I have just started the book of Romans as part of my morning devotions. For the past two days I’ve been stuck in chapter 2…challenged by two particular verses:
“The day will surely come when God, by Jesus Christ, will judge everyone’s secret life.” (Romans 2:16)
“And true circumcision is not a cutting of the body but a change of heart produced by God’s Spirit. Whoever has that kind of change seeks praise from God, not from people.” (Romans 2:29b)
Taken individually, these verses speak volumes to me.
In verse 16, I completely understand the concept of a “secret life”. Men are notorious for living secret lives. In fact, many men (and again, I speak from experience here) live multiple secret lives. We have our work life, our home life, our travel life, our Internet life, et al. And with each life comes a different face…and often a different set of behaviors. But verse 16 clearly states that God sees them all and will one day hold us accountable for our secret lives.
Verse 29 is about the change of heart that God produces in us. In this section Paul is chiding his readers for “playing church”. They are saying one thing but living another (we call that hypocrisy today). And here he tells his readers what a truly changed person looks like…it’s about God changing us from the inside out. And this produces a change in our focus. We stop looking for the approval of others and start looking for God’s approval (something I need to work on more).
However, the reason I’ve been stuck in chapter 2 is because God was trying to show me something (and I’m often slow at getting what He’s trying to teach me). He kept impressing on me that these two verses do not stand apart from each other–that they are related. I just kept wrestling with how they are related.
That is, until I read chapter 11 in The Call this morning. The connection between the two verses has to do with our responsibility. Not what we are responsible for (like our families, our jobs, our churches, etc.), but who we are responsible to.
Why do we have secret lives? Why does God need to change our hearts? Because we don’t live like we are responsible to anyone! But we are responsible to someone…we are responsible to God. We don’t even really have secret lives…He knows our secrets. And this whole notion of seeking God’s praise instead of others’ strikes at the heart of the matter.
Os Guiness said it better than I could on page 89 of The Call: “What we do then, when no one sees but God, is the test of our true responsibility.” That’s the key…we need to be changed at our core (by God) so that we aren’t living for ourselves or for others, but instead are living for God and no one else. That’s when we are truly living responsible lives.
Now my challenge is doing it…letting God change my heart to live for Him!
