Week 2: Love in Weakness

Paul had one credential no rival in Corinth could touch, and he tells the story of it in the third person, after fourteen years of silence, without repeating a word of what he heard. Then he sets it down and boasts about his weaknesses instead. The reason sits in the next verse: God attached a weight to him so he would not be lifted up over everyone around him, and the thorn was given, the same verb Romans 12 uses of the gifts, only here it describes a subtraction rather than a supply. He pleaded three times and the answer was no to the request and yes to the man: My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.

Grace was never offered as a way around the trouble. It was offered as what would hold a man inside it, and weakness turns out to be the place where that power finishes its work, so a Christian who admits to none leaves it nothing to do. This lesson belongs in a study of love because a man who has quit hiding his own weakness is the only one free to sit down in somebody else's, and a congregation where everyone is fine is a congregation where nobody gets helped. The lesson closes in Gethsemane, where the Son of God asked three times in the same words and the cup was never taken, and at the cross, where He was crucified in weakness and lives by the power of God.