"Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God" (2 Cor. 3:5).
False teachers at Corinth had accused Paul of being arrogant and self-confident. Paul answered his critics by maintaining that he was indeed confident in his ministry but not because of his own abilities. He remained confident because his sufficiency was in Christ. Everything he was and everything he did came from God, who alone can change the hearts of sinners.
The conversions at Corinth shone forth as a testimony of God’s power, which came to them through Paul’s ministry. They were an “epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men.” Paul did not need a letter of commendation by men; the effects of his ministry served that purpose. As a result, he did not base his confidence in himself, but in the powerful work of Christ. “This confidence he had through Christ,” Hodge wrote. “It was not self-confidence. It was not the consciousness of superior excellence; but a conviction of the truth of the Gospel and of the reality of that vocation which he had received from Christ. This confidence of the apostle that he was what God had called him to be, an able or fit minister of the Gospel, was not a trait of natural character; it was not a conclusion from his inward and outward experience; it was one of the forms in which the Spirit of God which was in him manifested itself; just as the Spirit manifested itself in his humility, faith, courage, or constancy.”
We can determine whether such confidence in our ministry is self-inflation or the strength of God by our motives and attitudes. If our confidence is in ourselves, we will be prideful, arrogant, indifferent, jealous, and contemptuous of others. If it is of God, we will be humble, meek, long-suffering, willing to be the least, and marked by the fruit of the Spirit; we will mirror the sentiments of Paul who said, “But by the grace of God I am what I am” (1 Cor. 15:10).
In all things, whether we be a teacher, prayer warrior, or pastor, our sufficiency is in God alone. Our ministries are effective only through His power and according to His design. When pride begins to creep into our motivations, when we seek self-glory even in the slightest, our confidence no longer resides in Christ but it is in ourselves; and such confidence will never bear the fruit of a faithful and God-centered ministry.
What are your motives and attitudes concerning who you are and what you do? Do you seek to exalt yourself in any way? Do you desire to be praised by men? Take some time to sift through your motivations in whatever you do. Ask God for humility and a willingness to be the least of all that He might work powerfully through you.
