Sometimes boastfulness is entertaining, perhaps even necessary. This is especially the case in the world of sport where trash talking the opposition is all part of the game. (In UK athletics the recent spat between Mo Farah and Andy Vernon is a case in point.) We know that boastfulness can also be destructive though. None of us likes a boastful person – the person who constantly brags about their achievements and abilities – but we can all be prone to more subtle forms of boastfulness. The temptation to ‘selectively update’ is powerful. We want to manage our profile so that others think well of us, while hiding the less commendable aspects of our characters. Social media makes this temptation more compelling and is having an interesting shaping impact on our self-perception. Andy Crouch has written insightfully about this in Christianity Today, describing how western society is moving from a guilt-based morality to, not so much an honour-shame culture, as a fame-honour culture.

The personal screen, especially with its attached and always-available camera, invites us to star in our own small spectacle. As our social network chimes, blinks, and buzzes with intermittent approval, we are constantly updated on our success in gaining public affirmation. But having attracted us with the promise of approval and belonging, the personal screen can just as easily herald exclusion and hostility.

The Bible warns repeatedly against boastfulness. Sometimes this is explicit, as with the ‘boastful horn’ of Daniel’s vision, and warnings that God opposes the proud. Sometimes the warnings are more subtle.

As I’ve been preaching through Romans recently I’ve seen in a new way the relevance of Paul’s warnings about boastfulness. “What becomes of our boasting? It is excluded.” (Rom 4:27) Rome was a boastful culture and it is easy to imagine Roman Christians boasting in the superiority of their Roman-ness, just as Jewish Christians boasted in the superiority of their Jewishness. It seems this ethnically rooted boastfulness was causing real tensions within the church at Rome and was a key reason for Paul writing the letter he did at the time he did. Paul wants to make it crystal clear that our justification before God comes not from any ethnic or cultural superiority but purely by grace.

In our own day, boastfulness can very easily creep into our own ecclesiology. It is all too easy to find ourselves expressing a position of superiority over and above other Christians, and falling into exactly the kinds of errors the Roman believers were making. This can cut in all directions.

I heard of one church, bang in the middle of British evangelicalism, who would not allow another church, also thoroughly evangelical, to use their building for a mid-week event because the congregation who requested use of the building didn’t recognize women elders. This looks like an expression of superiority to me; just as it would be an expression of superiority if the positions were reversed. There must be a line beyond which we “do not even eat with such a one” (1 Cor 5:11, and I am currently working on a paper trying to get to grips with what that line might be) but there is clearly a huge territory on this side of the line where boastfulness is more of a problem than is compromise. The sad truth is that charismatics can look down on cessationists, as Arminians can look down on Calvinists. Low church and high church can be equally snooty towards one another. It’s not that the differences between these positions are unimportant: I’m the kind of person who thinks that if anything such differences need to be highlighted rather than blurred! Some ways of doing things are contextually better than others, and some practices are more biblically faithful than others: I don’t think these difference are merely different flavours of ice-cream. But that doesn’t mean we should slip into boastfulness! In the end it is our righteousness in Christ that counts, not the style of our worship.

I was talking with a friend earlier this week who has not yet crossed the line of faith but has come to listen to me preach a few times. It was interesting to hear him articulate how the message of righteousness delivered in Romans is an obstacle to full acceptance of Christianity. It sounds boastful! And it sounds immoral in our fame-shame culture. I tried to explain to him that the amazing message of the gospel is that believers in Jesus are right; but we are never to be self-righteous. It is self-righteousness that sticks in the throat, and boastfulness that breaks the unity of the body.

“What becomes of our boasting? It is excluded.” The boasting we are meant to boast in is our hope of the glory of God (Rom 5:2), not any human notion of superiority. That is something that the church in Rome needed to learn. It is something that all too often we need to learn too.