I spent most of my life either gaining qualifications or teaching others to gain qualifications. Examinations were a large part of my life as the approved way of recognising a person had reached a certain standard of knowledge or ability. A qualification is, in effect, a shortcut for someone to assess your competence; it’s supposedly shorthand to inform others what you are capable of doing in a particular area.
Yet examinations are notoriously difficult to formulate in such a way as to be entirely reliable: some people may not be good at writing answers but be perfectly knowledgeable and competent in other areas; others may be so nervous during an examination that their true skills are not reflected properly in that time-limited pressure-cooker situation. Examinations are a ‘snapshot’ measure of competence which can fail to take into account a whole raft of things which are important to know. I became very disillusioned with the format of some public examinations which did not, in my opinion, give people the skills they actually needed to survive in the real world, even if their paper results were glowing.
Being qualified to do something means to be competent in a particular area, and this is often acquired only through ongoing diligence and practice, honed over years.
In the Christian life, however, competence or sufficiency does not merely come from our own skills, knowledge or effort, important though these are. There is a saying that ‘God does not not call the qualified; He qualifies the called.’ This is not to say we should not strive for competence and excellence in all we do, but it does reflect what Paul says to the Corinthians that ‘we are not competent in ourselve to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God.’ (2 Cor 3:5) We must never become reliant on our own skills or qualifications but must understand that it is God who makes us competent. (2 Cor 5:6)
There are two extremes we can hold when it comes to this matter. We can feel proud of our achievements, of our competence and come to believe that success is all down to our excellence – but then we are likely to end up flat on our faces: ‘if you think you’re standing firm, be careful you don’t fall!’ (1 Cor 10;12) Or we can feel utterly useless and inadequate, daunted by the tasks God gives us and haunted by a feeling that we are not qualified to do these. The good news is that Christian service is not defined by qualifications. God is the One who ‘qualifies’ us (see Col 1:12). He is the One who makes us fit for purpose and He is able to take everything we offer to Him (however ‘inadequate’ we may feel it to be) and turn it into something greater than the sum of its parts. Are you qualified to serve God? Not by your own righteousness or skills, but by God’s grace, most definitely!
