Grace That Works Harder

Today's Scripture: 2 Corinthians 3:5
"Our sufficiency is from God."
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If you feel incompetent in God's service you are in good company. Paul felt that way also: "not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God" (2 Corinthians 3:5).

If there's anyone in the history of the church who could have relied on his own God-given endowments, surely it would have been Paul. He was a brilliant theologian, a gifted evangelist, a tireless church planter, and a sound missionary strategist. He was also adept at cross-cultural ministry—"To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law" (1 Corinthians 9:20-21). Yet Paul, with all his abilities, acknowledged that we aren't competent in ourselves.

We are not competent, but God makes us competent. That's what Paul was saying in 1 Corinthians 15:10: "his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them." God's grace in its concrete expression of divine power was effective in Paul—so effective that Paul could say he worked harder than all the other apostles. At first glance, that statement seems to put Paul in a position of unconscionable boasting, and I used to be troubled by it. It seemed quite out of character with Paul's obviously genuine humility. But I've come to realize Paul wasn't boasting. He was exalting the grace of God. He was saying that God's grace at work in him was so effective it caused him to work harder than all of them. The grace of God motivated him, enabled him, and then blessed the fruits of his labors.