What do you have that God hasn’t given you?
—1 Corinthians 4:7
His arrogance was repugnant. “I’m president of this bank,” he crowed. “My dad was just a lowly barber.”
“Let another praise you, and not your own mouth” (Prv 27:2).
Eugene Peterson paraphrased 1 Corinthians 4:7 this way: “Isn’t everything you have and everything you are sheer gifts from God? So what’s the point of all this comparing and competing?”
King David and his followers gave liberally to the temple building fund. David prayed: “Who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand. . . . all of it belongs to you” (1 Chr 29:14, 16).
Even the ability to make a living is a gift from God (Dt 8:18).
What we have and what we are—
are gifts, not achievements.