Philippians 4:12-13 vs. “I Can Do All Things - Philippians 4:13”

Why it matters

This verse is the standard example of a sentence that travels without its paragraph. Read in place, it promises Christ's strength for any circumstance, hunger included; quoted alone, it gets applied to any ambition, and documented discussions of the verse spend most of their length undoing that reading. A memory song is verbatim planting, so what this track plants is accurate and durable. The scope is the one thing it cannot plant, because the scope lives in the verse before the one it sings.

Helpful comparison

This is the site's second entry from the Hide 'Em In Your Heart series, and the two grade on the same axis with opposite outcomes. The Vol. 2 track on Psalm 119 sang a testimony and kept the question it answers beside it, so its context held. This track sings a conclusion and leaves behind the list that conclusion sums up, so its context does not. Same series, same honest design, sung words that are exactly the text with the address attached, and the difference is entirely in what the selected verse needs from its neighbors. Psalm 119:11 stands alone; Philippians 4:13 leans back. On translation, the identification is straightforward though the track never states it: the King James reads “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me,” the sung line modernizes that relative clause the way the New King James does, and the BSB printed above differs only in its closing words, “who gives me strength.” The NIV of the era reads “everything” and drops the name Christ for “him,” so the sung line is not the NIV. One more place context could live: the album's credits show written narrations and child verse reciters around the songs, so the series' spoken material sometimes carries what a lyric omits. Whether this track's narration reaches back to verse 12 is not documented in the sources below, so this entry grades only what is sung.

Sources

• Steve Green - I Can Do All Things - Philippians 4:13 (official audio) · (the recording checked for this proof; oEmbed returns author_name “Steve Green - Topic,” the label's auto-generated audio channel)
• Discogs — Hide 'Em In Your Heart (Songs With Steve Green), Sparrow, 1990 · (1990 CD release; track 15 “I Can Do All Things (Philip 4:13)”; credits Frank Hernandez as writer, producer, arranger and co-creator, Betsy Hernandez as co-creator and writer of the narrations, Steve Green as lead vocalist and narrator, and four children as Bible verse reciters)
• Apple Music — Hide 'Em In Your Heart, Vol. 1 · (the album as currently distributed: 1990, twenty tracks)
• ABCJesusLovesMe — Hide 'Em in Your Heart CDs' verse list · (lists the song on Vol. 1 under the single reference Philippians 4:13)
• Expository Songs — songs from Philippians 4 · (catalogues the track under Philippians 4:13 with songwriter credit Frank Hernandez)
• SifaLyrics — I Can Do All Things, Steve Green · (the published lyric, consulted for analysis and not reproduced here: the sung text is the verse, repeated, in the New King James wording)
• GotQuestions — Can I really do all things through Christ? · (documented discussion of the verse's scope: the context is endurance of any circumstance, against readings that make it a promise of achievement)