My Grace Is All You Need
In response to Paul's fervent pleas that he needed to be freed from the tormenting thorn in the flesh the Lord said, "My grace is all you need." The verb is another present tense verb that suggests an ongoing truth. "My grace is always (or continues to be) all you need."
How does the word "grace" function here? The line of the thought is made a bit more difficult because of how it's linked with the next phrase. "My grace is all you need for my power is made perfect in weakness." The preposition rendered "for" usually indicates a causal connection. "Because my power is made perfect in weakness my grace is all you need" seems to be the thought.
I tend to think that Paul is implicitly confessing that the "triumphalist" view to some degree was his own or at least, it could easily have become his own. We're told the thorn was to keep him from strutting and that suggests he was tempted to view revelations and success and manifest power not only as glory badges but as the kind of things that should accompany his status as an apostle. (Maybe that's stretching a little.)
His expressed exultation when he discovered that his weakness was the way to God's glory makes it sound like a genuine discovery. It's as if up to that point he might well have thought the revelations were an essential part of his apostolic profile and therefore needed so that he could fulfil his ministry effectively. The Lord protected him from the dangers arising from the revelations and assured him that his pain and loss weren't hindrances but rather that they were the media in which God's saving power was made "fully present" (Furnish). When he learned this he almost burst into joyful applause. If this catches the tone of it then it would suggest that Paul's eyes were opened through his pain and loss and that he was rescued from what his opponents were still blinded by. It's as if he said, "I used to think I had to have all the 'glory marks' of apostleship but when I was weakened and instructed by God my eyes were opened. I came to understand not only the truth of the gospel more clearly but also the essential means by which it is made known." At such a moment he not only approved of Christ's agenda he recognised and approved the method and means.
Paul's plea for deliverance may well have been motivated by a raw desire for ease and that would be perfectly understandable. But once his eyes were opened the loss was transformed and became an occasion for and a means of "gospeling". So there's more in Paul than the desire for ease; there's an underlying and stronger hunger to glorify God. Still, his experience is agony and at one point he felt the need to have it removed.
"I need you to remove this debilitating weakness."
"All you need is my grace."
"I need you to take away the agony that is weakening me."
"Because my power is made perfect in weakness all you need is my grace to sustain you in your weakness."
Of course it would be true that while he's in agony Paul would be preoccupied with that agony and he might not feel like evangelizing but that can't be what he has in mind here. When he speaks of "weakness" he isn't speaking of physical/emotional pain and loss simply as physical or emotional experiences. He views them in the context of God's way of redeeming and in contrast to the triumphalist point of view. That being the case and the fact that he does seem to have learned this from God in the wake of revelations and through the thorn experience we know Paul worked out his theology as he lived out his life and ministry with God (Holloday).
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.
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