I truly know Him? Do I “practice His presence?” In my own heart and mind, is that really the measure of my “faith?” If I couldn’t do any the things we Christians would call our “religion,” would I still have the treasure of my relationship with Him? Is the essence of my faith a Martha or am I truly a Mary?
“It is not good to have zeal without knowledge.” We would learn from the Jews it is even possible to be “zealous for God,” and still to completely miss the way. Lord, may You truly be the very center and essence of my faith. May everything I think and do arise from that relationship. Then may people all around the world, especially born-again Christians, pause and consider their own hearts. May we all buy from Jesus “gold refined in the fire…and white clothes to wear…and salve for our eyes, so we can see!” (Rev. 3:18). May our “zeal” be based on knowledge we get directly from the Word of God and may it truly be a zeal that “brings forth much fruit” (Jn. 15:5).
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