“And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” 2Cor. 12:9
ByMichael Adekoya – Dear Reader, earlier in 2 Corinthians Paul had spoken of his troubles, hardships, distresses, beatings, imprisonments, riots, hard work, sleepless nights, and hunger (2Cor. 6: 4-5). Yet one particular affliction apparently caused him more pain and grief than all the others combined. He referred to it as “a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me” (2Cor. 12: 7).
We have no idea what Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” was. It’s pointless to speculate. Whatever it was, it was probably a natural hindrance to his ministry. We do know it was a Satanic attack (a messenger of Satan), but it was given to him at the direction of the God whom he loved and served with all his heart.
INEXPRESSIBLE REVELATION 2Cor. 12:7-10
Paul had had a unique experience. As he described in the opening verses of 2 Corinthians 12, he had been caught up to the “third heaven,” to God’s paradise, and had heard inexpressible things that he was not permitted to tell. This rapturous experience, apparently unique to Paul, could have caused him to be filled with pride had he been left to himself. But God in His infinite wisdom and love for Paul did not leave him exposed to that temptation.
DIVINE ASSISTANCE, ANOTHER DIMENSION OF GRACE – 2Cor. 12:9
I want to focus particularly on that crucial and blessed statement in 2 Cor. 12: 9, “My grace is sufficient for you,” because it opens to us another dimension of God’s grace. To this point we have been studying the aspect of grace commonly defined as God’s unmerited favour to us through Jesus Christ. In verse 9, as well as other Scriptures, we see grace used to mean God’s divine assistance to us through the Holy Spirit. This divine assistance is actually the power of the risen Christ, but it is mediated to us by God’s Spirit.
Paul used grace in this same sense in 1 Cor. 15:10. The grace of God, in this connection, is not the love of God, but the influence of the Holy Spirit considered as an unmerited favour. We can readily see this popular but biblical use of the word grace in a very familiar Scripture written by Paul, for instance in Phil. 4:13. If in place of the words “through him who gives me strength,” we substitute the words “by His grace,” verse 13 would read, “I can do everything by His grace.”
We distinguish these two aspects of grace, however, because the first focuses on God’s grace as the source of all blessings, whereas the second focuses on God’s grace expressed specifically as the work of the Holy Spirit within us.
THE THORN IN THE FLESH
Paul needed grace, but he also needed the thorn in his flesh. Like us, he was susceptible to the temptation of pride, and the thorn was given to check that temptation. Paul was a humble man. He considered himself “less than the least of all God’s people” and the worst of sinners (Eph. 3: 8; 1 Tim. 1:15); yet he knew he was susceptible to pride, given the right circumstances. All of us are susceptible to pride. And pride stands in direct opposition to grace, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (Jam. 4: 6). Pride is often reflective of a self-righteous attitude. We begin to grow in the Christian life, and we see other believers who are not growing as we are. We are tempted to become proud of our spiritual growth. Or we see some Christian fall into temptation, and instead of being concerned, we become critical because of our own self-righteousness.
THE PRIDE OF SELF-SUFFICIENCY
God never removed Paul’s thorn, despite his anguished pleas. When Paul wrote these words, it had been fourteen years since he had received the surpassingly great revelations (2 Cor. 12: 2). The sin of self-sufficiency goes all the way back to the Fall in the Garden of Eden. Satan said to Eve, “You will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3: 5). Mankind was created to be dependent upon God: physically, “in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28); and spiritually, Jesus said, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15: 5). God intended our dependence on Him to be conscious and continuous. One of the more dramatic and prolonged illustrations of this is found in His miraculous provision for the Israelite nation in the desert. This is one of Moses’ vivid recollections Deut. 8: 2-3.
God humbled the people and caused them to hunger before He fed them. He deliberately brought them to the end of themselves. The description in Psalm 107: 5 is apt: “They were hungry and thirsty, and their lives ebbed away.” Then He fed them miraculously with food they had never tasted before. God wanted them to be acutely aware of the fact that He was feeding them; they were dependent on His provision every day.
THE SUFFICIENCY OF GRACE
Before we can learn the sufficiency of God’s grace, we must learn the insufficiency of ourselves. The more we see our sinfulness, the more we appreciate grace in its basic meaning of God’s undeserved favour. In a similar manner, the more we see our frailty, weakness, and dependence, the more we appreciate God’s grace in its dimension of His divine assistance. Just as grace shines more brilliantly against the dark background of our sin, so it also shines more brilliantly against the background of our human weakness. Paul’s words in Rom. 5:20 “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more.” He could have just as aptly said in 2 Cor. 12:9, “But where human weakness increased, grace increased all the more.” That is essentially what he said in different words “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 about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”
There is a lesson about grace in the way God distributed the manna to the Israelites in the desert. Exo. 16:16-21. Then Moses said to them, “No one is to keep any of it until morning.” However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So we must look to Him anew each day for a new supply. We were created for a simple, childlike dependence on Him, but since the Fall we have tended to resist that dependence. God well knew this tendency when He gave this warning through Moses to the Israelites: You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today. Deut. 8:16-18. It is noteworthy that this warning occurs shortly after the reminder in verses 2-3, which was mentioned earlier. Such a self-sufficient attitude is obviously detrimental to our relationship with God, so He works to keep that from happening. He allows our respective thorns in the flesh to remain, giving us grace sufficient to cope with them only day by day. From time to time He brings extraordinary crises into our lives, as He did when Paul was forced to say, “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead” (2 Cor. 1: 8-9).
In conclusion, I want to call your attention to the fact that we are not simply passive recipients of God’s grace. Just as the Israelites had to gather day-by-day the manna God graciously provided, so we must appropriate day-by-day the grace that is always sufficient for every need. What is your greatest need right now? Whatever your need at this time, you too can experience the reality of God’s words to Paul: “My grace is sufficient sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” God’s grace is sufficient. It is sufficient for all your needs; it is sufficient regardless of the severity of any one’s need. The Israelites never exhausted God’s supply of manna. It was always there to be gathered every day for forty years. And you will never exhaust the supply of God’s grace. It will always be there every day for you to appropriate as much as you need for whatever your need is. Truly God’s Grace is sufficient for all and in all situations. Remain blessed!
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