Romans And Proverbs And The Fear Of The Lord

The book of Romans is both very plain in its meaning and message and filled with puzzles that require meditation and brain work to "solve." Paul is brilliant and logical, and is also the apostle God chose to receive a revelation of grace and of the gospel like no other. Paul truly considered himself to be the least among the apostles because of his past persecution of the church. 

But back to Romans: it's both very plain in meaning and message and in places, "hard to understand" (as Peter famously characterized Paul's writings). But not impossible. As mentioned, those places simply require more thinking, more lingering upon the text and context, more Spirit-helped brainwork. Logic is involved. (Spiritual understanding doesn't preclude logic.) It's all important, both the plain parts and the more difficult ones; all for the sake of seeing Christ as more lovely, and God as greater and more good, than ever. 

That's the way it is not only with Paul's writings but with all of Scripture. The Bible describes itself to contain, in it's wisdom, proverbs and riddles (Proverbs 1:6). To understand it, and thus God, one must "receive," "treasure up," "make your ear attentive to" and "incline your heart to" God's words and commandments. One must call out for insight, raise one's voice for understanding, seek for those things like silver and search for them like hidden treasure (Proverbs 2:1-8). This is all done because of, and in order to learn, the right and proper fear of Yahweh. To behold his beauty. 

All this is true work! God never said that insight and wisdom into his ways would be handed over easily and casually. He has always been a God who has been all about being sought as treasure, as more desirable than the finest silver or gold. That's how truly worthy he is. 

Adoring The God We Behold

God deserves our adoration. He deserves, as Scripture tells us, our highest praises. What exactly does this look like, how is it accomplished, in reality?

I realized some years ago that simply saying "Praise the Lord" or "I praise you Lord" is not praising the Lord! The words "praise the Lord" in the Psalms are actually a command to God's people to open their mouths and say something about God. First of all, it is a command to open our mouths and say true things about God's greatness and goodness. Secondly, speaking these true things must spring from genuine admiration for him and thankfulness to him. And finally, we are to speak these things in this way both to others and to God himself. Praise is telling others about God, and praise is telling God about God, as we see in the Psalms.

Now, understanding that praising God consists of saying true things about his greatness and goodness with admiration and thankfulness, both to others and to God himself, we must remember something else we we learn from Scripture: it is from the abundance of the heart that we speak (Luke 6:45). If our hearts are not really filled with love and admiration for God, words of praise won't come spilling out of our mouths. We'll hardly know what to say about him. If our hearts feel stony and cold toward him, if we're hurt and confused by difficulties in our lives, for example, and we're unfamiliar with God's word and ways, this will stop up our hearts from admiration and thankfulness, and our words (or lack of them) will reflect this.

If we find ourselves in continuing (not temporary) difficulty with the biblical command to adore and praise God, the first thing to do is to realize that this is our lack; there is no lack in God's worth. If our knowledge of God through the Scriptures has not resulted in the assurance that we know him well, that we are on accepted and intimate terms with him, that he is our constant friend and ally, and that we may trust him completely with all our sorrows as well as all our joys, then our journey of faith may have gone amiss. We need to realize that it's possible to belong to him yet not know him well, if our knowledge of him has been gained through other means than a much-opened Bible and a Scripture-saturated life of prayer. If our hearts remain dull toward him, and words of praise and thanks are hard to find, then we must re-examine what we think we know of him.

The apostle Paul, in his second letter to the Corinthian church, exhorts the people to pay close attention to the message of the apostles because they, the apostles, have been made the ministers of the new testament wherein God's glory has been most fully revealed and made known. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:4-11 that the apostle's teaching is in fact the ministry of the Spirit, revealing the glory of God through Christ in a way that far surpasses what was seen through Moses. The message of the apostles "portrays Christ" in this way (Galatians 3:1), as do the rest of the Scriptures. This is why Paul says that when the Spirit of God removes the veil that blinds, we are set free to behold the glory of the Lord (2 Corinthians 3:16-17). And it is as we behold, as we see and gaze upon this glory, that we are transformed into the same image. We become, by degrees of glory, like that which we are gazing upon (2 Corinthians 3:18).

But how do we see and gaze upon the glory of the Lord? We can put all the above paragraph in very simple terms. Paul is speaking metaphorically, but what he means is simply this: it is by the Spirit's work of opening our spiritual eyes to the Christ of the Scriptures that we come to know and admire and thank God for what he has done. We behold the glory of the Lord when we hear or read, with spiritual understanding, the Bible's testimony about Christ and him crucified.

There in the written word we "see" the glory of Christ revealed through the various narratives, the explanations, and the teaching; this sight causes our admiration to blossom and swell and grow for all that God has done through the sending of his Son for our sin. There we see the hope for the resurrection of the body and the final restoration of all things. There we find the strength for going on, for how and why we are to hold on to hope in God (for how he holds us!). We need both the Old and New Testament Scriptures, for both paint the epic and tragic portrait of man, and of God's dealings with man; there we learn man's true story and nature, and the greatness of God's plan of the ages for our rescue.

It is our wide and faithful reading of Scripture that enables us to obey the command of God through the Psalmist to truly praise him. Unless we have studied the portrait of Christ in this way both in the OT and the NT, unless we have gazed upon the glory we see building steadily from Genesis to Malachi, and then bursting into full view from Matthew to Revelation, we won't know the true things to say about God.

If we're only used to praising God for what we have temporally—our good health, our nice cars and homes, our healthy loved ones—then we will be at a loss when those things are taken away. We should always be thankful for our health and for what God has provided. But we very much need to set to work cultivating a taste for the things of eternity, don't we. This taste is only truly gained when we comprehend the message of Scripture as explained by his appointed ministers of the good news. We can only adore and praise the God whose glory we now behold.

Open your Bible. Go to Ephesians 2:15-23 and pray along with Paul, for yourself and for all Christ's church, that "the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your understanding enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe..."

And keep reading the Scripture, fastening your gaze on the glory of God revealed there.