Please read the passage before reading the comments.
Our strength is our weakness, or our weakness is our strength. We tend not to want people with disabilities to receive honors or positions of trust. We tend not to vote for candidates who have physical disabilities. For Paul, however, his disabilities were signs of God’s power.
Paul’s human weaknesses showed God’s power at work. He had come to understand that the negatives in his life redounded as positives for God. Whatever were his weaknesses in proclaiming the gospel of the Lord Jesus, the many conversions proved God’s power at work, to the glory of God. He expressed his death as manifesting the risen life of Christ. What in his human weaknesses was lacking for proclaiming the gospel, was lifted up in the power of God for the conversions of people. Death seemed to be working in Paul’s self, but in the reality of God, life was being made manifest.
When we seem to have toiled in vain, when we seem to have exhausted every human strength, God’s grace gives us victory.
God’s strength saves. When Jesus died in the weakness of human nature, God raised him from the dead for the salvation of the world. Jesus’ weakness is God’s strength. When we share Jesus’ weakness, we also share God’s strength. God’s strength is the treasure we hold in earthen vessels.
Leave a Reply