His strength in my weakness

In a letter to the Corinthian church, the Apostle Paul wrote the following well-known passage:

"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."

That first phrase - "My grace is sufficient for you" - is the one my mind usually lingers on (it's the one I have hanging on a wall in my house, too, which is probably why it comes to mind first!), but I want to set it aside and move past it today. Instead, I want to focus on the whole idea of God's strength being made perfect in our weaknesses - of our weakness being the opportunities for God's power to rest upon us and be made manifest in our lives.

When I think of my weaknesses, it is usually with shame, guilt, anxiety, and self-condemnation. I want to be cured of them, essentially: to be strong and perfect so that I can then give, love, sacrifice, and obey as God desires me to; to be righteous and above reproach in everything so that I can accomplish great and glorious things for God; to have my testimony be that He has made me perfect. At the center of this whirlwind is the desire to be something in myself so that I, myself, can please God. And I think most of us can relate to this desire to be able to offer something to Him, instead of always being needy and dependent!

But this is ultimately a self-focused desire, founded on pride (which is why our perceived failures and weaknesses, even about trivial things, matter so much to us, and why the slightest criticism has the potential to wound us deeply). While we do want to honor God, we also very much want it to be seen and known that we specifically are the ones honoring Him; we want Him to be glorified, but we specifically want Him to be glorified by our actions, and to share in His glory. Brothers and sisters, what I am slowly coming to know is that to truly honor Him our own honor must be utterly forsaken. In order to truly glorify Him with our lives we must learn not to desire our own glory in any way - to obey, and love, and seek God, and not care whether or not we are noticed, respected, or admired for our actions.

So our weaknesses really do become wonderful gifts, because they are precisely the areas where our obedience and love come from Christ's power rather than our own strength, and are thus the areas where we can most easily seek to glorify Him self-forgetfully. If we have nothing to offer, nothing to give, than we can give (but really it is God giving through us) without expecting glory or admiration in response. How could we expect those things, when the power to accomplish what we have done is not our own, but is God's power given to us, resting on us, and working through us?

Francois de Fenelon, a French priest and author from the late 1600s, wrote the following thoughts along these lines, which have been very convicting to me:

"Strength is made perfect in weakness. You are only strong in God when you are weak in yourself. Your weakness will be your strength if you accept it with a lowly heart.You will be tempted to believe that weakness and lowliness are not part of trusting God. It is commonly believed that to trust God you generously give God everything because you love Him so much. Heroic sacrifices are held up as true examples of trusting God. To truly trust God is not so glamorous." - The Seeking Heart

Isn't it true? We desire the glamor, the glory - we want to do great things for God and be the heroes whose stories are told throughout the church. But that is not truly trusting God, and it is not true strength in our faith either; true strength, perfect strength, is that which comes upon us from God in the midst of our weaknesses.

So I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses. My power is insufficient, but there is this great hope that Christ's power will rest upon me and work through me - and in this work it will be Christ Himself who receives the praise and the glory for whatever is accomplished, not me. And that is how it should be. It is His power, after all, that created me, sustains me, and gave me new life in Him through His death and resurrection. As I was unable to accomplish my own salvation, so I am unable in my own strength to continue in righteousness now that I have been saved. But in my weaknesses, His strength can be made manifest in my life, and I can begin to learn to set myself aside so that He may receive the glory, for it is His to receive.

Worship and work

In the middle of a little book of discourses, there is a collection of discourses on What We Learn From the Lilies In the Field and From the Birds of the Air, and the middle of this little collection is a discourse entitled "How Glorious It Is to Be a Human Being." And in this discourse the author argues that the glory of being human comes from these two things that we alone of all creation can do: that we can worship, and that we can work.

When the author of this discourse took the time to look at the lilies of the field, as Jesus commanded, and thought about how God clothes us in so much more glory than the lilies, he saw that this clothing must refer to something innate in us as being humans, not in our literal clothing (which has never been so glorious as the lily, not even that which adorned King Solomon). And what was this particular glory, that could be compared to the beauty in which the lilies were clothed? It was, the author concluded, simply that to be human means to have been created in the image of God, in a unique manner not shared by any other created thing. The lily bears witness to its Creator, but it does not bear the image of its Creator. We as human beings do, and that is our glory. In the quote I posted earlier, you can read how the author of this discourse explained that we resemble God as His inverse image by worshiping Him, and how that worship is our glory because by it we show that we were made in His image.

