Grace turns boasting upside down. When we live according to God’s grace (and especially according to His gift of salvation in Christ), we recognize that everything we have is a gift from God (1 Cor. 4:7); we can do nothing on our own (John 15:5); weakness is the way of strength (2 Cor. 12:10); all things work together for good for those who love God (Rom. 8:28); we live by faith and not by sight (2 Cor. 5:7); and whatever we do, we do for the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31).
So much of our trouble in the Christian life involves the use of possessive pronouns. J.C. Ryle wrote in his Expository Thoughts on Mark: “The life of Christianity . . . consists in possessive pronouns. It is one thing to say ‘Christ is a Savior.’ It is quite another to say ‘He is my Savior and my Lord.’” In other words, everything we need for the Christian life is found in being able to speak about Jesus with possessive pronouns. But at the same time, we also get ourselves into trouble when we use possessive pronouns in other ways. We talk about my plans and my time and my rights, and we set ourselves up for disappointment and dissatisfaction when things don’t go our way. It is the problem of presumption, and at the heart of it is the old, stubborn struggle against pride.
Presumption is not a new problem. When the Apostle James wrote to Christians living in the first century, he warned them about dangers that continue to plague Christians in the twenty-first century—dangers such as a sharp tongue and a materialistic lifestyle and boasting about the future. James wrote:
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. (James 4:13–16)