By Grace I Am What I Am

The man who once dragged Christians to prison became the man who planted churches across an empire, and he refused to take credit for either version of himself. Listen to how Paul introduces himself in his own words: "But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me" (1 Corinthians 15:10, NKJV).

One verse earlier, Paul called himself the least of the apostles, a man not worthy of the title because he persecuted the church of God. He did not hide the before picture. He stood next to it in public and let grace tell the story. That is what makes his testimony so strong: he never edited out the prison guard, the approval of a stoning, or the years spent fighting the very gospel he ended up preaching. Grace does not need a cleaned-up past to work with. It works with the real one, and then it makes the real one into a witness.

This is Day 28 of our series on the grace of God, and it is the day grace stops being only a pardon and starts being an identity. Some of you still introduce yourself by your worst chapter: the addict, the failure, the one who walked away, the one who almost ruined everything. Paul had a chapter darker than most, and grace did not just forgive it. Grace rewrote the introduction entirely. When somebody asked Paul who he was, he did not say a Pharisee, a Roman citizen, or a former persecutor. He said, in effect: I am what grace made me.

And notice that the grace was not wasted on him. "His grace toward me was not in vain" means it produced something: labor, travel, churches, letters, a life poured out. Grace that truly lands always gets up and goes to work, and it works with a strange confidence, as if God Himself is the one doing it, because He is. Paul worked harder than all of them and then gave God the credit in the same breath. That is not a contradiction. That is the engine of the Christian life: grace received becomes grace at work.

So today, stop apologizing for a past that grace has already answered, and stop introducing yourself by a name Jesus no longer calls you. You are not who you were, and you are not yet who you will be. You are, right now, what the grace of God has made you, and that same grace is still with you on the job, still working, still not in vain.

Prayer: Father, thank You that my identity is not my past. By Your grace I am what I am, and I ask You to keep that grace working in me today, not in vain, but producing fruit that points back to You. Teach me to introduce myself the way Paul did: as a trophy of grace. In Jesus' name, Amen.