I can do all things through him who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:13)
Some have called this the Superman verse. People invoke it to say that they can do anything and everything, as long as Christ is giving them the ability to do it. It’s a great motivational verse. As great as that message sounds, it’s not what Paul meant when you read the verse in its context.
I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me. You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity. 11 Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. 12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. 13 I can do all things through him who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:10-13)
Ben Witherington observes that the Greek does not say “do.” The only verb in the Greek is ischuo, which means “to be able, strong, healthy, valid, powerful.” A literal rendering of the verse is “I am able all things in Him who empowers me.” Read literally, it doesn’t make any sense. Able to do what? The helping verb is missing, and can only be supplied by the surrounding context.
Paul tells us what he was able to do. He was had learned to be content in any state he found himself in. He learned to endure both the good and the bad through Christ’s empowerment. The meaning of Philippians 4:13 then, is “I am able to be content/endure all things in Him who empowers me.”
This verse affirms our ability to persevere through the good and the bad by trusting in Christ, not our ability to accomplish any feat we want as long as it is done “in Christ.”
Keep it in context….
Thinking to Believe 
January 18, 2017 at 10:23 am
Even with your explanation and with your substitution of verbs the bottom line is that one can do the good the bad and the ugly when empowered by Jesus.
I don’t see any change in the context “interpreted” before your “explanation” and subsequently interpreted after would change at all. What Paul said and meant others can and more likely than not will, interpret the verse to mean that they can do, endure, able to be content with anything they attempt to do, endure, able to be content with anything they attempt to do with Christ’s empowerment, in the same way that Paul did. In other words trusting in Christ provides them the ability to accomplish any feat within themselves or outside themselves to which they direct their efforts…..as long as it is “in Christ”.
Am I missing something here?
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January 18, 2017 at 5:31 pm
Powerful verse, since Christ dwells in us (Christians) we can depend on, lean on and trust in Him to do, get through and endure all things.
This doesn’t mean we are passive agents in this world, rather, we need to understand that in whatever we do, Christ is with us and is in us. Once we realize that, we realize that He is more than just a helper but is in fact our very life that we can draw from. Jesus is with us behind every door and every decision, whether we botch it up or not.
Naz
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January 18, 2017 at 8:35 pm
Naz:
Another way of saying what you said again:
If I wanted to give you a rest and you were digging a hole in the ground, how’d you think I’d do it.? Here you are, in the hole digging and I want to give you a rest. Sing a little ditty on the edge of the hole? That wouldn’t give you a rest, that would give you a heart attack. Ten rules and regulations on a piece of paper and let it flutter into the dirt? Uh uh. New concepts on digging? Forget it. I could give you a magnificent demonstration of a new technic so that you could throw it over your right shoulder without getting it in your left eye. How about that? That would only frustrate you. There’s only one way I could give you a rest if you were in a hole digging and that is if you get out and let me get in, if you dropped the spade and let me pick it up, you vacate and let me occupy, then I could give you a rest. You bow out and you bow Christ in. You say Lord Jesus thank you. You made me this way. Adam in his stupidity threw it all back into your face. And I was part of the monstrosity humanity produced but in infinite mercy you assumed my humanity. So that risen from near death as Divine Logic you could come and inhabit my humanity, share your life with me, not give me strength, be my strength, not give me victory but be my victory, Thank you. And I’m going to learn how to walk in the spirit. Be being filled with the holy ghost, exposing every situation with your adequacy, letting you demonstrate that you’re big enough for the job. It’s going to be fantastic.
That’s the Christian life. For every step you take for every new situation, you get out and you let him get in, you vacate and he occupies, You say thank you Lord, you may need hands, here they are, you may need feet, here they are, you may need lips, here they are, you may need a mind to think with, a heart to love with and I’m available. And you’re in business. You’re big enough, Thanks.
