November 27 Daily Devotional

Strong in the strength which God supplies
Through His eternal Son

This is a staggering statement—‘I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me’ (Philippians 4:13). It is a statement that is characterized at one and the same time by a sense of triumph and by humility. He sounds at first as if he were boasting, and yet when you look at his statement again you will find that it is one of the most glorious and striking tributes that he has ever paid anywhere to his Lord and Master.... It at one and the same time exhorts us to rejoice, to make our boast, and yet to be humble and to be lowly. And there is no contradiction, because the boast of the Christian is not in himself but in the Lord.

Paul was very fond of saying that. Take, for instance, the statement: ‘God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ’, or again: ‘He that glorieth let him glory in the Lord’. There is the exhortation on the one hand for us to be boasting; yes, but always boasting in Him.

... The Authorized Version ... does not really bring out the particular shade of meaning the Apostle was anxious to convey. It says: ‘I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me’ ... a better translation would be: ‘I am strong for all things in the One who constantly infuses strength into me’.... What the Apostle is really saying is not so much that he can do certain things himself, as that he is enabled to do certain things, indeed all things, by this One who infuses His strength into him.... The real secret, says Paul, which I have discovered is that I am made strong for all things in the One who constantly is infusing strength into me.

Spiritual Depression, pp. 289–91