“Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith” (Romans 3:27 ESV).
Several resources define the word “boasting” in the following manner:
- Speaking of yourself in superlatives. (1)
- To glorify oneself in speech; talk in a self-admiring way; To speak of with excessive pride. (2)
- To talk or write about oneself or something related to oneself in a proud or self-admiring way. (3)
- To call attention to one’s own accomplishments. (4)
As seen in the passage quoted above, the word translated “boasting” encompasses a word that means “that of which one glories or can glory, [and/or a] matter or ground of glorying” (5) The Scriptures disapprove of these attitudes because boasting is inconsistent with the type of love that is defined for us in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8…
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails…” (NIV).
The noted author C.S. Lewis offers several valuable observations in this regard…
“There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which everyone in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. I have heard people admit that they are bad-tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about girls or drink, or even that they are cowards. I do not think I have ever heard anyone who was not a Christian accuse himself of this vice. And at the same time I have very seldom met anyone, who was not a Christian, who showed the slightest mercy to it in others. There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others. The vice I am talking of is Pride.” (6)
…Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest…” (7)
Image Attribution: C. S. Lewis, Levan Ramishvili, Public Domain CC BY-NC 1.0, via flickr.com. Disclaimer Notice
(1) Power Thesaurus. “BOASTING Definition & Meaning – Explained.” WordNet 3.1 © 2011 by Princeton University, 2026, www.powerthesaurus.org/boasting/definitions. Accessed 18 Dec. 2025.
(2) American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition. (1992)
(3) American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. (2011). Retrieved December 18 2025 from https://www.thefreedictionary.com/boasting
(4) boasting. (n.d.) Picturesque Expressions: A Thematic Dictionary, 1st Edition. (1980). Retrieved December 18 2025 from https://www.thefreedictionary.com/boasting
(5) G2746 – kauchesis – Strong’s Greek Lexicon (KJV). (n.d.). Blue Letter Bible. https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/g2746/kjv/mgnt/0-1/ [see relation to G2745]
(6) C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1958), p. 94. Quoted in Boice, J. M. (2005). Romans: Justification by Faith (Romans 1-4). Baker Books. [p.404]
(7) Lewis, Ibid. pp. 95, 96.