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Perfect Power in Our Weaknesses
(Overcomer Wu)

Let us start this discourse by reading a significant portion of God's Word in 2 Corinthians 12:1-14. Here the apostle Paul gave us a rather intimate and frank word, including a somewhat secretive account of his life: "It is necessary to boast; nothing is to be gained by it, but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven – whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. And I know that such a person – whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows – was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat. On behalf of such a one I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. But if I wish to boast, I will not be a fool, for I will be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one will think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me, even considering the exceptional character of the revelations. Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too exalted. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.”

Neither Paul nor we should ever be boastful, yet in order to make his point, he was forced into it: "I have been a fool! You forced me to it. Indeed you should have been the ones commending me, for I’m not at all inferior to these super-apostles, even though I am nothing. The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, signs and wonders and mighty works. How have you been worse off than the other churches except that I myself did not burden you? Forgive me this wrong! Here I am, ready to come to you this third time. And I will not be a burden because I do not want what is yours but you.”

As in any proper interpretation of the Bible, the above Bible passage should be looked at in the larger context of chapters ten through thirteen. These passages are very informative because they tell us things about some personal experiences of the apostle Paul that we don’t learn anywhere else. We see him as a shepherd, and we see his shepherding heart as he cares about a flock of people to whom he had the responsibility and the joy of presenting the Gospel and then leading them to believe and receive Christ Jesus the Lord as their Savior, Lord, and Life. They are his children, and in a very touching, tender passage in the 11th chapter, he lays bare his heart as to what his dream for them was, and he says his intent and yearning were "to present you as a chaste virgin [as a pure virgin] to Christ” (v.2). What an interesting and a foreign purpose to many of a pastoral ministry this is: to present your people as a pure virgin to Christ!

By reading the 18th chapter of Acts, we get the story of Paul’s original visit to Corinth and how he began in the synagogue there until they booted him out. When they booted him out, the question came as what he was to do, and God told him not to leave because better things were to come. Therefore, God led Paul to begin to teach in a house that was adjacent to that synagogue. At the time of writing this epistle, he had been twice to Corinth and now he was planning a third trip, and this letter is preparation for that third visit. The concern that moves Paul’s heart in this whole letter is the spiritual welfare of these, his children in Christ. The problem is that he is getting word about false teachers that are coming in or who have been resident with the church from its incipient stages but have now turn to their selfish agenda and started teaching something counter to what he had taught his children – what God's pure Word has been teaching us. He says these false teachers or apostles are teaching and leading them to another Christ, another spirit and another gospel. One of the main concerns of the whole book and these last four chapters particularly, are about the purity of the Gospel of Christ that was presented by him, Apollos and others, and being preserved in and among the saints whom he has led to Christ. Let us take a glimpse of that at the introduction to the 11th chapter:

"I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness.” Here he is arguing and trying to make his case, and he feels it is necessary to speak about himself and to play a role which is very reluctant to him, for it is playing the role of a fool. So he says, "I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me! I feel a divine jealousy for you,” and then we get this wonderful text, "for I promised you in marriage to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by its cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes [and he is speaking of these other teachers] and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you submit to it readily. I think that I am not in the least inferior to these super-apostles. I may be untrained in speech, but not in knowledge; certainly in every way and in all things we have made this evident to you.”

In this passage and other similar passages, we can sense Paul’s passion for the protection of the purity both of the saints under his care as well as for the purity of the Gospel of Christ. These too ought to be our deep concerns if we have any interest at all in not deviating from God's pure Word and in protecting the saints from any false teachings or practices that are detrimental to their spiritual well-being, because there has never been a thriving church or a group of saints with whom the Lord is well-pleased whose teachings and practices are not in line with God's pure Word in the Bible!

Please note that in Paul's autobiographical here, he says that if they want to talk about superior apostles, he will tell them a little of what he’s done for Christ. Paul realized of course that this is completely out of line for him to engage in such writings; yet he was compelled to do so for their sake in making his point. However, let us look at chapter 11 and begin in the middle of verse 21 with that incredible passage that we would not have if it had not been for these who were opposing him: "…whatever anyone dares to boast of – I am speaking as a fool – I also dare to boast of that. Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendents of Abraham? So am I. Are they ministers of Christ? I am talking like a madman – I am a better one; with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless floggings, and often near death. Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked. And, besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I am not indignant? If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. The God and Father of the Lord Jesus (blessed be He forever!) knows that I do not lie. In Damascus, the governor under king Aretas guarded the city of Damascus in order to seize me, but I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall and escaped from his hand.”

