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2 Cor 12-13 – Teaching #7: Our Weakness, God’s Strength (pt3 of 3)

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4) It’s because in God’s eyes, weakness is strength.

2 Cor 12
9 But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me. 10 So I take pleasure in weaknesses, insults, catastrophes, persecutions, and in pressures, because of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

The word for “weakness” in v9 has many meanings. In addition to the obvious–lacking strength, feeble, frail, ill, undergoing suffering or calamity–it can also refer to an inability to accomplish what they would like to do. How many times do we commit to do something and we don’t follow through? Or, how many times do we commit to being less selfish only to fail? Or, to be more loving or more compassionate and fall miserably short? This is what weakness is. We are sinners who fall short of the glory of God. But there is an amazing truth that Paul reveals in these 2 verses. He gives us one of the keys to spiritual power and vitality.

God’s grace is more than the forgiveness of God to accept you as you are. The grace of God is a POWER that is present in weakness, a power that is perfected in weakness. “Perfected” means to bring to an end, to complete, to fulfill, to reach the intended goal. The same word is used by Christ on the cross when he said, it is finished, it is fulfilled, it is accomplished, sin has been paid in full, it is consummated.

How is power perfected in weakness? When we admit our weakness and we rely on God’s grace to sustain us, then the latter half of v9–Christ’s power resides in us. This is our posture in prayer. Lord, I’ve come up short. I need you. Lord, I can’t do it, but you can. Please take over. Imagine how many times Paul must have prayed this prayer. The external suffering is too much to bear. I feel weak. I can’t do it. Lord, you got to pull me through this one.

Or, regarding the thorn, Paul prayed, I can’t bear it. Lord, help me. Please remove it. He prayed three times, but to no avail. The thorn which was allowed by God kept Paul from fancying himself as a spiritual superman. It kept him pinned down to earth. The thorn also kept Paul pinned close to the Lord, in trust and dependence. God comes to him and says, I won’t take away the thorn, but my grace is sufficient for you. My grace is enough. Rely on me and I’ll get you through.

Humility is not something we can manufacture. We can’t will ourselves to be humble. But through external hardship and internal thorns, we are brought low. Our weakness is revealed. Humility is nothing more than an honest self-assessment. Paul is not asking us to do mental gymnastics to believe we are nothing when in actuality we are something.

2 Cor 12
11 I have become a fool; you forced it on me. I should have been endorsed by you, since I am not in any way inferior to the “super-apostles,” even though I am nothing.

Paul was not speaking falsely when he said he was nothing. This is not false humility. Some people say, I am nothing when they don’t believe they are nothing. They’re dishonest, insincere, they are appearing humble when they are actually proud. Paul was being extremely truthful when he said, I am nothing. Because he understood–weakness is who we are. We have taken off the Iron Man suit. It’s finally being real.

Our entire lives, we have been fed lies. Shows like American Idol give you a taste of what this kind of Me-centered, self-esteem stroking culture has produced in our generation. From birth, our parents tell us we are great. Society tell us you can be whatever you want to be. You can do anything you put your mind to.

I can believe with all my heart that I am good enough to play in the NBA when I am swatting Elijah in my living room, but that is only a fantasy. We have been fed lies to puff up our egos. We have believed what others have told us about ourselves. Fulfill your potential. The sky is the limit. You’re great. Reach for the stars. Christians who grow up with this mentality have a really hard time depending on the Lord. Because most of their lives, they have depended only on themselves. Is it any wonder that Christians lack spiritual power?

Humility teaches us dependence on the Lord. Given his circumstances and his inner torment, it was impossible for Paul to go a day without crying out for God to rescue him. When you are sick in bed, you can’t do anything except groan. If you are fortunate to having a loving roommate or loving spouse, they will care for you. Because you can’t do anything for yourself.

When you are weak, you realize how precious and amazing grace is. Grace is not just needed to kickstart your Christian life. Grace is not just the initial door you pass through to begin your spiritual journey. Grace is needed at the beginning, the middle and the end and everything in between.

Dramatic religious experiences, like the extraordinary revelations Paul received, appear glorious and it makes us feel powerful. There is a power that brings elation, but it is not the kind of power the Lord seeks to give us. What if God gave me spiritual super powers and I felt like a super hero? And I wore a shirt on Sundays with a big “SS” on my chest which stood for Super Spiritual Man. Is that the kind of power God wants to give me? No, he wants me to depend on the grace of God, to admit weakness, to receive the sustaining strength of the Lord to get through each trial, each thorn, every mountain and valley. A life lived like this is powerful.

