Have you ever wondered why the power of Christ is perfected in our weakness? Or why an all-powerful and eternal God weakens us to strengthen us in Him? We learn from the life of Paul in 2 Corinthians that He does so for our good and His glory.
2 Corinthians 12:7–10 (ESV)
So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
In 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, we see 2 divine reasons intertwined with 2 divine purposes for the sufficiency of our Lord’s grace in our weakness:
- His grace is sufficient; because He weakens us for our good. (v.7-8)
- His grace is sufficient; because He strengthens us for his glory. (v.9c-10)
Before we dive into these reasons for the sufficiency of our Lord’s grace, we have to understand the nature of Divine Grace in this passage. The first aspect of grace that we see here is that it is “My grace.” Grace isn’t a universal principle that is floating around in the universe just waiting to be manifested into anyone’s life. Instead, it belongs to Christ. He possesses it and generally divulges it to all his creation as its creator and sustainer. And He specially bestows it upon His new creation as its Redeemer. So then, our Lord’s grace here is a divine enablement of the Holy Spirit that advances us through various degrees of the Christian life.
The second aspect of God’s grace is that it is not just what he has or something he gives. It is who he is. Recall to your mind YHWH’s self-revelation to Moses in Exodus 34:6–8. Mercifulness and graciousness then capture the essence of who our Lord is and show us the fountainhead of his being. So, all He does and who He is flows out of his mercy and grace. Even when it causes us pain and grief, we can be assured of this eternal reality in our Triune God.
Since grace isn’t just something God has and it is who He is, it’s impossible to comprehend the nature of grace in a snapshot. Instead, we apprehend it by experiencing it in drops and glimpses. But these tiny droplets and glimpses of grace keep strengthening us in our weaknesses. That’s what we see here in Paul’s life.
So how is God’s grace working in Paul’s life? He is sanctifying Paul by the divine aid of the Holy Spirit, as Calvin and others point out—which is not an uncommon or unusual work of the Holy Spirit. Recall to your mind what the Holy Spirit did after he came and rested upon Jesus during his baptism (Luke 4:1–2 and Matthew 4:1). Clothed in divine power, He led Jesus out into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. But Christ was not tempted because he had a proclivity to sin. Instead, it was to reveal his nature as the incarnate Word of God who had come to redeem his fallen creation. So, if our Father providentially worked in the ministry of His sinless Son in this way, why would we expect anything else in the life of His Apostles and our lives, who are sinners? Now let us look at the two reasons intertwined with two purposes for God’s sufficient grace.
1. His Grace is sufficient; because He weakens us for our good [v.7-8].
How does our Lord weaken Paul and us? Paul tells us in v.7 that a thorn was given to him in his flesh. Who gave him this thorn? Our Lord [signified by the divine or theological passive]. Our Lord is the active agent. He is the sovereign giver. So we see that at times divine enablement or our Lord’s sufficient grace can look like a thorn in your side.
Is that foreign to your understanding? Remember that it is both purposeful and sovereign that our Lord can give thorns of suffering, affliction, and pain to his children. What was this thorn? A messenger of Satan or a demon. What was its purpose? To torment Paul. Verse 7 is bookended with the same reason twice: “to keep me from becoming conceited.”
Scholars have various views about what this thorn was. Many argue that it was a physical condition, others argue that it was a psychological condition, and others hold that it was the opposition he faced from the super apostles in Corinth. I believe it was a combination of all these factors. But the main impetus of pain came from the fact that the Corinthian Church was siding with these false super apostles. Pastor John MacArthur pointed out that this is why Paul is in agony within his soul. The church he planted and pastored is being deceived by false apostles to turn against him.
Now let’s look at the purpose. Why does our Lord weaken Paul and us? It is for our good. Namely, to kill pride in us. If you boil sin down to its very essence, pride is at the root of it. It was Satan’s pride that exalted himself above God. In this same vein of pride, Adam and Eve were deceived into disobeying God. It is hard to imagine the apostle Paul needing to be sanctified from pride. But even the Apostle of apostles isn’t immune from this temptation and inclination of our fallen desires. So take heart, dear brother and sister, that is the case with us as well. Pride is at the heart, root, and foundation of all our sin. We lustfully look at the opposite sex or envy another man’s status or covet his possessions because we are prideful. Our hearts constantly seek to exalt ourselves over the will of God and the good of our neighbor. But we have a good Father who will not let us wallow in the pit of pride. Instead, he gives us thorns of false accusations, afflictions, sorrows, and pain to sanctify us into the image of His Son, Jesus Christ (Romans 8:29).
But you might be thinking, is God an egomaniac for doing this? Why does the all-powerful God have to cause pain in his Apostle? Can’t he accomplish his purposes in another way? John Piper points out that Brad Pitt, Oprah Winfrey, and others thought the same and concluded they could not worship such a God, who causes pain in his followers. If this causes you to stumble, then you haven’t looked closely enough.
In v.8, Paul says that he pleaded (begged, NLT) with the Lord. This is an explicit reference to our Lord Jesus Christ. He gave Paul this thorn. He is not an egomaniac. Philippians 2 says that even though He was in very essence God, He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking on the form of a servant. He became weak to take upon himself the wrath of God we deserved. Recall Gethsemane: Our Lord prayed in the wee hours of the night, 3 times to his father that the cup of God’s wrath might pass from him.
Even though we are not told how the Father might have responded, it might have been the same words with which our Lord answered Paul’s prayer: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
Many saints like Joseph, Jacob, and Job were also comforted with this same comfort in their afflictions, as their God-given thorns of affliction and accusation dug deep into their sides—all while pointing to God’s only begotten Son, Jesus, as the culmination and perfection of God’s weakening hand in our lives. So these words are not of an egomaniac general who sends his troops into the heat of battle while enjoying the protection of a command center. Instead, these words come from our Lord, who was once crowned with a crown of thorns and now stands interceding for us in the midst of God’s throne as a slain lamb, having conquered death by trampling it with death, the greatest thorn in our sides.