Obviously, Paul is defending himself and his apostleship, which some may consider unnecessary. They are claiming that there are greater apostles than he, super-apostles or as one translation says, arch-apostles. Was he wrong to defend himself and to defend his ministry and his apostleship? I don’t think that the Lord gave any indication whatsoever that He was because Paul properly represented Him, His Word and His Gospel. For this reason, the Lord Jesus identified His Word/message with His servants and identified His servants with His Word. For instance, in Matthew 10 where Jesus is sending out the twelve, He says that if the people receive His disciples, they get Him, and if they get Him, they get His Father (Matt 10:40). If the people reject them, they reject Him and if they reject Him, they also reject His Father. That’s an interesting identification of the servant of God with God Himself. Then in the tenth chapter of Luke, when Jesus sends out the seventy, He says the same thing about the seventy. As He says in the high priestly prayer: "…so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and You in Me, that they may become completely one…” (Jn 17:22-23); this indicates that He is one with His sent ones. Furthermore, we read in the thirteenth chapter of John and there He says broadly to His servants that whoever receives You receives Me, and whoever receives Me receives My Father (Jn 13:20). Conversely by this same token, if a messenger/apostle/preacher/elder/pastor of the Lord does not bear the Lord's pure and unadulterated Word of God, but mix in his own concepts and ideas with a twist bent towards his own agenda, then the Lord is not one with such a person.

Why was Paul forced to defend his apostleship in order to defend his message, which was entirely in harmony with God's Word? It’s not so he can be exalted, but to protect God's Word and the Gospel of Jesus Christ from being adulterated. How can we be confident that Paul's messages were in line with God's will and God's Word? Because what he had written have become the very written and canonized Word of God, the Bible, by virtue of the fact that he was completely one with the Lord in all His word and action. However, now that the divine revelations of God is complete and recorded for us in the volume of the Bible, no one can claim that they have received a vision or a word from the Lord that contradicts the very written Word of God, for God NEVER contradicts Himself! Scholars and atheists have tried for ages to show that there are contradictions in the Bible, but they have all been proven to be false one by one.

There was such a passion in Paul for the Lord Jesus Christ and the saints so that he could not stand silently by while God's message was being adulterated and God's sheep were being led astray. If we are interested in recovering our church life back to normalcy, we need to be passionate like the apostle Paul in defending God's pure Word and speak against those who dare to adulterate it; for it is the healthy teaching and living of God's Word of Grace that is able to build up the church (Act 20:32) and to normalize the church life.

The so-called “super-apostles” criticized Paul, ridiculed him and said something like: "He’s unimpressive when you meet him personally. He writes these thundering epistles which you now read and they radically impact you. But wait until he shows up in person. He’s really an unimpressive small man with no great oratory skills at all. They said that he’s really not a great preacher at all." That was the strong point of his accusers because their business was to persuade people to follow them, and so style rather than the content of the message was everything to them. Apparently Paul didn’t have a great interest in style, but he was most careful about the content of his preaching that they would be in complete harmony with God's speaking. Contrary to the false apostles/teachers/preachers, Paul only spoke what is consistent with the truth of God's Word. We can take courage from that, because we may not be the most eloquent or clever-minded speakers, but if we are faithful to present the pure Word of God, that is what God can use to convert people (like brother Yun, whose biography is written in the book entitiled The Heavenly Man, who often preached the gospel to save many by simply reciting the pure Word of God without any accompanying testimony or interpretations) and to transform people’s lives. The apostle Paul must not have been impressive physically nor was he the most eloquent orator or preacher (though there is indication from 1 Corinthians chapter 2 that it was not that Paul could not speak eloquently, but that he purposely did not want to exercise his natural talent lest he over-shadow the message or the gospel of Christ in anyway), but God used him to turn the Mediterranean world and the Asia Minor area upside down by converting countless thousands to Christ and planted churches all over (and not by way of creating a division or pulling people out from another church group).

These prideful people who are criticizing him and ridiculing him felt themselves to be spiritually superior. The indications are that they were quite proud of their spiritual gifts, natural eloquence or even direct visions (which are oftentimes contrary God's Word; thus, they are false and untrustworthy). Paul’s response to all that was simply to tell of one outstanding experience of his own. To avoid the temptation of pride or appearing to be boastful, he told the story in the third person. He said that there was a man in Christ fourteen years ago who was lifted up into the third heaven, into Paradise itself and he saw things that no man can describe and he heard things that no man can utter. Yet Paul wants to talk not about visions or spiritual experiences, but about Christ. It is as though he wrote, "I want to talk about Him, and the way I’m going to talk about Him is by contrast with me." Thus, Paul says that he gloried not in his apostleship, not in his visions, not in his personal experiences or in his preaching abilities; rather he said he wanted to tell about his weaknesses and to “boast in his infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Cor 12:9b).

In these four chapters of 2 Corinthians, verses 10 through 13, the verb, the noun or the adjective – to be weak, weakness, weak – occur thirteen times. The beauty about it is that in 1 Corinthians you have the same thing. Writing to the Corinthians in the first epistle, thirteen times, and in the second epistle in these four chapters thirteen times, he uses the noun, the adjective or the verb – to be weak or weakness. The Greek word Astheneia is the noun; astheneo is the verb; and asthenes is the adjective. The basic root word is asthen. The noun in classical Greek is asthenos. Now the "a" at the beginning of that "asthenos" is a privative, a negative element. It’s like the "a" in "atheism": "a" – no; "theism" – god. Similarly, the "a" in "agnosticism": "a" – no; "Gnosticism" – knowledge. So an agnostic is a person who doesn’t know whether there is a god. The word here is asthenos: "a" – no; sthenos – strength. So asthenos is literally means no strength.

