Frailty Clothes Omnipotence
He was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God. (2 Cor. 13:4) When I am weak, then am I strong. (2 Cor. 12:10)
In nature we see that all the grandest forces are best expressed though the frailest mediums. The awful energy known as electricity works most effectually through slender wires. The mighty magnetic stream is revealed in the trembling needle (of the compass). Thought is not located in an organ like a man’s fist, all bone and muscle: its chosen seat is the delicate brain, and it best acts through fairy cells and attenuated films compared with which the gossamer is coarse. Life does not reside in the massive skeleton, but pulses along the silver cord of alarming delicacy.
“This principle comes out supremely in Christianity ~ the cross is its last and highest expression. The aspect of frailty clothes omnipotence. ‘He was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God.’ In the moment of His utmost weakness, Christ had the consciousness of measureless power and the full assurance of victory. ‘Thinkest thou that I cannot beseech my Father, and He shall even now send me more than twelve legions of angels?’ Let us more fully understand our Master’s greatness, and we shall share His confidence and peace. The Church of God is the theater of disappointment and failure. Nothing here seems to succeed. Workers are snatched away when most wanted; expensive undertakings born in enthusiasm are buried with tears; missions starting in poetry die into prose; we are distressed on every side by delay and disaster. There is more failure with us than with any other. We suffer more defeats than any army. Our shipwrecks exceed those of the high seas. There would be a panic on the Stock Exchange every day if our bankruptcies were commercial. And all this implies our glory. The sense of failure is acutest where the aim is highest, and the catalog of defeats suggests the grandeur of enterprise. Think of the enemies we challenge… our vast ambitions, our immense field of action, the difficult elements in which we work, and no wonder that we know most of the sense of failure, and feel failure most keenly. But our failures are infinite successes, our defeats victories, our martyrs conquerors; we faint only to prevail, we die to live in resurrection power and beauty…. He Who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, knows all this. It is His own program; and He is not disheartened.” ~ W. L. Watkinson.
“Our Lord died an apparent failure, discredited by the leaders of established religion, rejected by society, and forsaken by His friends. The man who ordered Him to the cross was the successful statesman whose hand the ambitious hack politician kissed. It took the Resurrection to demonstrate how gloriously Christ had triumphed and how tragically the governor had failed.” ~ A. W. Tozer.
Reigning by Serving
He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. (John 12:25)
A paradox is defined to be “A tenet or proposition contrary to received opinion and seemingly absurd, but true in fact.” The Gospel of Christ is full of paradoxes; for God’s thoughts and ways are on a higher plane than human thoughts and ways, and therefore appear impossible and even absurd from the merely human standpoint, just as the statements and actions of an astronomer searching the heavens with a telescope would appear absurd to the wild savages in the heart of Africa. We give a few of the these paradoxes:
1. We see unseen things. (2 Cor. 4:18)
2. We conquer by yielding. (Matt. 5:5; Rom. 12:20,21)
3. We rest under a yoke. (Matt. 11:28-30)
4. We reign by serving. (Mark 10:42,44)
5. We become great by becoming little. (Matt. 18:4)
6. We are exalted by being humbled. (Matt. 23:12
7. We become wise by becoming foolish. (1 Cor. 1:20,21)
8. We become free by becoming slaves. (Rom. 6:17-22; Rom. 8:2)
9. We possess all things by having nothing. (2 Cor. 6:10)
10. All things are ours because we are not our own. (1 Cor. 3:21; 1 Cor. 6:19)
11. When we are weak then we are strong. (2 Cor. 12:10)
12. We triumph by defeat. (2 Cor. 12:7-9)
13. Our honor is our shame. (Phil. 2:5-11; Luke 6:26)
14. We glory in our infirmities. (2 Cor. 12:5)
15. We live by dying. (John 12:24,25; 2 Cor. 4:10,11)
“You will shine the brighter,” said Shelhamer, a minister and author, “by giving up your own brilliance; go the faster by walking softly with your God; grow eternally tall by sitting on a low bench; reign over others by letting them reign over you; yea, save your life by losing it.”
Make me a captive, Lord, and then I shall be free.
Force me to render up my sword, and I shall conqueror be.
I sink in life’s alarms when by myself I stand;
Imprison me within Thine arms, and strong shall be my hand.
My heart is weak and poor until it master find;
It has no spring of action sure, it varies with the wind.
It cannot freely move till Thou has wrought its chain;
Enslave it with Thy matchless love, and deathless it shall reign.
My power is faint and low till I have learned to serve;
It lacks the needed fire to glow, it lacks the breeze to nerve.
It cannot drive the world until itself be driven;
Its flag can only be unfurled when Thou shalt breathe from heaven.
My will is not my own till Thou hast made it Thine;
If it would reach a monarch’s throne, it must its crown resign.
It only stands unbent amid the clashing strife,
When on Thy bosom it has leant, and found in Thee its life.
~ George Matheson
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