Reformed Doctrine Daily Devotions

Today’s devotion comes from 1 Corinthians 15:9-11.

 

“⁹ For I am the least of the apostles, and not fit 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 toward me did not prove vain;  but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me.

 

¹¹ Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.”  1 Corinthians 15:9-11.

 

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Today’s Scripture focuses on “the grace of God” which is mentioned twice and which is demonstrated in Paul’s life.

 

Paul did not use that grace as an excuse for laziness, and neither should we.  Paul stated that:  “His grace toward me did not prove vain;  but I labored even more than all of them”.  But then, Paul quickly added:  “yet not I, but the grace of God with me”.  

 

Paul was not boasting.  He previously “set the stage” by declaring that he was “the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God”.  And, he concluded:  “Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.” 

 

Paul recognized that “the grace of God” deserved the credit for whatever success was accomplished.  When Paul states:  “Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.”, we remember what he wrote earlier in this book of 1 Corinthians.  “What then is Apollos?  And what is Paul?  Servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one.  I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth.  So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth.”  1 Corinthians 3:5-7. 

 

 

First, we were created by God for the specific good works that He gifts us and otherwise also enables us to do.  “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”  Ephesians 2:10.

 

Second, God gives us the will to do His will.  God works within us.  “for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.”  Philippians 2:13.  

 

Putting these two things together using a musical analogy, God gives us each different musical instruments (“we are His workmanship”), and then God’s Spirit blows through each instrument (“to will and to work for His good pleasure”) to combine and orchestrate the two into beautiful music.  “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit.  And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord.  There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons.  But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”  1 Corinthians 12:5-7.

 

In briefest summary, all is accomplished by “the grace of God”.  It is all “His doing”.  “But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, “LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD.”  1 Corinthians 1:30-31.