Most people pay no attention to the fine difference between being “weak” or having “no strength.” They pretty much equate the two expression as being one and the same. Allow me to point out the slight and fine difference between the two which makes all the difference in our Christian lives. If I’m weak, I need to be strengthened, but if I have no strength, what I need is strength. In the earlier days of my Christian life, I often prayed, "Lord, strengthen me to do Your work; to build the church and make me more effective in all that I do for You that You may have Your will done and be glorified." Yet the Lord is saying through this passage of His Word that, "You’ve got it all wrong. I'm not interested in strengthening you, I want your natural man to be out of the way! I am weakening you outwardly so that you may rely les and less on your outer/old man, but rather die to your old man and learn to rely on Me. Take Me as your Strength instead so that there is no question as to who is doing My work and building up My Church." Thus, Paul was really saying: "I'd rather glory in my strengthlessness, that the Power/Strength of Christ may be manifested through me." The Lord has shown him a most valuable vision in His Christian life – one that we all need to see and live by – which is the laying aside of my self and to get rid of all my natural human abilities/talents, or the lack thereof, and receive Christ Himself to be ALL that we need. Only thus can God's purpose by fulfilled (rather than frustrated and hindered by even our best intention, abilities, and efforts), and only thus can He be glorified (rather than us).

In actuality, we even see this theme and message in the Old Testament. For instance, in Zechariah 4:6, where God needed to do something for His people, and God spoke and said, "‘Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the Lord.” The two words which are used here in Hebrew – "not by might,” "nor by power” – represent all human capabilities. In other words, the Almighty God doesn't want nor need to do things by man's abilities or might, but by His own Might and Power through His Spirit that all the glory may be attributed to God! The problem with the saints in Corinth was exactly that they relied too much on their own human wisdom and might rather than on God, and they were stealing away the glory from God. For this reason, the apostle Paul exhorted the saints in Corinth twice with similar words: “he who glories, let him glory in the Lord” (1 Cor 1:31) and again in 1 Corinthians 10:31, “... whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

Moreover, at Caesarea Philippi when Jesus asked, "Whom do men say that I…am?” (Matt. 16:13), the people had all sorts of notions and concepts about Him. Jesus then said, "Whom do you say that I am?" Peter said, "You are the Christ” (v.16). "From that time forth began Jesus to show unto His disciples, how that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day” (v. 21). Jesus went on to say: "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it” (vv. 24-25). Our fulfillment is when we come to the end of ourselves and allow Him to fill us and live through us. We find out what it really means to be the person God wants us to be.

We are also quite familiar with this well-quoted verse in Isaiah 40:31, "They that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” In the Hebrew it literally says, "They that wait upon the Lord shall exchange their strength.” The Hebrew word "chalaph" is an exchange of strength where you quit doing things in your own strength and allow His power to be demonstrated in and through you through His Spirit operating in you. What is being conveyed is that we are not the causes of God's works or speaking; we are simply the channels. In ourselves, we can never produce of anything of positive eternal worth or significance; we’ are only the vessels or the channels through which God can operate if we yield to Him by dying to ourselves. This is the life of “Not I... but Christ” spoken of in Galatians 2:20. When we get to the place where the Lord has the full freedom to live, move, and flow through us, that is the moment when the Lord can accomplished great things through us. Yet all the glory will be to Him and not to us, for we are dead to ourselves and our abilities, how can we possibly share in any of the glory?

Recall the two occasions of Moses getting the water to flow out of the rock in the wilderness? In Exodus Moses speaks to God and says the people are complaining because they are thirsty. God tells him to strike the rock with his rod and the water will gush. Moses struck the rock, and the water gushed (Exo 17:1-7). But then you read Numbers 20:1-13, and the people are complaining again. They irritated Moses which caused him to be impatient and angry with them. God instructed Moses this time, "Speak to the rock…and it shall give forth water.” Moses stood and spoke strongly against the people, who were testing God, and then he struck the rock with his rod and the water flowed. But God told Moses that he had made a grave mistake. "You shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them,” God told Moses, and it was because of what Moses had done on his own that was not in accordance with God's Word. If God were to let Moses into the promised land, then the message would be mixed: for the source of water would not be entirely of God’s work but partially Moses'. Thus, God cannot sanction that work which was not in accordance with His pure unadulterated Word by letting Moses go without a negative consequence for his misrepresentation of God. God own work and message can never be mixed with human elements, concepts, traditions, or efforts. Thus, any vision, revelation, or message that we teach or seek to implement in our practice that is in anyway contrary to God's Word is a strong proof that it is NOT something originating from God but from our own flesh. And it behooves us to not go along with any human visions, teachings, or practices that deviate from God's pure Word lest we also come under God's severe judgment or lose His blessings.