Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Corinthians 1-4.

There is a lot of valuable stuff in this passage, but I am going to focus on what Paul writes in chapter three verses four and five.

Such confidence we have through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God.

First I want to point out that Paul tells us that we should have confidence.  We should not be timid as followers of Christ, but we also should not be arrogant.  We should have confidence that we will be able to accomplish whatever task God has given us.  This confidence does not derive from our own abilities.  So, we should not necessarily believe that we have better skills to perform a task than others.  God does not call us to do something because we are better than someone else.  God calls us to a particular task so that others can be shown His power (or, perhaps to show us His power).  Paul goes on in chapter four to expand on this point.  He tells us that he refused to use deception or distortion to bring people to faith in Christ and calls on us to do likewise.  Many will refuse to see the light of the Gospel, but that is not our problem.  He writes that we should allow Christ’s light to shine through us, not attempting to gain glory for ourselves but to allow people to see and glorify God through what they see in us.  Our competence to do the tasks which God has set before us does not come from ourselves.  Rather, we can confidently believe that we will accomplish the tasks God has given us because His Spirit will work through us.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.