And he moves into that situation and demonstrates his marvelous integrity and that experience becomes a memory and in the next step into a new situation, you thank him again, you handled the last situation in a most marvelous way and I now have a supreme, unshatterable confidence that you can do now what you did then, thanks, you’re in business. I vacate and you occupy. And once more he demonstrates his integrity and now you’ve got two experiences and two memories, two memories to undergo faith on the next situation. And this is really a corker. Ten times worse . Then you say Lord Jesus, fantastic, here’s a chance for you to be ten times bigger than you were last time. Marvellous. And so one step at a time you vacate and he occupies, you vacate and he occupies, you vacate and he occupies. You vacate and he occupies and you discover the Christian life is one vacation after another. Until you’re finally always on vacation and he’s always in business. And you’ve discovered the secret of living miraculously.
And if you’re a preacher next Sunday you won’t get into the pulpit, Christ will, just borrowing the flesh and blood of a forgiven sinner. Through whose lips he’s going to make articulate what he wants to say. Your kids will wake up tomorrow and discover they got a new Mom and a new Dad because Christ clothing himself with their humanity is demonstrably at home in the family and you kids, the other youngsters at school are going to wonder what hit you as in your presence they suddenly become aware that Jesus is alive not just in heaven but in you. Sanctified.
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January 21, 2017 at 11:39 am
Leo, I understand what you are saying in a general sense I agree with you.
However, what’s even more wonderful about the gospel is that we don’t have to “vacate” or move out of the way. We are united with Christ in every situation. It’s not all of Him and none of me, it’s all of Him and all of me because I’m a new creation now with a pure heart at the core and Jesus is not ashamed to call me brother. I’m not saying this to build up our egos, but Christ died so that we would be glorified with Him. Wasn’t that His prayer in John 17?
Also, regarding the Holy Spirit, this would not be available to us unless Christ died and rose again glorified. A “near death” experience is scripturally not good enough for the gospel to work.
Joh 7:38 He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.
Joh 7:39 (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)
Naz
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January 21, 2017 at 2:29 pm
Naz:
I know you want to believe that Christ died because that is what satisfies you that the gospel can only work that way but I believe you are wrong. What made it work was that people believed that he had died and that was all that was required in order for the second part of the crucifixion to work and that second part was when he went to them alive, not dead and not risen from the dead but risen from “the place of the dead” and which they had surely assumed that Jesus was indeed dead when the tomb door was sealed. Not so. He appeared alive because he was alive and had not died……….. in a similar way that Lazarus was not dead when he was entombed but “arose from the place of the dead” because he was still alive.
As to the prayer of John 17. Jesus may have said some of the things attributed to him but there is way, way too much repetitiveness and it seems the author was trying over and over and over again as the style of repetitive prayer was the way…..even Jesus noted this when he said in
“But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.” (Matt 6:7)
“the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me”
“they are thine and thine are mine”
“I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.”
“And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.”
“those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.”
“those that thou gavest me I have kept,…..”
” I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me:”
“the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me.”
Man if that does not sound like repetitive nonsense from clerical sermonizing, well!
I mean this is so unlike Jesus, reading John 17 is so boring. People are familiar with this kind of speaking in hollow walls of church and cathedrals where the drone of monotone send people into sleep.
Like I have stated before: “So it was the Old Testament the Lord Jesus took in his hand and yet the amazing thing is this: though this was that book from which the others were accustomed to preaching, when they listened to the Lord Jesus they were astonished,. For it says in the last verse in that chapter that he taught them as one having authority. Not as the Scribes; in other words, when the Lord Jesus got up, he spoke as though he said what he meant and meant what he said and had the right to say it. Nothing apologetic; he didn’t throw out a few suggestions. He didn’t say “I suppose”, “Maybe”, “I think”. His was a proclamation, not like the Scribe. When the professional preachers got up they nestled in the corner of their pew and went for a quiet doze hoping they’d wake up just before the benediction and preferably after the offering. But when the Lord Jesus,; when he got up, everybody was on the edge of their seat wondering what AMAZING thing he’d say next. He was an astonishing preacher.”
