As a Pharisee, a servant of the Law, Paul may perhaps have had the personality and physical strength to endure a great deal of abuse. But he could not have experienced the power and strength he speaks of here, for this power, rising from the knowledge of God's glory, was not a mere human ability to endure or resist. It was a lived realization of the resurrection of Jesus.

Grace and sin both reach deep within us. The fulfillment of the letter of the law, even heroic fulfillment, is in danger of remaining merely a peripheral accomplishment, leaving the inner person basically untouched, unconverted. Jesus graphically reminds us that sinful intentions, coming from the heart, make a person guilty even without any external infringement of the Law. Afflictions, doubts, persecutions come to Paul. But in the depth of his person, where grace is at work, he is never in despair, never feels abandoned, never destroyed. It is here too that we all come to experience that the creative and sustaining power of a fully human life, and so of a holy life, comes entirely from God.