The word “semnos” appears 3 other times in the New Testament. Each time it is used it describes how someone should be. For instance, it is used for a deacon, an aged man, and the wife of a deacon. It is often translated as grave or serious. I have seen lots of Christians who look grave- like they just sucked on a lemon, but I don’t think that is quite the point here. It is more of a Christian who is sincere and intentional about their relationship with God. In these other verses, it says these leaders and Christians should also not be slanderers (gossips), not prone to partaking in too much wine, not greedy, should be faithful, temperate, loving, and patient. When I think of the lemon-faced Christians I usually do not associate them with love and patience. I often think of them as judgmental and legalistic Christians. The ones who go around focused on what everyone else is doing wrong and how they are not good enough for God. They want to give you a long list of "thou shalt not"
, but do not spend any time with the "you shall’s".
It is so easy when we become Christians to start thinking of ourselves as better than others, especially over time. When I became a Christian I was only 9 years old. I did not become a Christian because of God’s love, it was more about fire insurance. I wanted to go to heaven and not hell. I wanted to escape the wrath of God. At that time I definitely did not understand that God wanted a relationship with me, I thought he just wanted obedience from me. The only way I could please him was by being perfect. Therefore, I tried my hardest to be perfect and spent my life working to be good enough for God. Since my relationship was motivated by fear and approval I found myself judging others by those same standards. Needless to say, my Christian walk was not enjoyable for me, and I probably didn’t lead many other people to a great relationship with Christ either.
Romans 12:3 says, “Because of the privilege and authority God has given me, I give each of you this warning: Don’t think you are better than you really are. Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us.”
Have you ever noticed how easy it is to make a mistake and say, “I had good intentions”, yet when someone else messes up you are shocked and surprised that they could do “that”? We tend to have rose-colored glasses when it comes to our intentions and magnifying glasses when it comes to the intentions of others. Where God sees our sin and repentance. People often flippantly say, “Well, God knows my heart.” The thing is- He does. If you sin and you are truly repentant then God absolutely knows that! If you sin, and you just want to call the “I’m sorry- I got caught” card, then God sees that too. We can lie to others, we can even lie to ourselves, but we can’t lie to God. He knows.
Another thing I think is interesting in that verse is that it says to evaluate yourself by the faith God has given us. One way to look at this is that we cannot use the world to justify our personal favorite sin because at least we aren’t doing that. They are not Jesus followers, so they do not have the same Holy Spirit in them guiding them to follow God’s ways. Consequently, we also can’t judge them for not following God when they don’t know Him. We should be more concerned with trying to introduce them to God than pointing out everything that they are doing wrong. If all we do is tell them what is wrong with them and how disappointed God is in them, they will feel that they can never come to Him or that He wouldn’t even want them if they tried. And then when we as Christians slip up, because we are people and we will, it helps them to believe that all Christians are just hypocrites.
Another way to look at that verse is that you are to judge yourself by the faith that you have. When you are first saved there will likely be things that God will not convict you of that He might convict you of later down the road because of where you are at in your faith journey. He often leads us in steps. You will have a wrong attitude, you might be holding unforgiveness, have a behavior that is not God’s best for you- but he often doesn’t try to make you deal with all of those things at once. Usually, the Holy Spirit will convict in one or two areas at a time, and then when you get that area under control He will show you the next area. We are always striving towards perfection- being more like Christ. Unfortunately, we will never achieve it on this earth. There is always something we can work on to be more developed as a Christian. This is why you have to be careful judging others that sin differently than you do or even trying to push your convictions on someone else. If you feel that you have it all together, I can assure you that you do not. There is always an area that we can grow in.
As we go through this week, let's work to be honest in our thinking. Allow God to point out things in us that offend Him so that we can let our thoughts and then our actions be a light to those around us. Let’s reflect God’s character in our character.
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