When this author then turned to look at the birds of the air, he saw how the bird did not worry about providing for himself in the future because the bird did not work nor have indeed any conception of the future. So while we ought to learn not to worry from the bird, our not worrying is different in essence from the bird's, because we touch the eternal and thus understand the future. It is our glory - as a created being with an eternal spirit, not just a temporal body - to be able to understand the worry about the future, and it is our glory to be able to work for the needs of our eternity and our future as the bird cannot work but as God Himself does work. It is another aspect of our being created in the image of God! And when we work, because we understand that it is God who provides for us ultimately as He provides for the bird (which is why we need not worry), we can think of ourselves as working together with God instead of as working for ourselves. And this also is our glory.

So to worship God and to work together with God (as being made in His image we are able to do in a way that nature cannot) - those are the things that the author of this discourse has concluded are the twin glories of a human being. And it makes me excited! For in those two glories we find eternal value and purpose for our lives, in God. Live is not empty and dark, because we have a God who loves us, who is worthy of our love and adoration and praise, in whom we can delight. Neither is life meaningless and despairing, because we have a God with whom we can work as He carries out His great eternal plan - and even the most trivial aspects of our temporal work are woven by Him into that great plan.

The glory of being human

"The upright gait is the sign of distinction, but to be able to prostrate oneself in adoration and worship is even more glorious; and all nature is like the great staff of servants who remind the human being, the ruler, about worshiping God. This is what is expected, not that the human being is to come and assume the command, which is also glorious and is assigned to him, but that worshiping he shall praise the Creator, something nature cannot do, since it can only remind the human being about doing that. It is glorious to be clothed as the lily, even more glorious to be the erect and upright ruler, but most glorious to be nothing by worshiping!
[...] The human being and God do not resemble each other directly but inversely; only when God has infinitely become the eternal and omnipresent object of worship and the human being always a worshiper, only then do they resemble each other. If human beings want to resemble God by ruling, they have forgotten God; then God has departed and they are playing the rulers in God's absence. This was paganism; this was human life in the absence of God. This was why paganism was still like nature, and the most grievous thing that can be said about it is that it could not worship." - Soren Kierkegaard, Uplifting Discourses in Various Spirits

A proper attitude towards sin

An anonymous reader left the following question on my previous post:

"I wonder how grace transforms our feelings about our own sin. Do we stop despising? Do we no longer care to forget? What is life like when we view our sin differently? Do we disregard it? Do we see sin as a way to learn and grow as individuals? Do we laugh at it? In other words, what is the or a proper attitude towards sin?"

As you can see, a lot is covered and asked in that comment, and I hope the reader will not mind that I am going to focus on the last question in my response: what is the (or a) proper attitude towards sin?

Before I begin, though, I have a disclaimer to make. Not being perfect myself, I don't respond to my own sin perfectly either. I would not be surprised if the way I think I ought to respond to my sin is also imperfect. That is an unfortunate but rather unavoidable consequence of not being omniscient and of having a sin nature that strives to darken and confuse what knowledge I do have. On the other hand, of course, I am much better equipped to write about how to respond to one's sin than about how to avoid sinning altogether, since I have had much more experience with the former than with the latter!

I believe there are three primary paired aspects of a proper attitude and response toward sin: first, confession and forgiveness; second, repentance and renewal; and finally, humility and grace. The first is pretty straightforward - in order for there to be healing, in order for one to move on from a sin and continue to try to follow God, there must be recognition of the sin and confession to God of the sin. As long as we are in denial of a sin, or as long as we are trying to conceal a sin from God (and often from others), we are allowing that sin to ensnare and enslave us. So it is important, however painful it may be, to confess our sin to God and to whomever else it may have affected. With God, we can be sure that He will forgive us that sin; that is what He has promised.

