To Encourage You

2 Corinthians 1:1 “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God . . .”

We’ve all heard the phrase, “give credit where credit is due.”  It’s a term that says that people should be praised for the good things they’ve done.  In the verse above, at the very beginning of Paul’s second letter to the church at Corinth, he identifies himself as an apostle.  Certainly, this was a high position of leadership, something for which Paul could have been proud and taken credit for.  But he never talks that way in his letters. He never brags on himself for his apostleship. He never tries to impress us with his credentials and take credit for his position. Rather, Paul goes out of his way to tell us that the only reason he is an apostle is that it was the will of God, not his own.  He does it in simple statements, like the one above, or he goes into detail to tell us about how he became an apostle on the Damascus Road.

You see, Paul’s will at that time was to do everything in his power to oppose Christ.  His will was the very opposite of God’s will.  He tells us “I persecuted this Way (which is just another name for the followers of Jesus) to the death, binding and delivering to prison both men and women,as the high priest and the whole council of elders can bear me witness. From them I received letters to the brothers, and I journeyed toward Damascus to take those also who were there and bring them in bonds to Jerusalem to be punished” (Acts 22:4-5).  As such, he was overwhelmed that God would have ever called him to the position he was in.  He acknowledged that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost” (1 Timothy 1:15).  He acknowledged that at one time he had been very proud of himself. He was proud of his Jewish heritage. He was proud of his education at the feet of the foremost rabbi of his time, Gamaliel. He was proud of how well he had observed the religious ceremonies and traditions of the Jewish religion. At that time, he viewed himself as blameless under the law.  He was even proud about his sincerity.  He thought he was really something in that he had such great zeal for the things he believed that he was persecuting anyone who didn’t think like he did. 

But then Jesus opened his eyes to his sin and stunned him with the fact of his foolishness and pride.  Yes, Paul was an apostle, incredibly, despite who he was, not because of it. He took absolutely no pride in himself.  He gave credit where it most definitely belonged: to the mercy and grace of his Savior. And that’s always the way it is for a believer. None of us who have believed did so because of ourselves. We can’t take any credit for it whatsoever. We were all, at one time, guilty sinners, spiritually blind, and spiritually dead. As Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.”

You see, a person who is spiritually dead has no spiritual capacity to seek God.   Similarly, John tells us that “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). It is never the other way around.  So, if you are a believer, you know that it is, first and foremost, “by the will of God.”  Somehow or other, as you were going on your merry way, oblivious to your need of a Savior and oblivious to the depth of your sin, God intervened in your life.  It was probably by way of another person, or it may have been through some circumstance in your life that had you up against the wall.  But in any event, it was God who initiated it. You simply responded.  As Paul wrote in another of his letters, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). 

So, is that how you see yourself?  Do you realize that you, like Paul and like any other true believer, have no reason to boast?  Yes, it is the meek that will inherit the earth, not the proud, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6). Yet, thankfully, it is in the face of that very opposition that God can graciously and wonderfully turn the proud heart to a humble heart, just as he did for Paul.