“I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” Paul wrote that as a prisoner, about being held up through hard times as well as good ones. The “all things” are the states he lists one verse earlier: brought low and having plenty, full and hungry, having more than enough and going without. It is Paul’s word about strength to get through whatever comes, and it was never a promise that you can win whatever you attempt. If it is on your shoes or your wrist, you can keep it there. It covers the loss too.
The list one verse earlier
Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.
Philippians 4:11-12 (KJV)
“Abased” means brought low, and “abound” means having plenty. Paul pairs the good side with the hard side three times: brought low and plenty, full and hungry, plenty and need. In the King James the same two words, “all things,” appear in verse 12 before they appear in verse 13: “every where and in all things I am instructed.” His “all things” are the states on that list. You will not see abased, hungry, or suffer need printed on a wristband, and the hard half is where the verse does its heaviest work.
Paul also says he learned this. “I have learned,” he writes in verse 11, and in verse 12 the King James has “I am instructed,” where the World English Bible puts it as “I have learned the secret.” It was a thing he came to over time, in real places.
Where he was when he wrote it
Paul was a prisoner. He speaks in the first chapter of “my bonds,” and says his bonds in Christ “are manifest in all the palace, and in all other places,” in Philippians 1:13. His hunger had not been a figure of speech, either. Writing to another church he lists what the work had cost him: “in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness,” in 2 Corinthians 11:27.
The last part of the letter thanks the church at Philippi for a gift they had sent him. “I have all, and abound: I am full,” he tells them in verse 18, and near the end of the passage he makes them a promise in return: “my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus,” in verse 19.
Does “all things” mean all things?
It means everything Paul says it means. A writer who tells you he knows how to be hungry and how to be full, and then says he can do all things through Christ, has told you what the “all” is doing in that sentence. The sentence is about being held, on the good side and on the hard side, and Christ is the one doing the holding.
Printed alone on a jersey, the verse reads like a guarantee about the scoreboard, and that reading survives right up until somebody loses. Jeremiah 29:11 gets printed on things too, and it is a letter telling exiles to build where they had been put.
When you lose
Paul had lived on the hard side and wrote this as a prisoner, so the verse does not skip you if you are losing or short this week. What it offers you there is strength to be held, with no promised result. Paul had heard that kind of answer before, in 2 Corinthians 12, when he asked three times to be spared something and was told that God’s grace was enough for him. The thorn stayed, and the strength came with it.
The same strength is there in the attempt. Walking into the exam, the interview, the game, you can ask for strength to do it well and to stand whatever the result turns out to be. What would it change, the next time you look down at that verse before you play, to read it as Paul did?