I am who I am because....

This is my wife’s first photograph with her new camera. It is yours truly at Gatwick airport waiting ‘patiently’ for our flight to go on holiday. I was actually making a note of a large advertisement for a mobile phone company. It read “I am who I am because of everyone.”

The meaning of this as an advertisement for a mobile phone was lost on me, but I was intrigued by this message. Am I am who I am because of everyone? I don’t think so!

Certainly the apostle Paul would not have said: “I am who I am because of everyone.”

Paul never forgot his past and in 1 Corinthians 15 wrote: For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.

This applies to all of us who know Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour – well we have probably not worked as hard as Paul and maybe we didn’t persecute the church, but we can say “by the grace of God I am what I am.”

Question is: do we? Or do we think of our own efforts with a certain pride?