The grace and power of God intersect with human lives at the point of our weakness. If you think you can live out your life on your own strength, you don’t understand the grace of God. If you think you can live out your Christian faith on your own strength, you don’t understand how the power of God works. Humble people admit, I am weak, I can’t do it, but God, you are strong. His grace will get me through. His grace is sufficient. I just need to stay close to my Lord. His grace is all I need. Weakness trains us to depend on the Lord for everything.

How can you and I tell if we are living by our own strength or God’s strength? It’s hard to tell sometimes. On the outside, we all come to church and read our Bibles and pray before meals so how can we discern if we are living by our own strength vs. God’s strength?

Let’s read 2 Cor 13:4-5. [READ]

Christ himself is the example and the model for us to follow. He was weak to the point of being obedient to death and He allowed himself to be crucified in weakness. But in that act of supreme weakness, God’s power rested on him and Christ was exalted literally from the grave. Now, Paul advises us to test ourselves to see if we are in the faith.

Christ is the standard. He is the answer key. Are we passing the test? How do we know? On God’s scantron, if you will, there are 3 choices. Choice A, B, or C. There is only 1 right answer. Some of us are weak, but it’s not weakness in the same way that Christ was weak.

Choice A) Some are very weak, but their weakness is just a disguise for immaturity.

Please turn with me to 2 Cor 11:28-30. [READ]

At the tail end of the verses outlining Paul’s suffering, Paul mentions his greatest suffering. He suffered the most when he heard that false teachers were stumbling weak brothers and sisters in the faith. He burned with indignation, he felt the most weak, the most frustrated when those who were not yet mature were being led astray.

This is different from the godly weakness that we have been talking about this afternoon. This weakness stems from immaturity.

Let’s read 2 Cor 13:9-11. [READ]

Twice in the span of 3 verses, Paul tells weak or immature Christians to become mature, to become fully mature. In other words, grow up. If you’ve been a Christian for 5, 10, 20 years and you are still immature in the faith, there is something wrong. You are failing the test. It’s time to grow up.

Choice B) Some are strong but their strength comes from self and it stems from pride.

This is hard to discern from Choice C) Few are strong but their strength comes from God and it stems from weakness. On the surface, both can look very similar. You know how you can tell? You look at how that person relates with others.

Let’s read 2 Cor 12:20. [READ]

With the exception of “selfish ambitions” and perhaps “arrogance,” every other sin listed here is relational. Quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, slander, gossip and disorder.

How you relate with others is a good indicator of where your strength is coming from. If your strength is coming from yourself as you try to relate with others, problems will inevitably arise in your relationships.

Prof. Paul Barnett, retired Anglican bishop of North Sydney and Teaching Fellow at Regent College in Vancouver had this to say:

“It is always a temptation for Christian ministers to use one’s position or one’s gifts, or both, to create a circle of admirers. Such a person exercises his ministry in the name of Christ but is really involved in an ‘ego trip.’ More subtly, the minister may encourage people to lean on him like a crutch, out of his own need to be needed. Alternatively, the minister is capable of being corrupted by the power given him in the church so that he becomes a bossy authoritarian who must always have his own way. It must always be remembered that the word ‘minister’ means ‘servant.’ The application is able to be extended to all people whose roles in life give them power over others–parents, employers, business executives, doctors, teachers, lecturers, and many more. The Christian must not shrink from exercising whatever authority his role gives him. But he must do so in a way that creates an environment of justice and fair play. And he himself must at all times remain like Christ and the apostle, a humble servant.”

If self is at core, it will poison your relationships and it will destroy the ministry. Remember, this is THE Pastoral Epistle, arguably more so than even the commonly known pastoral epistles of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. So Paul is giving us wise counsel in terms of how we minister and relate with one another in the church. If your strength is coming from yourself, you are failing the test. This relates to the final choice, which is the correct answer.

Choice C) Few are strong but their strength comes from God and it stems from weakness.

A minister or servant leader will not rip relationships apart. A minister or servant leader will not rip churches apart. Instead, he will serve with the purpose of building others up.

Turn with me to 2 Cor 12:19. [READ]

Paul spoke for the purpose of building others up. Again in 2 Cor 13:10, turn with me there. [READ ]

Paul mentions twice about becoming mature and twice about building others up, not tearing them down. What’s the application? It is wrong to say, I can minister out of my own strength. It is equally wrong to say, I am too weak to minister. Both involve a lack of trust in the grace of God and His power to change you.

