The Grace of God in You
Before social media, the apostle Paul was well acquainted with the humble reality of himself. He found his middle ground in the grace of God through Christ. In 1 Corinthians 15:9–10 Paul says,
For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.
Paul didn’t think less of himself for his past failures nor did he condemn himself for being a horrible person and then get depressed. But he didn’t self-correct himself by going to the other end of the seesaw by thinking too highly of himself. Instead, Paul saw his entire life through the lens of grace.
It was grace that stopped his persecuting and it was grace that made him an apostle. Grace working through him made him work hard and grace made him who he was. He could accept who he was—strengths and weaknesses, past, present and future—through the reality of God’s grace through Christ. He could only accept his true self once he humbly embraced the grace of God.
Christ purchased this grace for us at the cross where the ugly reality of ourselves met with the beautiful reality of Jesus. He took away the penalty of our ugly reality and transposed the grace of his beautiful reality onto us. Who we are in Christ is now our ultimate reality. We can say with Paul, “I am what I am through the grace of God.” Now that’s something to tweet about.
