By His Grace

DEVOTION

1 CORINTHIANS

BY HIS GRACE

1 Cor 15:9-11

9 For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them — yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. 11 Whether, then, it was I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.

NIV

It surely is a good thing not to have any personal pride in any accomplishments that we achieve within the Body of Christ. Maybe that should apply to our whole life as well. It is by the grace of God we are who we are, and surely we must admit that it is by his grace that our lives have been changed. If the grace of God has not had an effect on our lives, than we need to do some real soul searching. It would appear the lesson for us here is not to get so filled with our own abilities that we think we are someone special, or better than others because of some special talent or skill we exhibit. It also serves to show us that we should not get so catch up in pride thinking we are so spiritual, or holy and that sin no longer has a grip in our lives, for pride in any form about anything is sin too. We can see a real sense of humility in this passage even in the fact of stated the facts of working harder than any other, for it was not him but the grace of God that was in him. Perhaps we should simply accept the fact that all we are, all we do, is because of the grace of God working in us, and we should make sure we acknowledge that before God and men. It may be the worst thing we can do is to applaud someone who has ministered in some form of music in a worship service, or tell a preacher he did a good job, or it was a good message. Maybe we should say something like, God really used you today, and his grace was pouring out of you. Maybe when we are used by God and someone praises us in some manner, we need to express that it was not us, but the grace of God. We need to remember that this grace is not unmerited favor, but the divine influence on our hearts and how that is expressed in our lives. That is what Paul is taking about, that is what we need to see, and understand about our lives. We are who we are not because of what we have done, but because of what God has done for us, in us and though us. When we quote that we can do all things through Christ Jesus who strengthens us, do we really mean we can, or do we mean we can because of God? We are because of God’s grace.