You may think you are strong because you believe you can minister out of your own strength. Don’t stop there. You have to become weak so that the power and strength of God can reside in you. You may think you are too weak and can’t do anything. Don’t stop there. You have to move beyond your immaturity and begin to trust in the power of God to change you. For one person, you are asking for the grace of God to change you from being proud to being humble and then onto dependence on God’s strength. For another person, you are asking for the grace of God to change you from being immature and insecure to being humble and then onto dependence on God’s strength.

I pray that we can all become like Paul, but ultimately like Jesus Christ, in terms of their servant leadership. Christ embodied divine humility and weakness and God endowed him with divine strength. Not only did he embody this message of weakness, Jesus expressed this weakness in his ministry through his servant leadership and he gave us a pattern of ministry to imitate.

I want to end by rereading 2 Cor 12:9-10.

2 Cor 12
9 But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me. 10 So I take pleasure in weaknesses, insults, catastrophes, persecutions, and in pressures, because of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Our weakness, God’ strength.

2 Cor 12-13 – Teaching #7: Our Weakness, God’s Strength (pt2 of 3)

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2) What makes us recognize our weakness?

For Paul, what allowed him to recognize his weakness? One, he had to endure much hardship. And two, he had a thorn in his flesh.

Please turn with me to 2 Cor 11:24-30. [READ]

In this section, Paul boasts about his weaknesses and he doesn’t point to a personal list of vices or struggles as the source of his weakness. He lists suffering, external things that made him feel weak. Sometimes, we treat Apostle Paul like he is super human. Like a spiritual super hero. When God was creating Paul, He must have formed him from extra fine, high grade angelic dust compared with the rest of us made from mundane mud. We talk about him as if he must have floated through life and suffering to him was not difficult at all. He was like the man of steel. Suffering hit him like bullets and bounced off. If this is your view of Paul, re-read 2 Corinthians. This letter shows Paul’s vulnerable side. He actually gets hurt by words, people’s rejection cause him deep pain, and you realize, this guy is like one of us. He is not like Spock. He has emotions.

When he received 39 lashes on the back from the Jews, those lashes must have hurt. I wasn’t there, but I’m sure he bled, just like you and me. When he was stoned, those stones were not made out of nerf material. He must have had gashes and bruises all over his body. When he was out in the open sea for a night and a day, the water was not heated. It must have been icy cold and he must have feared that he might be eaten alive by sharks. Paul was constantly traveling and in v26 of chapter 11, we read that he faced dangers from robbers, dangers from his own people, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the open country, dangers on the sea, and dangers among false brothers–basically, every person was a possible threat and every place–city, open country, sea–was a potential danger zone. He lived in constant fear that he would not survive as he sought to win souls. When he lacked sleep and lacked food and water and lacked clothing, he must have experienced incredible fatigue and hunger and thirst and intense cold. He was not impervious to the effects of suffering. He was like one of us.

What makes someone humble? Suffering. Hardship. Paul and Barnabas, when they were preaching in Lystra said in Acts 14:22, “It is necessary to pass through many TROUBLES on our way into the kingdom of God.”

What makes someone humble? What makes someone lose hope in this life and in themselves? What makes someone desperate for God in prayer to sustain them? Trouble, hardship, suffering. One reason Paul was humble, or weak, was because of hardship. If your approach to life is to avoid suffering at all costs, chances are, you won’t be humble.

Paul is turning boasting on its head. People normally boast because they are strong, they are good at something. And when it comes to weakness, we normally hide it, we sweep it under the rug. We don’t want to reveal any of our weaknesses. Even in job interviews, when asked the question, what are your strengths and weaknesses, we are trained to share weaknesses which are really strengths in disguise. My weakness is that I have a laser sharp focus as deadlines approach and I may lose a bit of my friendly demeanor. What that person is really saying is I get results. I get the job done. The so-called weakness is really a strength in disguise. If people were 100% honest in their job interviews and said things like, my weaknesses are, I am lazy and some Monday mornings I just like to call in sick when I am not really sick. Or, I have ADD, I have a really hard time focusing. Or, I get bored easily so I am not good with repeated tasks. If these are your answers, forget about getting a job.

Paul actually boasted about his weaknesses. About his suffering and hardship which led to his sense of weakness. Hardship made him humble. These are external factors. There is also an internal factor which contributed to his humility.

3) Paul was humble because of external hardship, but he was also humble because of an internal thorn.

Please turn with me to 2 Cor 12:1-7. [READ]

For someone like Paul who experienced such an intense, supernatural vision or possibly some kind of an out-of-body experience, it must have been extremely hard not to be proud. How could he not boast? Paul refers to these visions as “extraordinary revelations.” He must have felt a strong temptation to exalt himself. v7–the ESV translates “exalt himself” as “elated.” Figuratively speaking, the revelation could have caused Paul’s head to be so puffed up that he might have become airborne. Exalted, elated, elevated–in others words, spiritually proud.

