“Without Me you can do nothing,” Jesus said (John 15:5). The converse is equally true. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” Paul wrote in Philippians 4:13. Both sides of that truth are equally important. “I labored more abundantly than they all,” Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:10, “yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me” (emphasis added); “By the grace of God I am what I am” (v. 10). In no way did Paul imagine himself intrinsically adequate for the task to which God had called him. And that realization kept him dependent on divine grace in every aspect of his
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