Once a week, I get together with a small group of Harbor guys to go through Grudem’s Systematic Theology. Most times our conversation is fast-paced and exciting. Sometimes even explosive. But on some less-spicy topics it can be a slog to get through the material. I can almost hear the question in the back of the guys’ heads because it’s already in the back of mine: “Tell me why we’re doing this again?”
In a pragmatic, instant-gratification age, it can be tough to see the value in things that aren’t either a) immediately useful or b) immediately entertaining. Theology doesn’t always meet either of those criteria. Many people think it never does. Why can’t we just love God and let the details work themselves out?
Paul tackles a similar question in Romans 10. He’s been talking about the people of Israel, and how they missed the mark because they pursued God their own way. He says, “My heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.
That’s a scary thought. It’s possible to have a zeal for God and still not be saved because you don’t have knowledge!
And Paul knows about zeal. He says in Galatians 1 that before he was saved by Jesus he was “advancing in Judaism beyond many of his own age,” and that was because he was “so extremely zealous.”
It’s possible to have a passion for God, and still not find him because you don’t have knowledge. It’s not that Paul is putting zeal against knowledge, because just a little later, in chapter 12, he’ll tell the Romans, “Do not be slothful in zeal, but be fervent in spirit.”
He wants us to have such a fire for the Lord that it gives us chicken skin. But that passion has to be guided by the right beliefs, or else our zeal can become a dangerous thing. So dangerous that it can keep us from being saved.
Theology matters because lives depend on it. Lives like the one in this video, a man who couldn’t find any answers to his theological questions in the churches he visited, so instead turned to Islam.
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