John 17 was not Jesus speaking in my humble opinion.
As to John 7:38 ………..that is a quote from Isaiah and it may or may not have been said by Jesus because in the next verse John 7:39 is in parenthesis denoting a commentary by the author as well.
Amen Naz
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January 21, 2017 at 3:15 pm
Naz:
Words are tools in an information war and facts are fungible to accommodate interpretations of different understandings which is why there are While religion does not have a monopoly of fudging they have no immunity against it.
Until the Protestant Reformation, the Christian church was largely composed of only two groups or “denominations”: the Roman Catholic Church in the west and the Greek Orthodox Church in the east. With the Reformation, however, other Christian denominations grew up.
The Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary estimated 34,000 denominations in 2000, rising to an estimated 43,000 in 2012. These numbers have exploded from 1,600 in the year 1900.
Why that is, I submit, is the financial security religious investors see available around the sprouting of Mega Church Reality Shows with their own televised production facilities.
The founding pastor of the world’s largest Pentecostal congregation has been sentenced to three years in prison for embezzling 13 billion won (US$12 million) in church funds.
David Yonggi Cho, 78, founded Yoido Full Gospel Church, an Assemblies of God-affiliated denomination that has grown to more than 1 million members. Last year, CT noted how the pastor emeritus faced indictment for an alleged stock scheme with his son.
Last Thursday, the Seoul pastor was convicted of embezzlement as part of a scheme in which he arranged for the church to buy stock from his son Cho Hee-jun at more than three times the market price.
Hee-jun was sentenced to three years in prison for colluding with his father. Hee-jun, 49, previously served as chairman of the Yeongsan Christian Cultural Center.
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January 21, 2017 at 3:18 pm
correction: paragraph one should read “…….of different understandings which is why there are”….so many denominations and independent churches around America and the world in general.,,,,,,,”While religion does not have a monopoly of fudging the facts, they have no immunity against it either.”
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January 23, 2017 at 6:30 am
Leo, do you see what you are saying….
“I know you want to believe that Christ died because that is what satisfies you that the gospel can only work that way but I believe you are wrong. What made it work was that people believed that he had died and that was all that was required in order for the second part of the crucifixion to work….”
You are making Jesus out to be a liar and a fraud and that’s what He would be if He just tried to make people believe He was dead. We are not saved by merely believing something, you have said that yourself a million times, we are saved by what Christ did and nothing else. Our faith in Him, His death and resurrection allows us to receive the eternal life He is offering. The salvation Christ offers through the gospel is not us changing the way we think about ourselves, it’s Christ changing our identity through the resurrection and the indwelling Holy Spirit. Only after this can we begin to think differently of ourselves. You cannot bypass the death and resurrection, that is the core and the very means by which people are saved and pass from darkness to light.
As Paul said, you are preaching another Jesus and a different gospel.
Naz
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January 23, 2017 at 7:46 am
Naz:
I told you a million times that you restored to your true humanity by the life and message of Jesus…you said a million time it was about his death and resurrection. Liar and fraud are your words and have nothing in common with me or Jesus. I told you Jesus said that the only sign given would be the sign of Jonah………..
“….But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish (metaphor), so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth(metaphor). (Matt 12:38-41)
……….who was saved from the belly of Sheol and survived the ocean storm.
And you cannot bring yourself to listen and understand what Jesus himself said after he recovered from the wounds of his ordeal when he appeared to the disciples ALIVE! Not dead!
“Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. (Lk 24:39)
“….We are not saved by merely believing something….”) But yes you are Naz because that is the dogma of “Church Teaching” not reality of Christ. And not the reality of your own conclusion either. You believe in a death and a resurrection from death….but it was a resurrection from the place of the dead like the Belly of the Fish Belly of Sheol(metaphor like the Heart of the Earth)…struggling to stay alive like Jonah.
