Boasting, by one definition is, “an act of talking with excessive pride and self-satisfaction.” Where the law-based religious person boasts in his fleshly efforts and in the converts he makes to his way of religion, the Christian boasts in something different.

We are so accustomed to thinking of all boasting as being un-Christian. The reason is that boasting usually exalts oneself in comparison to others. But any validity in personal boasting is specious for two reasons: 1) There is always someone who is better at doing whatever we boast about in ourselves; we are somewhat selective concerning to whom we compare ourselves. 2) We assume all other things are equal in the comparison of our lives with others. For example, a person who boasts that he owns the biggest boat, is the most educated person in the group or the best athlete fails to acknowledge the advantages he has, through no doing of his own. He has been born into a wealthy family that can afford such amenities as sports development camps, elite schooling or inherited fortunes. So in every area of life, boastful comparisons cannot be valid, for no two lives have everything else equal. Especially in the religious area is boasting vain. Even then, what difference does it make to boast that one does more law-keeping than the next, when both fall so woefully short?

But there is something we can validly boast in, something that surpasses all comparisons—and that is “the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” That is the apostle’s boast, and should be ours as well. All acts of righteousness are completely eclipsed by what Christ has done in sacrificing Himself for our sins. It has brought about in the believer a new creation. Everything changes at the point of salvation. In another place, Paul wrote, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor 5:17).

Paul couldn’t stop talking about it, with excessive pride! This was not pride in himself, but in another, the One who provided a perfect sacrifice for sins. This truth, when rightly understood, is so overwhelming that it separates us from the worldly way of religion. Paul describes it as a personal crucifixion of the world to ourselves and ourselves to the world. We are dead to a religious  way of thinking, and alive to the freedom that comes through God’s grace.