The strength given to us by God's forgiveness of our sin is what enable us to move on to the next step, to refocus the eyes of our hearts and to set our feet once more on the path He has laid out and which His word illuminates. In repentance, we turn away from our sin and gaze once more upon Christ. We press on again toward the goal, reaching for the prize. It is in this step that we remember that we are washed of our sin by the blood of Christ, that He has removed them as far as the east is from the west and has promised not to remember them - and so we too, in a sense, forget the sin and move forward. In Christ, following our repentance, we are set free (in a practical, immediate sense - eternally, we are already free and cannot be enslaved again) from the bondage in which our sin had placed us, so we can leave it behind. There is no guilt or condemnation.

In another sense, of course, we do remember our sin. We remember that we are weak in certain areas, and learn to be more wary of those temptations. We remember that when we felt we were following God with passion and zeal, sin still found a way to bring us down, and from these memories we learn humility. If we are honest with ourselves about our sinfulness, and about our constant need for God's forgiveness and renewal, it is hard to have a heart full of pride! Instead, we can use the occasion of sin to lead us to renewed gratitude and humility by giving us reason to remember the incredible grace of God. So while we will still struggle and sin, we can use those struggles and failures to mature our character and to deepen our understanding of and love for God, because of the gift of His grace.

I am thinking I would like to go into more depth on each of these three aspects, so there might be more posts forthcoming along these lines, but this is the essence of my thoughts on what exactly is the proper attitude of the Christian towards his or her own sin.

Apologies...

I apologize for my silence this past week! Work (typically where I mull over ideas and even write if there is down time) has been particularly busy, I've been trying to think of how to write out an answer to a question left on the previous post by an anonymous commenter, and when I have had time to write I've spent it on a letter of recommendation I'm writing for a former teacher. I've started five or so posts and not had the time to finish them - or really, to be honest, the mental togetherness to conclude them in a coherent way. So I thought I'd let you all know (however few of you there are!) that I am still here and still writing, or at least trying to write. If all goes well I'll post something more substantial by tomorrow; the post I mentioned above that has been claiming what mental energy I do have will most likely come later, as it is threatening to become lengthy and involved :)

Alright, I wish you all well! As the Apostle Paul would say, grace be with you :)

Another meditation on God's grace

When you begin to understand God's grace, it changes everything. How you perceive God, how you perceive yourself, how you perceive other people, how you deal with sins and shortcomings in yourself and others, how you deal with successes and recognition (both yours and others'), and how you handle all kinds of situations - all these things start to change. At least, this is what I am starting to see in myself as God has seemingly been coming at me on every side with this concept of grace, and interestingly enough, I'm seeing this change even in the midst of my sin. I don't mean that I'm suddenly sinning less, unfortunately, but that my response to my own sin is qualitatively different, at least a little bit. Sin does not automatically lead to despair, when grace is present; one failure does not mean that we need fear losing God's acceptance and love, when His grace has covered all our sins already and has reconciled us to Him.

The wonder of God's grace is that even as we mourn over and despise our own sin we can find peace for the past, strength for the present, and encouragement for the future through our hope in Jesus Christ. Do you know that wonder, of finding the strength in Him to forget the failures of the past and to try again to follow Him? The liberty of God's grace is that our lives are no longer bound by a list of "oughts" - a book of duties supplying an correct course of action for every situation - but rather by His love. Do you know that liberty, that breathtaking freedom of learning to live by grace rather than by law, of stepping outside the rigid walls of earthly duty and walking in the love and light of heaven? Outwardly, your actions may not change much, but the heart behind them will be altogether new. The burden of God's grace - and yet it is not a burden at all, but a gift whose value is beyond measure - is that He desires us to become channels, to pour out to others in every trivial daily event of our lives the great grace which He constantly pours upon us. To be able to give that grace to others, not as yet another thing we ought to do for God, to please Him with our law-keeping; nor yet with condescension, as if we were so great that we could certainly spare some grace for those lowly people around us; but with humility of heart, knowing we need grace at least as much as they do, and with gratitude of spirit that God has given us this chance to imitate Him in this most beautiful of His works toward us - that is a gift beyond description.