You conveniently forget the life and message of Jesus and quote incessantly about the death and use all the NT testimonies from the Disciples from Acts onward who themselves did not know the truth; it was enough for them to believe in a resurrection from the dead, like you, to solidify their mindset….They were already predisposed to belief about being raised from the dead as they were already preaching that Lazarus was raised from the dead which also was not a death but he was raised from the place of the dead…..alive!
And you too are predisposed to the death and resurrection after death, and that’s all you have to hang your hat on which would otherwise crumble if you opened you eyes and mind to reality. So my common sense allows me to allow Jesus message and life to fill my life and mind but you cannot because you are not free. The Truth will set you free but only if you accept it and you are not there yet Naz, nor are the billions around the world still cloaked in the misty web of obfuscation and haziness of the smoke and mirrors of church dogma that has always used deceit of superstition and supernaturalism to promote their religious insanity that cannot admit when they are wrong, Galileo is a prime example more than two hundred years before they accepted that the earth revolves around the sun. How smart is that? And it doesn’t matter if you are following the superstition of the Bible, the Torah or the Koran or whatever other book called “Holy”
And it is that same Church that makes you believe the nonsense you continually try to justify. Trump lies, tells you it the truth and his surrogates go around the country defending the lies. It’s the way of the world of the masses with closed eyes, a closed mind and a loss of humanity and common sense. That’s why you had 62,979,879 million people who voted for Trump. They believed the lies and that was enough to make him victorious in the electoral college calculus.
I know it’s a hard pill to swallow; it’s like trying to give up smoking; it’s an addiction and your mind is enthralled in a trance. It’s called the hypnotic effect of ritualistic repetition over and over and over…that eventually you accept the lie as the truth. Religious Ritualism is the Psychological Ploy of Popes, Priests, Preachers and Proselytes.
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January 23, 2017 at 8:08 am
Naz:
Paul never met Jesus and did not know Jesus anymore than you do. Paul may very well have been at the trial of Jesus just as he was at the religious trial of Stephen when the righteousness of the religious theocrats murdered Stephen by stoning him to death.
Acts 7: 57 The council members shouted and covered their ears. At once they all attacked Stephen
58 and dragged him out of the city. Then they started throwing stones at him. The men who had brought charges against him put their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.
Acts 8 1 Saul approved the stoning of Stephen.
Saul was right there, congratulating the killers, as the rocks rained down.
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January 25, 2017 at 6:51 am
Leo, you are mistaken, Saul (Paul) encounters the risen Christ on the Damascus road…..
Naz
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January 25, 2017 at 9:26 pm
Naz:
Please give me a break…..what credibility is that? A one man story about his saving moment? There are thousands of stories circulating about encounters; do you think that a story of an encounter is any more plausible two thousand years ago than in today’s churches, about the appearance of Jesus in a Potato?Or a piece of pizza? I don’t think so.
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January 26, 2017 at 6:03 am
Leo, whatever……enjoy your cherry picking..don’t choke on the pits…
Naz
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January 26, 2017 at 11:11 am
Naz:
You do realize that Jesus had already left the country in a cloud (of dust) that took him from their (the Disciples) sight as he “ascended” over the horizon. Jesus’s entourage left the area and they saw him no more. Within three or fours weeks Jesus would have been in Italy or France. Paul did not see or hear Jesus anymore than Moses saw or heard God at the burning bush so remember the trickery of artful presentations to get a message across.
In biblical times, people believed that the Earth was relatively flat suspended by columns above “the abyss.” Over the earth was a rigid firmament that separated Heaven from the Earth. It was a natural assumption that one is physically closest to God when one is at the top of a mountain or hill. This is seen in the story of Mount Sinai, the Tower of Babel. The Hebrew Scriptures contain many references to “high places” as the location of worship. So it was natural that the early Christian church would assume that when Jesus ascended to Heaven, he would have left from the summit of a hill or mountain.
