Sunday
Sunday
Power through Weakness
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.
2 Corinthians 4:7
One of the overriding themes of the Corinthian correspondence is power through weakness; there are eight distinct expressions of it in the two letters.
Of course, the lust for power has been a characteristic of the human story ever since Adam and Eve were offered power in exchange for disobedience. Still today the pursuit of money, fame, and influence is a concealed drive for power. We see it in politics and in public life, in big business and industry, in the professions and the media, and even in the church and in parachurch organizations. Power! It is more intoxicating than alcohol, more addictive than drugs. It was Lord Acton, the nineteenth-century British politician, who composed the epigram, “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” He was a Roman Catholic who in 1870 strongly opposed the decision of the First Vatican Council to attribute infallibility to the pope. He saw it as power corrupting the church.
The Bible contains clear warnings about the use and abuse of power, and Paul insisted on his theme of power through weakness, divine power through human weakness. In the first two chapters of 1 Corinthians, he gives three striking examples of the same principle.
We see it first in the gospel itself, for the weakness of the cross is the saving power of God (1 Cor. 1:17–25). Secondly, we see power through weakness in the Corinthian converts, for God had chosen weak people to shame the strong (1 Cor. 1:26–31). Thirdly, power through weakness is exhibited in Paul the evangelist, since he had come to Corinth “in weakness and fear, and with much trembling” but also “with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power” (1 Cor. 2:1–5).
Thus the gospel, the converts, and the preacher (or the evangel, the evangelized, and the evangelist) all exhibited the same principle that God’s power operates best in human weakness. For God chose a weak instrument (Paul) to bring a weak message (the cross) to weak people (the socially despised). But through this triple weakness the power of God was—and still is—displayed.
For further reading: 1 Corinthians 1:18–2:5