Sufficient New Year’s Resolutions
3 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you, or from you? 2 You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. 3 And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. 4 Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. 5 Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, 6 who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
2 Corinthians 3:1–6 ESV
So much about life has to do with our confidence in who we are. If we have to have reassurance from others that we are doing a good job, or doing right, or are accepted, we spend a lot of time paying attention to others reactions instead of our own actions. In this letter, Paul is asking “do I need to show you credentials?” and he answers himself “you yourselves are all the credentials we need!”
As we get into the season of making New Year’s resolutions, consider how many of them are to convince other people of something about yourself. Paul says that all of his sufficiency comes from God. That means everything that makes him ‘good enough’ is from God. His sufficiency, his ability, his credentials and his authority all come from God.
If all of your ability and sufficiency comes from God, shouldn’t all of your wishes for self-improvement be pointed toward improving your relationship and your closeness to God? In all of these hopes, maturity in the knowledge and the love of God becomes foremost when we discover He is the source of every good thing.
Use this week as a practice, and then set out in the new year to grow in the Lord. You will be transformed into a letter from Him to others, and your identity will be rooted deeper in the most stable thing in all existence.
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