We all know people who are proud and arrogant. They love to hear themselves talk because they always think their ideas are profound and everyone else’s is inferior. We can spot such people right away and we don’t like them. In their pride, they are airborne and they have elevated themselves above others. We like people who are down-to-earth. Such people don’t take themselves so seriously. They are not afraid to admit their weaknesses because they are not trying to maintain an image. “Down-to-earth” is an interesting choice of words. In contrast to being airborne, a down-to-earth person is grounded so to speak.

For Paul, spiritual pride would have spelled disaster for him and his ministry and the gospel. We know that he was tempted strongly to exalt himself due to the extraordinary revelations, but what kept him grounded? A thorn in the flesh.

2 Cor 12
7 …Therefore, so that I would not exalt myself, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to torment me so I would not exalt myself. 8 Concerning this, I pleaded with the Lord three times to take it away from me.

There is a bunch of speculation as to what the thorn is. It could be a sensual temptation, a speech defect, an eye disorder, epilepsy? Because there is no consensus and the fact that Paul doesn’t mention specifics, we just have to chalk this up to, nobody knows. In some sense, the fact that Paul doesn’t mention specifically what the thorn is, I think, is a blessing. It has potential to speak to and encourage and bless a far wider audience than it would have been the case had he identified the specific nature of the disability. If he had an eye problem and you yourself are blind, you’d be encouraged by this passage. But if you suffered from a speech defect, Paul’s struggle wouldn’t hit you as personally. Just to say, there is wisdom in Paul being vague about his thorn.

I also want to point out that the thorn was a messenger of SATAN. God was not the origin of the thorn. God never torments, nor tempts, BUT he does allow things to torment and to tempt. Why? Why was the thorn allowed by God in Paul’s life? So that Paul would not exalt himself. The thorn kept the great Apostle Paul who had these extraordinary revelations from becoming airborne and floating to the spiritual stratosphere of pride. The thorn kept him pinned, grounded, down to earth where he, as well as you and I, always should remain.

We all have thorns. Areas of weakness. Desires and passions that if we are not careful could destroy us. Idols that enslave. Addictions. Character flaws. When we look inside, we all have to admit that we are weak. The problem is, we rarely look inside. We look instead at the Iron Man suit we put on. We look at external achievements. We look at the image of power, strength and competence we project out to the world. All the layers we put on to make us seem invincible to others and we can even fool ourselves.

Weakness is not an aberration to an otherwise stellar character. Weakness is not who we are on a bad day. Weakness is not an occasional blip on the radar. Weakness is who we are. Period. We are sinners in desperate need of a Savior. Not just to save us once but to continue to save us every moment of every day for the rest of our lives. It often takes hardship to see our true nature. It often takes an honest look at who we are on the inside to recognize our weakness. If you’ve suffered and you have been humbled by life, praise the Lord. If you look at yourself in the mirror and know that the strong, competent, polished self that you project to others is a farce, praise the Lord. Why?

2 Cor 12-13 – Teaching #7: Our Weakness, God’s Strength (pt1 of 3)

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We are going to wrap up 2 Corinthians today. Paul planted this church at Corinth and the first challenge this young congregation faced was internal. This is review for those who have been with us a while back when we covered 1 Corinthians. After Paul left the church at Corinth to continue planting other churches, the Corinthian leaders who remained began to diminish the centrality of the gospel message and to pursue the supernatural, charismatic gifts like speaking in tongues and prophecy. There is nothing wrong with such gifts because Paul himself spoke in tongues privately and had special revelations and spiritual experiences. However, when these things become the focus and Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection becomes secondary, it’s just a matter of time before the church will fall apart.

In 2 Corinthians, the challenge was external. False teachers had come in and turned the gospel of free grace which liberates people into a legalistic religion that enslaves. This is a running theme in Paul’s ministry. He plants churches, he leaves and false teachers come in. The result: people suffer, they stumble and they are led astray. We will read about the exact same thing happening at the church in Galatia next week.

We started our study through this letter six weeks ago in 2 Cor 11:1-4. [READ]

Notice the choice of words. If you add to the gospel or subtract from the gospel or you raise another teaching above the gospel, you end up teaching a false gospel or another Jesus. And soon, you will lose everything.

With this as the backdrop, the first teaching was about repentance and the reality of spiritual battle. Week 2 was the new covenant (2 Cor 3). Week 3 was the gospel of Christ, the light of the knowledge of God’s glory in the face of Christ (2 Cor 4). Week 4 was about having an eternal perspective (2 Cor 4-5). Week 5 was the new creation and the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor 5-6). Last week was the grace of giving in terms of finances (2 Cor 8-9).

