CHAPTER TEN

THE SUFFICIENCY OF GRACE

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

2 CORINTHIANS 12:9

That life is difficult is a self-evident and universally recognized truth. The morning newspaper reported today that over 1,000 jobs were eliminated in our moderate-sized city over the past two months, making an already frail economy worse and leaving people without paychecks right at the Christmas season. As I write, several hundred thousand military personnel have been deployed to the Middle East, raising once again the terrible specter of war with its ever-increasing technological capability of widespread and wanton death and destruction. Returning to our local scene, a convicted murderer sits in our county jail waiting to hear if he will be sentenced to die for his crime.

We live in a fallen and sin-cursed world. Even Christians are not immune from the frustrating and often overwhelming circumstances of life resulting from that curse. I think of a couple who should be entering their retirement years, but cannot because they are still caring for a grown but partially dependent child. I am reminded of another friend who is faithfully caring for her husband, now stricken with Alzheimer’s disease.

This morning I prayed for several families who are trying to cope with teenage and even grown children living in various stages of spiritual rebellion and estrangement from their parents. Only a block away, a mother with young children fights a seemingly futile battle with cancer. Not only are we as Christians not immune from such heartaches, it often seems we experience more of them than do the non-Christians around us.

But for almost two thousand years, multiplied thousands of believers have found comfort, encouragement, and the strength to endure from God’s words to the apostle Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Paul was no stranger to adversity. Earlier in 2 Corinthians he had spoken of his troubles, hardships, distresses, beatings, imprisonments, riots, hard work, sleepless nights, and hunger (6:4-5). Yet one particular affliction apparently caused him more pain and grief than all the others combined. He referred to it as “a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me” (12:7).

We have no idea what Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” was. It’s pointless to speculate. Whatever it was, it was probably a natural hindrance to his ministry. We do know it was a Satanic attack (a messenger of Satan), but it was given to him at the direction of the God whom he loved and served with all his heart.

Paul had had a unique experience. As he described in the opening verses of 2 Corinthians 12, he had been caught up to the “third heaven,” to God’s paradise, and had heard inexpressible things —things he was not permitted to tell. This rapturous experience, apparently unique to Paul, could have caused him to be filled with pride had he been left to himself. But God in His infinite wisdom and love for Paul did not leave him exposed to that temptation. Paul himself described God’s gracious bulwark against pride this way:

To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2 CORINTHIANS 12:7-10

DIVINE ASSISTANCE

I want to focus particularly on that crucial and blessed statement in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “My grace is sufficient for you,” because it opens to us another dimension of God’s grace we have not seen as yet in this book. To this point we have been studying the aspect of grace commonly defined as God’s unmerited favor to us through Jesus Christ. In verse 9, as well as other Scriptures, we see grace used to mean God’s divine assistance to us through the Holy Spirit. This divine assistance is actually the power of the risen Christ, but it is mediated to us by God’s Spirit.

That grace has this meaning in various places of the New Testament seems to be recognized by almost all Bible commentators. John Calvin, for example, in his commentary on 2 Corinthians 12:9, said, “Here the word grace does not mean as elsewhere God’s favour but is used by metonymy for [to indicate] the help of the Holy Spirit which comes to us from God’s undeserved favour.”[46]

Paul used grace in this same sense in 1 Corinthians 15:10 (a verse we will consider in chapter 11): “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them —yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.” Charles Hodge said of this passage,

The grace of God, in this connection, is not the love of God, but the influence of the Holy Spirit considered as an unmerited favour. This is not only the theological and popular, but also the scriptural sense of the word grace in many passages.[47]

A “popular . . . sense of the word grace” refers to the way we speak when we say something such as, “By God’s grace I was able to love my disagreeable neighbor.” We refer, of course, to God’s enabling in an otherwise impossible situation. And we know that the aid we receive comes to us through the influence or help of His Spirit.

We can readily see this popular but biblical use of the word grace in a very familiar Scripture written by Paul, Philippians 4:12-13: “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”

If, in place of the words “through him who gives me strength,” we substitute the words “by His grace,” verse 13 would read, “I can do everything by His grace.” Although the change of wording sounds strange to our ears because of the familiarity of this verse, we have not changed the theological statement at all. “By His grace” and “through Him who gives me strength” express an identical thought.

So we see that grace, as used in the New Testament, expresses two related and complementary meanings. First, it is God’s unmerited favor to us through Christ whereby salvation and all other blessings are freely given to us. Second, it is God’s divine assistance to us through the Holy Spirit. Obviously the second meaning is encompassed in the first because the aid of the Spirit is one of the “all other blessings” given to us through Christ. We distinguish these two aspects of grace, however, because the first focuses on God’s grace as the source of all blessings, whereas the second focuses on God’s grace expressed specifically as the work of the Holy Spirit within us.