Stay clear of silly stories that get dressed up as religion.
In Latin there is a saying: “Nemo accendit nisi ipse ardet,” that is, “no one can kindle another, unless he himself burns.” Jesus once said, “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” (Luke 12:49) Also, words of his are known outside the New Testament: “He who is near me is near the fire; and he who is far from me is far from the kingdom of God.”
We are called to light that fire using common sense and clear understanding but not, most certainly not, with supernatural religious eyes full of nonsensical impossible accounts of suspending the Laws of Physics and the Laws of Nature.
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January 26, 2017 at 11:20 am
Naz:
Jesus said:
“Count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—give a cheer, even!—for though they don’t like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble”
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January 27, 2017 at 6:32 am
What’s your point …..
Naz
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January 27, 2017 at 8:53 am
Stay clear of silly stories that get dressed up as religion; get common sense like Jesus, not supernatural sense like religion.
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January 27, 2017 at 9:55 am
Common sense ? Huh ? Explain this ?
Mat 8:23 And when he was entered into a ship, his disciples followed him.
Mat 8:24 And, behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves: but he was asleep.
Mat 8:25 And his disciples came to him, and awoke him, saying, Lord, save us: we perish.
Mat 8:26 And he saith unto them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith? Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm.
Mat 8:27 But the men marvelled, saying, What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him!
Leo can you do that ?
Naz
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January 27, 2017 at 10:15 am
No Naz:
I cannot do that and you cannot do that and neither can anybody else do that. I am guided by Jesus’s common sense you are guided by an incessant appetite for the morbidly fictitious account, embellishment or fabrication to suit the supernatural mind but such were the minds of men in those days as they were educated by tradition for thousands of years and passed to posterity, as it still appears to suit the minds of men today, the gullible and the weak minded of those led by fiction and nonsensical accounts of religious men for the sake of their supernatural dogma regardless if they have to insert fake accounts into scripture to carry on the HOAX.
Matthew didn’t write that account, some scribe, bishop or priest wrote like the carnival barker scribes who wrote that a piece of the real crucifixion cross was found and a piece of it given to the Pope who in turn gave it to Ireland.
“…….A relic of the “True Cross” on which Jesus was crucified has been venerated in Waterford City for over 1,000 years, allegedly given to the king of Munster by Pope Paschal II in the 11th century.
However, an Oxford University radiocarbon expert, professor Tom Higham, has now carried out an examination of the wooden cross using Oxford’s radiocarbon accelerator unit.
He did so at the behest of CNN, who ran a series called “Finding Jesus” over several nights last week.
His findings will deeply disappoint those who venerate the sacred item. The radiocarbon accelerator dates the relic not to the time of Christ but over one thousand years later to the 11th century.
Higham stated he was “disappointed” by the revelation but was hopeful that other relics might date back to the beginning of Christianity.
Candida Moss, Professor of New Testament and early Christianity at Notre Dame, was not surprised at the findings.
“There are churches all over the world that claim to have fragments or splinters of the true cross,” she said. “These aren’t being carbon dated and there are a few reasons why. First, carbon dating is expensive, and your average church doesn’t have the funds for this kind of endeavor. Second, carbon dating is seen as intrusive and a little destructive.
“Even if only about 10 milligrams of wood are needed, you’re still chipping away at a holy object. This isn’t something that churches like to do, especially as – and this leads me to my third point – almost all carbon dating tests end up discrediting the relics that are being tested. So, it’s not in the best interest of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches that claim to possess relics to have them tested,” she told CNN……”
You are living in a fantasy world that has taken away your common sense and replaced with Snow White and Peter Rabbit and the gullible may as read Three Blind Mice for all the good the bible does for them.
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January 27, 2017 at 10:20 am
“I cannot do that and you cannot do that and neither can anybody else do that.”
You are correct Leo.
Naz
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