Abiding in Christ

All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.

Matthew 28:18

Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.

Ephesians 6:10

My strength is made perfect in weakness.

2 Corinthians 12:9

No truth is more generally admitted among sincere Christians than that they are utterly weak. Yet there is no truth more generally misunderstood and abused than this. Here, as elsewhere, God’s thoughts are high above ours (Isaiah 55:8).

The Christian often tries to forget his weakness, but God wants us to remember it, and to feel it deeply. Christians want to conquer their weakness and to be freed from it; God wants us to rest and even rejoice in it. Christians mourn over their weakness, while Christ teaches His servants to say, ‘‘I take pleasure in infirmities; most gladly will I boast in my infirmities’’ (2 Corinthians 12:9–10). Christians think their weakness is the greatest hindrance in their life and service to God; but God tells us that rather than being a hindrance, our weakness is actually the secret of strength and success. It is our weakness, heartily accepted and continually realized, that gives us our claim and access to the strength of Him who has said, ‘‘My strength is made perfect in weakness.’’

When our Lord was about to take His seat upon the throne, one of His last statements was ‘‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.’’ Just as taking His place at the right hand of the power of God was something new and true—a real advance in the history of the God-man—so was His assuming all power and authority for heaven and earth. Omnipotence was now entrusted to the man Christ Jesus, so that from then on it might put forth its mighty energies through the channels of human nature. Here He connected this revelation of what He was to receive with the promise of the share that His disciples would have in it: When I am ascended, you will receive power from on high (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:8). It is in the power of the omnipotent Savior that the believer must find his strength for life and for work.

The disciples found this principle to be true. During ten days in the Upper Room they worshiped and waited at the footstool of His throne. They gave expression to their faith in Him as their Savior, their adoration of Him as their Lord, their love for Him as their Friend, and their devotion and readiness to work for Him as their Master. Jesus Christ was their one object of thought, of love, of delight. In such worship and devotion their souls grew up into intense communion with Him upon the throne, and when they were prepared, the baptism of power came. It was power within and power around them.

The power came to qualify them for the work to which they had yielded themselves—of testifying by life and word to their unseen Lord. With some the main testimony was to be that of a holy life, revealing heaven and the Christ from whom holiness came. The power came to set up the kingdom within them, to give them victory over sin and self, and to equip them by living experience to testify to the power of Jesus on the throne to make men live in the world as saints. Others were to give themselves up entirely to speaking in the name of Jesus. But all needed and all received the gift of power to prove that Jesus had received the kingdom of the Father. All power in heaven and earth was indeed given to Him, and by Him imparted to His people just as they needed it, whether for a holy life or effective service. They received the gift of power to prove to the world that the kingdom of God, to which they professed to belong, was ‘‘not in word but in power’’ (1 Corinthians 4:20). By having power within, they also had power around them, outside of themselves. For even those who would not yield themselves to the power of God felt its reality (Acts 2:43; 4:13; 5:13).

And what Jesus was to these first disciples, He is to us too. Our whole life and calling as disciples find their origin and their guarantee in the words: ‘‘All authority is given to Me in heaven and on earth.’’ What He does in and through us, He does with almighty power. What He claims or demands, He works himself by that same power. All He gives, He gives with power and authority. Every blessing He bestows, every promise He fulfills, every grace He works—all is to be with power. Everything that comes from Jesus on the throne of power is to bear the stamp of power. The weakest believer may be confident that in asking to be kept from sin, to grow in holiness, to bring forth much fruit, he may count upon these his petitions being fulfilled with divine power. The power is in Jesus; Jesus is ours with all His fullness. It is in us, members of His body, that the power is to work and to be made known.

And if we want to know how the power is bestowed, the answer is simple: Christ gives His power in us by giving His life to us. He does not, as so many believers imagine, take the frail life He finds in them, and impart a little strength to help them in their frailty. No; it is in giving His own life to us that He gives us His power. The Holy Spirit came down to the disciples directly from the heart of their exalted Lord, bringing down into them the glorious life of heaven into which He had entered. And so His people are still taught to be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might (Ephesians 6:10). When He strengthens them, it is not by taking away the sense of weakness, and giving in its place the feeling of strength. Not at all.

Rather, in a very wonderful way He leaves and even increases the sense of utter impotence; along with it He gives them the consciousness of strength in Him. ‘‘We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us’’ (2 Corinthians 4:7). The weakness and the strength are side by side; as the one grows, the other does, too, until his disciples understand the saying, ‘‘When I am weak, then am I strong; I boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me’’ (2 Corinthians 12:9–10).

The believing disciple learns to look upon Christ on the throne, Christ the Omnipotent, as his life. He studies that life in its infinite perfection and purity, in its strength and glory; it is eternal life dwelling in a glorified man. And when he thinks of his own inner life, and longs for holiness, to live a life well-pleasing to God, or for power to do the Father’s work, he looks up, and, rejoicing that Christ is his life, he confidently acts on the assurance that Christ’s life will work mightily in him all he needs. In things both small and great, in being kept from sin from moment to moment, or in the struggle with some special difficulty or temptation, the power of Christ is the measure of his expectation. He lives a truly joyous and blessed life, not because he is no longer weak, but because, being utterly helpless, he consents and expects to have the mighty Savior work in him.

The lessons these thoughts teach us for practical life are simple but very precious. The first is that all our strength is in Christ, laid up and waiting for our use, according to the measure in which it finds the channels open. But whether its flow is strong or weak, whatever our experience of it may be, there it is in Christ: all authority in heaven and earth. Let us take time to study this. Let us get our minds filled with the thought: So that Jesus might be to us a perfect Savior, the Father gave Him all power and authority. That is the qualification that fits Him for our needs—having all the power of heaven that triumphs over all the powers of earth, including those in our heart and life.

The second lesson is: This power flows into us as we abide in close union with Him. When the union is weak, undervalued or undercultivated, the inflow of strength will be weak. On the other hand, when our union with Christ is praised as our highest good, and everything is sacrificed for the sake of maintaining it, His power will work in us: His strength ‘‘is made perfect in (our) weakness.’’ Our one care must therefore be to abide in Christ as our strength. Our one duty is to be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.

Let our faith be expanded to appropriate the exceeding greatness of God’s power in them that believe, even that power of the risen and exalted Christ by which He triumphed over every enemy (Ephesians 1:19–21). Let our faith consent to God’s wonderful arrangement: nothing but weakness in us as our own, all the power in Christ, and yet within our reach as surely as if it were in us. Let our faith go beyond self and its life daily into the life of Christ, placing our whole being at His disposal for Him to work in us. Let our faith, above all, confidently rejoice in the assurance that He will, with His almighty power, perfect His work in us. As we abide in Christ, the Holy Spirit will work mightily in us, and we too will be able to sing, ‘‘The Lord is my strength and song’’ (Isaiah 12:2). ‘‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me’’ (Philippians 4:13).