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- 📖 Hard Work or God’s Grace?
📖 Hard Work or God’s Grace?
Which is correct?
Aaron Boyle
May 02, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
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Hard Work or God’s Grace?
Today I want to talk about this verse from Paul in 1 Cor 15:10
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.
This verse paints a fascinating picture of the duality of Christian life. A duality that sometimes is easy to forget.
Paul makes a point that he worked harder than any other apostle – so that God's grace toward him may not be in vain.
Does that sentence convict you, because it does convict me.
May his grace not be in vain
How often do you think about working for God’s Kingdom with every ounce of energy you have? To give all you have so that God's wonderful grace toward you would not be in vain? That you would be “worthy of the calling to which you have been called” (Eph 4:1).
I don’t think about it often enough.
Acting out of love for God – absolutely. But that his grace would not be in vain? That I would live up to the standard, to the potential, to the magnificent grace he has bestowed upon me – that is piercing to the soul.
Yet His grace sustains us
And yet, Paul carries on. In case you think he is now all about works, and living by the flesh, he quickly shuts down the argument.
“though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”
It is God's grace that gives the strength to carry on, the power to live for Him. It is not our own doing.
The duality of the Christian life.
Christians often like to think in black and white terms. Was Jesus God or human, is God love or justice, is it by my own flesh or by God's grace?
But the truth of many of these answers lies in a duality that we must learn to accept.
The answer is often both.
Christ Pantocrater: The two different facial expressions on either side of Christ's face depict Christ as the bearer of mercy and grace (left half) and Christ as the dreaded judge of unrepentant sinners (right side).
And taking one view more extreme than the other can lead us down dangerous theological paths. Both are important to remember.
God calls us to work hard for his kingdom. We can’t just sit back and say, “God has it, I am saved by His grace.” But we also must know and understand that all we do for Him is not us – it is his grace sustaining us.
Our God is not a God who fits in our little boxes of categorization.
He is what he is.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts
Be Blessed,
Aaron
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