Berean Standard Bible
I am not saying this out of need, for I have learned to be content regardless of my circumstances. I know how to live humbly, and I know how to abound. I am accustomed to any and every situation—to being filled and being hungry, to having plenty and having need. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.
King James Version
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. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.
About this verse
The famous last sentence rests on the ones before it, and the key verb is "learned": "I have learned to be content regardless of my circumstances." Contentment, for Paul, was not a temperament but an acquired skill — and look at the curriculum: "to being filled and being hungry, to having plenty and having need." Both directions required learning. We assume abundance is easy and only hardship needs grace; Paul lists plenty as a condition he had to be trained for too.
He writes from Roman imprisonment, in a thank-you letter for a financial gift the Philippians had sent. The passage is his gracious needle-threading: genuinely grateful, while explaining that his steadiness never depended on the gift — "I am not saying this out of need." Then the summary of his whole education: "I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength."
Read in place, the passage speaks to both financial directions. In scarcity, it promises a strength that does not require circumstances to improve first. In abundance, it issues a quieter warning: plenty is also a test, and it has its own ways of unlearning dependence. The secret Paul learned was not a strategy for either condition but a source that held through both.
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