And finally, today, drawing from the final 2 chapters of the letter, I am going to talk about humility, but more specifically, weakness. Paul uses the word “weakness” quite a bit throughout this letter. Humility and weakness are pretty much interchangeable.

1) We don’t like to be weak.

Quite the contrary, we like to boast. When you are growing up, esp. for guys, physical prowess is what the popular kids possess and what the rest of us want. At that age, nothing else matters. Who gets picked first at recess is really important, not who got an A on the math test. The strong, athletic kids are popular.

I remember not knowing about the Presidential Fitness test when I grew up in Flushing, NY in Queens. But when I was in the fourth grade and we moved to a suburb near Philadelphia, I found out one morning that it was time to be tested for Presidential Fitness. I had no idea what that was. But soon enough, I found out that it was a test to see who the toughest, strongest, fastest kid in the school was. As a fourth grader, one of the most nerve wracking things is walking up to a pull up bar one at a time having just watched my peers do 5, 6, 7 pullups and I had never done a pull up in my life. It might be shocking to you, but I was a bit of a chunky kid. There is nothing more embarrassing than having a kid right in front of me do 10 pull ups and then I was hanging on the bar and the gravitational pull of the earth at that moment suddenly quadrupled and my arm refused to bend.

By sixth grade, I was fed up with being picked on or being perceived to be weak so I started taking taekwondo. I know that Mr. Miyagi from the 1984 Karate Kid and Jackie Chan from the more recent version said we should only use martial arts for self-defense, but that’s not why I took it. I took taekwondo because I wanted people to fear me. I didn’t want people to mock me with the crane technique, but I wanted to walk down the hall and have the crowd of people split around me because if they bumped into me, they would be afraid of what I might do to them.

From a young age, we don’t want to be weak because society looks down on weak people. When I trash talk my kids and Elijah, my four year old, is going up for a shot in our indoor hoop and I block him, I like to yell, get out of here son! I find it poetic because he is my son so this is high level of trash talking because there is a double meaning.

You might not be as vocal in your boasting as I am with my kids, but don’t we all boast in our hearts? Boasting stems from a belief that we think we are better than others in some area. The greater the gap, the greater the boasting. Lebron James has the nickname, King James. And on the basketball court, he is the king. His team, the Miami Heat are the reigning champs. Earlier this year, they won 27 straight games. Lebron was the key reason for their dominance. He is the MVP on the best team in the league and they’ll most likely win another championship. Lebron can call himself a king on the court and he has the play to back it up. We love Lebron because he seems larger than life. He plays at another level. He is faster, he jumps higher, he makes all of his teammates around him better. He’s like a video game character. Almost super human.

I grew up carrying around an Incredible Hulk doll while wearing a Superman T-shirt and a blanket tied around my neck as a cape. We all want to be super strong, we all want to jump over buildings in a single bound and soar through the air. Have you ever seen a superhero with a “W” on his chest for Wimpy. Wolverine, yes, but it is doubtful if Wimpy Man would become a summer blockbuster. We like to cover our weakness. We put on an Iron Man suit so that we can appear invincible.

Sad to say, even in spiritual life, we don’t like to be weak. We gravitate to spiritual ministers who speak eloquently, who are highly competent, very decisive and gifted. Sometimes, when you compare yourself with such people, you think, they are too perfect. Do they have any weaknesses? Am I the only one around here who is struggling? We are drawn to such people who have it all pulled together.

Quotes on The Wounded Healer (Henry Nouwen)

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The wound of our loneliness is indeed deep. Maybe we had forgotten it, since there were so many distractions. But our failure to change the world with our good intentions and sincere actions and our undesired displacement to the edges of life have made us aware that the wound is still there.

[Read more…] about Quotes on The Wounded Healer (Henry Nouwen)

A Spiritual Secret from Apostle Paul's Life

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Continuing from last time, Paul was shipwrecked, he was imprisoned, he was beaten, but nothing seemed to faze him. How does Paul do it? I can’t do this. Even if I muster all my human willpower, I can’t come close to living like he did.

Paul seems almost super human in the book of Acts, but if you read his other epistles, they reveal a more vulnerable side. He is trying his best to live for God and he experienced setback after setback, people trying to beat him and kill him, he’s shipwrecked, he’s in chains. And I’m sure he wondered at times, why are all these things happening to me? [Read more…] about A Spiritual Secret from Apostle Paul's Life