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When God called Moses from the burning bush, Moses argued back five times. "Who am I, that I should go?" "They will not believe me." "I am not eloquent." He asked God to send someone else. Every objection was a version of impostor syndrome — the conviction that the person God was calling was the wrong person for the job. God did not counter Moses' self-assessment with flattery. He said: "I will be with thee." The answer to inadequacy was not a revised self-perception. It was the presence of the One who sent him.
Get These Verses Daily — Free“And he said, Certainly I will be with thee; and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: After thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain.”
God's answer to Moses' 'Who am I?' was not a revised self-assessment. It was 'I will be with thee.' The adequacy for the task does not come from Moses becoming someone different. It comes from the presence of the one who sent him.
“But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty;”
The Greek eklekto — 'chosen' — is deliberate selection. Paul says God chooses the unqualified, the weak, and the base on purpose. This is not the fallback strategy when qualified people aren't available. It is the design.
“Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God;”
Paul is writing to people who questioned his credentials. His answer is not to list qualifications but to reframe the source of sufficiency. The Greek ikanos means adequate, capable. Paul says he is not self-adequate. Neither is anyone else, and God never required it.
“But the LORD said unto me, Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak.”
God commanded Jeremiah not to say what Jeremiah was convinced was true about his own inadequacy. The commission comes from outside the self-assessment and does not depend on it. The sending is the answer to the self-doubt.
“I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”
The Greek endunamounti — 'strengtheneth' — is a present participle: ongoing, continuous enabling. Paul is not describing a single empowerment event but a sustained supply. The capacity is not native to Paul. It comes through the one he is connected to.
1 Corinthians 1:27–28 makes the counterintuitive claim central to the New Testament's theology of calling: "God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen." The Greek word for "chosen" — eklekto — is the word for deliberate selection. God's selection process runs opposite to the world's. Choosing the unqualified is not God's fallback — it is his method.
Paul wrote 2 Corinthians 3:5 as someone who had been publicly challenged on his apostolic credentials: "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God." The Greek word ikanos — "sufficient" — means qualified, capable, adequate. Paul explicitly claims not to be self-sufficient. This is not false humility. It is the theological foundation that makes his work possible: adequacy sourced from God rather than from the self.
Commentary is from a charismatic Protestant perspective, drawing on KJV text and public-domain sources including Spurgeon, Andrew Murray, and Matthew Henry.
Jeremiah 1:6–7 contains one of Scripture's clearest conversations about calling and self-doubt. Jeremiah says: "I cannot speak: for I am a child." God responds: "Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak." The command is specific: don't say what Jeremiah was convinced was true about himself. Not because it was false, but because God's sending reframes it. The inadequacy may be real. The commission comes from somewhere else.
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