The Counterintuitive Power of Weakness
What if instead of liabilities, our weaknesses were opportunities to experience the supernatural, saving, and empowering grace of Jesus?
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." - 2 Corinthians 12:9
In contemporary Western society, we view weakness as an obstacle or liability. Our flaws, struggles, and limitations are seen as deficiencies that hinder productivity and progress.
But what if we completely reframed how we view weakness, especially in our spiritual lives?
What if instead of liabilities, our weaknesses were opportunities to experience the supernatural, saving, and empowering grace of Jesus?
In 2 Corinthians 12, the apostle Paul provides an insightful perspective on this issue, describing an unspecified affliction as a “thorn in the flesh.”
It was so painful, he didn't just ask for its removal, he pled with the Lord three times to remove the affliction.
But Christ replied, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
Paul realized his thorn, though painful, had purpose. Through the lens of the gospel, he was able to see his limitations not as a liability but as an opportunity to magnify the sufficiency of God's grace.
As John Calvin notes in his commentary on Psalm 77:10:
“We are not so pressed down by adversity that we are not relieved by God’s grace. For although he seems to be far from us, yet he is near at hand; and although he seems to have forsaken us, yet he does not cease to watch over our welfare. And this is the reason why the faithful, when they are afflicted, do not sink into despair, but rather gather courage and strength to wait patiently for God.”
Not only do hardships cultivate desperation for grace, they necessitate relying on divine strength. As Paul declared, “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10). Counterintuitively, power comes not from strengthening the self but from emptying of self so that we may be filled with the presence and power of Jesus. From this perspective, weakness is reframed as an invitation to experience the gift of sanctifying grace.
And isn't strength through weakness the message of the cross? After all, the cross epitomizes the upside-down wisdom of the gospel, where God's power is perfected in human limitation as Jesus empties himself only to be filled with the Spirit unto the fulfillment of his redemptive role.
The same can be true for us when we reframe our understanding and experience of weakness.
Rather than an obstacle to God working in and through us, limitations become the very channel through which Jesus manifests his empowering grace.
This is the counterintuitive power of weakness.
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