Dear brother, sister, Our Lord’s grace is sufficient in weakening us for our good. Paul realizes the purpose of his pain in the midst of prayer. That, too, after praying three times for it to be removed. Are you approaching the throne of grace in prayer as the thorn God has given you pierces deeper and deeper within? He might not give you relief from the pain nor take away the thorn. But He will give you his sufficient grace, which is more of Himself, and that will draw our wandering hearts nearer to him. He loves you and wants you to draw closer to him in prayer, as our Lord did in the garden of Gethsemane. But remember, His sufficient grace doesn’t weaken us for nothing.
2. Our Lord’s grace is sufficient; because He strengthens us in Christ for His glory. (v.9b-10)
At the end of v.9, we see that as Paul realizes the purpose of his suffering through prayer, Paul rejoices in God. Realizing the sanctifying purposes God has for us in our suffering changes our perspective through prayer. It moves our eyes from the thorn to our Lord, who gave it to us. In prayerfully doing so, Paul was enabled to look at his thorn through the eyes of God’s providence and not just his agony. Even though the first divine purpose was to weaken Paul’s flesh and continuously kill pride, that wasn’t the ultimate or the desired end.
The second, more deeper and profound purpose in Paul’s weakening is seen at the end of v.9: “So that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” The ultimate purpose is our strengthening in Christ, which glorifies Him. So weakening is the prerequisite and the means of our strengthening in Christ. In other words, our weakness is an avenue for Christ’s power to be magnified.
However, the Corinthians’ perspective of strength was quite opposite. For them, strength was mingled with public honor, self-sufficiency, and extraordinary power. The city of Corinth was famous for hosting the Isthmian games (the Olympics of our day). So their ideal view of strength was the triumphant athlete. It was Hercules that captured the ethos of their culture, not Christ and Him crucified. This cultural reality had crept into the Corinthian church through their societal norms and also through the false super apostles, who were condemning Paul for his weaknesses. So the church wanted leaders who had rhetorical eloquence, social status, immense wealth, and the spiritual triumphalism of the so-called super apostles. Sadly, they were being deceived into exalting their flesh and becoming weakened by their flesh instead of being strengthened by the way of the Cross.
Aren’t we tempted to seek the power of the sword and not the cross? We are living in a time where the church is being lured headlong into destruction through political power. Whenever Christianity is used as an adjective, be aware! Whatever Christian Nationalism preaches has more to do with nationalism than Christianity. Remember that Christ wore a crown of thorns in this world to establish his kingdom. He did not wield the sword of politics to make converts. Even in his return, the sword he wields proceeds from His mouth, which is His Word by the power of the Holy Spirit.
So, if the power of Christ doesn’t represent the world’s idea of power, what is the power of Christ, and how does it glorify Him? The hand of God’s providence rests upon his weakened saints for the sake of ministry and service. Even though Paul was enormously afflicted from within and without, God accomplished the purpose of reaching the Gentiles through him. And still, the fullness of the Gentiles is being brought in through the words of God written through Paul. In much affliction, Paul gained much power for the sake of building Christ’s Church.
Why is that? Because the Bible teaches that when God’s power does not rest in our weakness, it leads to pride and promiscuity. In Judges 13-16, we see a man of herculean proportions, Samson the Nazirite. His God-given power was supposed to enable him to be a righteous judge over God’s people. When the Spirit of God rushed upon him, even killing a lion was as simple as tearing a young goat in two. With the jawbone of a donkey, he killed 1,000 Philistines. And he even burned their fields to ashes by torching the tails of foxes. But what did all these herculean escapades of Samson lead to? Pride and promiscuity. When many, including Delilah, asked Samson where his strength came from, he should have answered, “From the Lord.” Instead, he always exalted himself as the locus of divine power through riddles and jokes, instead of glorifying the Spirit of God. If he had witnessed that his power comes from God, then many might have repented, doing right in their own eyes like Rahab, and trusted in the Lord for their salvation. But Samson’s self-sufficiency led him to a dungeon, blinded by pride and promiscuity. It’s in this weakness Samson recognized the downfall of his office and the weight of his rebellion. When he prayed in repentance and faith, God’s strength enabled him in his weakness to bring down the temple of Dagon upon the heads of its own idolaters, thus fulfilling the purpose of God in weakness—what he could never do in his pride and promiscuity.
If we are honest with ourselves, we are like Samson in his pride as we serve our Lord. Even if our actions may not show it, our hearts are wretched with pride and self-exaltation. How many times a day do we have to confess our sense of pride to our Lord? But remember, the Lord is gracious to blind us to ourselves by giving us various thorns with different degrees of pain and humiliation so that we may look upon Christ by faith and become like a mere tent or tabernacle which can embody the power of our Good Shepherd to shade his sheep as a pillar of cloud in the heat of life and warm his lambs with his tender compassion in the coldness of many dark nights of the soul.
When Christ tabernacled amongst his people, did he do so in a blinding light? Or did he preach to them with a deafening sound? No, the eternal Son of God became a man, facing all the weaknesses, insults, and afflictions to be finally crowned with a crown of thorns and mocked by the people he came to save. But God vindicated him by raising him from the dead. That is why Christ crucified is our song and sermon. And if Christ crucified is our song and sermon, then along with Paul, we too can be content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. Because when we are weak (in ourselves), then we are strong (in Christ Jesus) (2 Corinthians 12:10).
Samson Tharakan
4th-Year Seminarian