In a more thoroughly defined translation of 2 Cor.12:9 it could be read as " He [Christ] said to me My strength is sufficient for it is only by means of conscious weakness that power is developed" Paul said he "would boast in this weakness [his thorn in the flesh] as that is how the Power of Jesus Christ is perfected in him". As God reveled my weakness in my old Adam natural mans earthly function and form I discovered a new strength and power. The weakness of a realized failed ability to carry out my Christian life on my own power brought me to the place where over time, as my identity in Christ was realized, I came to trust His all sufficient strength. The wonder of weakness provided the true path to what I could be in Him.
After all if we the failed man from the garden turned to our own way, and in that we became breakers of the perfect law of The Father, and were then judicially sentenced to death in Christ on the Cross; how in the world could we think in our own self we might serve God? Its really almost laughable if it wasn't so sad. Oh the hoops we jump through to make ourselves justified. Empires were built to serve the religious need to appear to be righteous followers of Christ; and on and on the tower of the natural mans strength is being fortified brick by brick, and all of this, mans own building, is only destined to fall like the Temple did in 70 AD.We are told in the Bible to" mortify our bodies". Does this mean to pull ourselves up by the boot straps of self discipline and not sin, or are we to imagine, that in any way we of ourselves in the natural might please God in the flesh? No that can not be, for as soon as one sin is put down another arises from the ashes. So therefore this command can only mean that a realization must take place as to who we are in Christ, a new man, and in that we will find ourselves in our own mind as well as The Fathers view, to be counted as mortified, and that by faith in a representative death of another. How can we live out this thought in a active vital way is the question? My friends we have a high calling, a radical path before us, but our God has given us a useful tool provided in His wisdom, our own weakness.
John Darby said " Experience is useful to make us feel the need of a deliverer-our own weakness. When we have made discovery of it, we come to know that God in sending His Son, has condemned sin in the flesh." What is it we are delivered from by experiencing our own weakness? It is ourselves. In looking at myself from the weakness and sin I have suffered I can become convinced that good does not exist in me, and then by that knowledge I may count it as true that I have died, " for you have died, and it is no longer you that live but Christ in you." This my friends is the genius behind our Father using the very thing Adam's life left in us, sin resulting in pain and weakness to cause us to realize there is no value in anything we are of ourselves in the natural, and causes us to finely look to the Lord to be delivered by weakness, from ourselves. Paul was the greatest example of this very real and necessary Biblical truth which must be understood to gain a active honest and real Christian life. Read Romans 6, 7, and 8 to see the incite provided a suffering servant who has embraced this concept, and thereby became a man convinced that his positional self realization and service can only function on this earth by using weakness provided by the Father, in leaving us to dwell in the natural man; to make known the only course for the Christian is being self aware and identified in Christ, and that by, the weakness and suffering that The Father placed upon His Son in our stead, as the example for us. The wonder of weakness.
The suffering of another, The Son of God, and in our relating to it by observing our own weakness, as we suffer in the flesh, will enable us to partake in the practical renunciation of our own sinful natural nature and thereby enter into liberty and growth, resulting in spiritual maturity. This my friends is the way for us, we must make good use of all that God in the sacrifice of His Son has given us. The flesh, Adam man, can never be made any better, and our Father in His unrelenting love for us has determined to deal with that fact. He allows the natural earthly path of suffering, resulting in weakness, to make available to our conscious mind that we in Adam are nothing, while this may not be pleasant, it provides a choice; do we use this God's tool for knowing our life hidden in Christ, as it was intended, or shall we continue to proceed along the wide way provided in a form of worship designed to create loyalty to a institutional experience, based on catering to the works and feelings of a new and improved stronger Adamic race of men on earth?
The Bible says, "we are always to bear about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus." In other words I count it as true that in my apprehension of myself as a natural man I am to consider myself dead! We are made nothing then and that is to be in our own understanding. This is not power my friends, but it is the way the Father gives power. Our weakness by the Fathers mandate is where we find the preparation for power in position. Paul said of this; "I glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me." God cannot make us know the power of a life identified and positioned in Christ by the strength of the natural man, that would be Him using the mind of the flesh, the Word says, "they that are in the flesh cannot please God". So then how shall we live? By recognizing the identity of our weakness in the flesh as the antidote, we cannot live the true Christian life by our own works and feelings. We by Christs weakness, His suffering on the Cross were judicially made to be, "not in the flesh, but in the Spirit" The practical out come of this is" through the Spirit we mortify the deeds of the body and we shall live." By mortify it means we are simply to live by the knowledge that our life eternal starting here in the body, on this earth, is not our own, we have a new nature which is identified in Jesus Christ in heaven, and the proof for that is brought to our mind by the weakness we bear in our flesh, which by the Fathers reckoning, [the flesh] is a dead thing anyway. When we find ourselves made nothing and weak in the self appraisal of our natural man, we will find the Christian.
It took me many years to finally realize that nothing outside of Jesus Christ can fully satisfy! The principal of joy is found "in the fellowship of His sufferings" for we are partakers of His sufferings" 1Pet. 4:13. In embracing this positional aspect of our spiritual presence in Christ we are then practically separated from all that is here. The Church in the world has provided a host of perhaps well meaning men and women to help us avoid our embedded fleshly weakness and maybe there is something to be learned in their words, but if its only to fortify the old nature where is the glory? I went along many years reading the gurus of christian worldly culture and woke up to find it was all really a effort to mix up natural feelings of my Adam man with a spiritual man to provide what at the time I thought was a divine joy; only to be left unsatisfied, still firmly positioned in a dead man. The truth I found in the resulting weakness was that everything I gained by this effort, that outwardly brought me joy, sooner or later failed. I then came to believe His Word, "it is in our weakness He is made strong". And it is in our weakness embraced, that the power of being positionally aware is held and that by applying the teaching of Gods Word by faith.
I recently came across a couple of Greek words that I thought illustrate the incite we will need to more fully understand the wonder of weakness. The first is, peripatetic, which is a Aristotelian word meaning to move about. In the sense used by the philosopher it came to define one mentally going about his life with the benefit of the knowledge gained from a certain school of thought. This idea is brought to bear for the Christian, in position, and in this bloggers life, and the the weakness found in our flesh is key. My Father says that I have died and that I am now alive in Him, and in Him only. My experience contradicts this.. So I have to find my flesh as a judged and crucified thing. My pain and weakness drives me to faith in this fact, therefore I can say with Paul, " in my infirmities the power of Christ rests upon me." The second word, oikoniomia, which is used in 1 Tim. 13-7, and means as used there; the stewardship of God's economy. But if we looked at the meaning of Gods economy in a larger sense we will find it is simply means God's plan to dispense Himself into our humanity. The principal of weakness is used by God in His plan for us, and if our eye's are opened by His work in allowing weakness and pain in our sinful flesh, it is then we will find ourselves in the only possible place of glory for mankind, identified and positioned in our mind, in Jesus Christ!
"The Lord keeps me then; He sends a thorn, if needed, to put me down completely. When the flesh is practically put down in its place of death, then Christs strength is made perfect in my weakness, for there can be no doubt that is His strength. Are your hearts content that the old man should be put down? Are you glad of it? Can you glory in infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon you"? W.K.
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