Tool Beta
Is It Actually in the Bible?
Phrases people quote as Scripture. The real verse, or the honest answer that there is not one.
God helps those who help themselves
Nowhere in Scripture, and it argues nearer the opposite of the gospel it's usually quoted to support.
Ephesians 2:8-9, in every translation this tool compares.
The line traces to ancient Greece: it's illustrated directly in Aesop's fable of the wagoner praying to Hercules while his cart sits stuck in the mud, and versions of the sentiment appear in Sophocles and Euripides. It reached English by way of Algernon Sydney's 1698 Discourses Concerning Government, and Benjamin Franklin is the reason it became a fixture of American speech (it's in Poor Richard's Almanack of 1733), but he was quoting an old saying, not coining one.
The Bible's own repeated claim runs nearer the opposite: grace is specifically for people who cannot help themselves. "For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so that no one can boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9). Paul makes the same point about timing in Romans 5:6: Christ died for the helpless "at the right time," not after they got their act together.
