The other day I was walking by the TV while attending to a series of small tasks. A news show was on in the background, and I was only half listening to the conversation. I was suddenly stopped in my tracks when I heard one of the panel members blurted out, “now let’s make sure we give credit where credit is due!”
Initially it wasn’t the words that caught my attention but the tone in which he delivered this phrase. He was trying to forcefully make his point and one of the other panel members responded quite sarcastically, “so let’s give credit where credit is due?”
What sat behind this phrase is the notion that it’s wrong or deceptive if we take the accolades that belong to another. When we act in such a manner we do not honour or recognise what the person has really done or recognise all the hard work to make something happen.
Have you ever been in the situation where others have taken the credit for something you have done? I have and I would have to say that I felt like I was being cheated. In a sense, it feels like something that was rightfully yours has been taken from you! Such situations leave a nasty taste in your mouth.
Later that day, as I reflected on the phrase ‘give credit where credit is due’, I found myself asking, I wonder how God feels when an announcement is made about some miracle taking place or a major new discovery being announced, and He isn’t even acknowledged? Nowhere does God get the credit or acknowledgement that He so rightfully deserves. It caused me to wonder what He thinks in such circumstances.
Does God think to Himself, ‘I wish My creation would give Me the credit where credit is due?’
Yet when we read the Apostle Paul’s writings in the New Testament book, Ephesians, we discover God’s thoughts are not centred on Himself, but rather He is thinking of you and me! Look at how the Apostle Paul described God’s thinking:
“Long before God laid down earth's foundations, He had us on mind, had settled on us as the focus of His love, to be made whole and holy by His love. Long, long ago God decided to adopt us into His family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!)” Ephesians 1: 4&5 (The Message)
In this opening chapter in the New Testament book of Ephesians, we see how the Apostle Paul ascribes blessings to God – something that was an Old Testament tradition and given Paul’s strong background and training, this is something he would have practised a lot. Now as a follower of Jesus Christ, it’s not surprising to find him having given praise to the Heavenly Father for His loving and eternal plan, celebrating the fact that all God’s saving initiatives centre on Jesus.
God’s sovereign will and grace are worked out through Jesus! When Paul writes, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” he is saying, ‘whose eternal and heavenly will has ushered in the historic events which occurred in Bethlehem and at Calvary.’ God’s eternal intentions have become saving actions in Christ – that has to be worth a mighty ‘Praise the Lord’ if there was ever a time to give one! (A way of giving credit to God where it is due!)
Bless and honour God for His forgiveness; that miracle by which our guilt has been allayed, the slate wiped clean and no longer condemned as we now have a new hope in Jesus. All that comes from God and Jesus flows to the praise of His glory as God deserves all the credit for this.
Let us be a community that is full of people who know when to give credit where credit is due. Let us in this mode continue to recognise that it is our Heavenly Father who is the source of all blessings!
Blessings,
Ross Grace
Executive Principal