You know Philippians 4:13. But did you know Paul wrote it about going hungry and having plenty, while he was a prisoner?
13 I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
Philippians 4:13, World English Bible
The story around it
Paul knew Philippi from the inside of its jail.
On his first visit he and Silas were dragged before the magistrates, stripped and “beaten with rods”. After many blows they were locked in the inner cell with their feet in the stocks. Then comes one of the most remarkable sentences in the book of Acts: “But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.”
Before morning the jailer himself had washed their wounds and been baptized.
Years later Paul writes to the church that grew out of that night. He is a prisoner again. He tells them he has learned to be content, full or hungry, in plenty or in need. So when the believers in Philippi first read “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”, they were reading the words of a man who had sung in their own prison.
Drawn from the Bible itself.
The moment
Paul is writing from custody. Earlier in the letter he mentions “my bonds”, and says the whole palace guard has come to know why he is held.
He is writing to friends. The church in Philippi had cared for him before, and now, after a time when they could not, they have sent help again. It moves him: “I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your thought for me”. This famous sentence stands in a thank-you letter. He wants them to know two things at once: that their gift mattered to him, and that he would have been at peace without it.
What stands around it
The two verses before it say what the “all things” are: “I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content in it”, and “both to be filled and to be hungry, both to abound and to be in need”.
What happened next
The man who had carried the gift from Philippi almost did not live to go home. Epaphroditus fell ill while he was with Paul, “sick nearly to death”, and when he knew the church had heard of it, he “was very troubled”. He recovered, and Paul writes that God had mercy on them both, “that I might not have sorrow on sorrow.” So Paul sent him back, probably with this very letter, “that when you see him again, you may rejoice”.
How that custody ended, the letter does not say. A later letter in Paul’s name, 2 Timothy, finds him a prisoner again, writing that “the time of my departure has come.” At his first hearing, he says, “no one came to help me, but all left me”. Then he adds, “But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me”. The Greek verb is the same one behind “strengthens” in Philippians 4:13. The strength he had written about in plenty and in hunger was the strength he met when everyone else had gone. Church tradition says he was beheaded in Rome toward the end of Nero’s reign, around the year 67.
The church in Philippi kept his letter. Decades later Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, wrote to them and reminded them that the blessed Paul had once taught among them and, when he was away, had written to them. If they studied that letter carefully, Polycarp said, it would build up their faith. A prisoner’s thank-you note had become a letter a whole church leaned on.
How people have read it
Today many people carry this verse into a contest, an exam or an operating room, and they have drawn real courage from it.
Others have pushed back, sometimes sharply, and said the verse has nothing to do with winning. Paul is speaking of contentment, in hunger as well as in plenty.
There is truth on both sides. The verse is about strength, and Paul means the strength to stay faithful and at peace whatever happens. That includes the hard thing in front of a person. It also includes losing.
Who has argued over it
For years the quarterback Tim Tebow wore this verse on his eye black, until such messages were banned in 2010. Speaking in 2012 about why he had chosen it, he said there’s not a better verse for an athlete. The basketball player Stephen Curry has written a version of it on his shoes since his college days, as a 2019 fact check by PolitiFact confirmed.
In the sixteenth century John Calvin had already drawn a line around the words all things. In his commentary on this letter he wrote: When he says all things, he means merely those things which belong to his calling. The pastor John Piper reads it the same way today: in Paul’s letter, all things includes going hungry, suffering and being in want.
So the verse lives in two places at once: on the field before a game, and in the cell of a prisoner who had learned to be content with little. Both ask it for strength. They differ on what the strength is for.
Background from outside the Bible. The sources are listed below.
What the context adds
The strength Paul speaks of is strength to be content, in hunger as much as in plenty. The verse is about enduring any circumstance with Christ, more than about winning in every one.
What it means for you
Notice the word Paul uses: he has learned to be content. It did not come all at once. It came through hunger and plenty, beatings and friendships, a prison and a gift. If you are not there yet, you have not failed this verse. You are where Paul once was, partway through the lesson.
The strength he describes has a name. It is not willpower, and it is not a mood. It is Christ, and Paul wrote that from custody, not from a stage.
Notice too that Paul was not too proud to be helped. He could be at peace with little, and he still told the friends who sent help, “you did well that you shared in my affliction.” Being content is not the same as standing alone.
Whatever is in front of you, a game, a diagnosis, an empty account or a full one, you can bring it to him as it is and ask for strength to stay faithful in it, however it turns out. If you have a few minutes, read all of Philippians 4 and see what surrounds this verse.
If you do not share this faith, there is still something here worth weighing: a prisoner who had learned to need less, and had not forgotten how to say thank you.
Other verses that say it too
He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Most gladly therefore I will rather glory in my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest on me. Therefore I take pleasure in weaknesses, in injuries, in necessities, in persecutions, and in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then am I strong.
2 Corinthians 12:9-10. Paul begged for his weakness to be taken away and was told instead, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” The same man learned to say “when I am weak, then am I strong.”
For even though the fig tree doesn’t flourish, nor fruit be in the vines, the labor of the olive fails, the fields yield no food, the flocks are cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD. I will be joyful in the God of my salvation! GOD, the Lord, is my strength. He makes my feet like deer’s feet, and enables me to go in high places. For the music director, on my stringed instruments.
Habakkuk 3:17-19. Centuries before Paul, a prophet waiting for invasion pictured empty fields and stalls and still said “yet I will rejoice in the LORD.” Like Paul, he found his strength in God, not in a full harvest.
Be free from the love of money, content with such things as you have, for he has said, “I will in no way leave you, neither will I in any way forsake you.”
Hebrews 13:5. Hebrews roots contentment where Paul does, in a presence rather than a possession: be “content with such things as you have”, because God has said he will not leave.
Why we say this
Bible passages this page rests on, in the World English Bible:
Written with the help of an AI model. Scripture quotations are checked against the World English Bible. Approved by HisFullGlory. Not reviewed by a theological reader.