THE THORN IN THE FLESH

Paul needed grace, but he also needed the thorn in his flesh. Like us, he was susceptible to the temptation of pride, and the thorn was given to check that temptation. In fact, in the Greek text, the phrase in 2 Corinthians 12:7 translated in the New International Version “to keep me from becoming conceited” was repeated by Paul. The King James Version picks up this repetition with the following translation: “And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure” (emphasis added).

As if to emphasize the need of the thorn, Paul twice stated the Lord’s purpose in giving it to him. It was to keep pride at bay. Paul was a humble man. He considered himself “less than the least of all God’s people” and the worst of sinners (Ephesians 3:8; 1 Timothy 1:15); yet he knew he was susceptible to pride, given the right circumstances. And the surpassing greatness of the revelations given to him could have been the right circumstances if God had left Paul to himself.

All of us are susceptible to pride. And pride stands in direct opposition to grace, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6). Pride is often reflective of a self-righteous attitude. We begin to grow in the Christian life, and we see other believers who are not growing as we are. We are tempted to become proud of our spiritual growth. Or we see some Christian fall before temptation, and instead of being concerned, we become critical because of our own self-righteousness.

I remember my reaction when I heard that a friend —whom I considered to be very committed to Christ —was resigning from his Christian organization because he was divorcing his wife for another woman. I said to myself, How could he do such a thing? I would never do that. It seemed as if God spoke to me right then: “Oh, wouldn’t you? Don’t be so confident in yourself.” I was sobered. I realized my “righteous indignation” and disappointment in my friend was accompanied by a sinful attitude of self-righteousness. Pride can manifest itself in very subtle ways.

Most of us are familiar with the often used but very true expression “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” Perhaps we’ve even uttered it on occasion. But do we sincerely believe it? I think not. If we truly believed it, we would be far less judgmental, much more compassionate toward, and quick to pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ.

God had a beneficial purpose in giving the thorn, whatever it was, to Paul. And it was God who gave it, even though it was given through the instrumentality of Satan. Satan certainly had no interest in curbing Paul’s temptation to pride; he would have wanted just the opposite. As in the case of Job, Satan undoubtedly wanted to drive a wedge between Paul and the Lord; he wanted Paul to turn against God. But just as God and Satan had different purposes in the affliction of Job, so God and Satan had different purposes for Paul’s thorn in the flesh.

God never allows pain without a purpose in the lives of His children. He never allows Satan, nor circumstances, nor any ill-intending person to afflict us unless He uses that affliction for our good. God never wastes pain. He always causes it to work together for our ultimate good, the good of conforming us more to the likeness of His Son (see Romans 8:28-29).

God’s purpose for Paul’s thorn is clearly stated in the text: “to keep me from becoming conceited” (2 Corinthians 12:7). Sometimes God’s purpose for allowing pain in our lives is clear; more often, it seems, it is not. In fact, frequently a great part of the pain is the sheer irrationality of it. God never explained to Job the purpose of his unbelievable pain. He left Job to suffer in the dark, so to speak. That is usually our experience.

Paul said the thorn was given to torment him. Other versions translate the verb as “harass,” “buffet,” or “afflict.” The same verb is used in 1 Corinthians 4:11 where it is translated as “brutally treated.” Paul was brutally treated by Satan. The apostle Peter said, “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). The devil is cruel and vicious. He would devour us, if he could. He torments us to the full extent God allows. But, as was the case when Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery, though the devil intends to harm us, God intends it for good (see Genesis 50:20).

Paul’s reaction to his thorn was one of deep anguish. He said, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me” (2 Corinthians 12:8). Although the thorn was always present, there were probably times when its pain, whether physical or emotional or both, was unusually severe. It is likely that on three of those occasions Paul was driven to cry out to God for its removal.

THE PRIDE OF SELF-SUFFICIENCY

God never removed Paul’s thorn, despite his anguished pleas. When Paul wrote these words, it had been fourteen years since he had received the surpassingly great revelations (see 2 Corinthians 12:2). During that time he had suffered many varied adversities. How could he have still needed the thorn to curb any temptation to become conceited? God had an even greater purpose for the thorn. He wanted Paul to experience the sufficiency of His grace. He wanted him to learn that the divine assistance of the Holy Spirit was all he needed. He wanted Paul to learn to lean continually on the Spirit for strength.

In earlier chapters we have seen that God’s grace assumes our sinfulness, guilt, and ill-deservedness. Here we see it also assumes our weakness and inability. Just as grace is opposed to the pride of self-righteousness, so it is also opposed to the pride of self-sufficiency. The sin of self-sufficiency goes all the way back to the Fall in the Garden of Eden.

Satan’s temptation of Eve was undoubtedly complex and many faceted. That is, it included what we would now consider a number of different temptations. But one of those facets was the temptation of self-sufficiency.

Satan said to Eve, “You will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). Mankind was created to be dependent upon God: physically, “in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28); and spiritually, Jesus said, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). God intended our dependence on Him to be conscious and continuous.

But Satan tempted Eve to assert her autonomy and self-sufficiency. As G. Ch. Aalders said, “That ideal of sovereign independence, which had been presented to her by the serpent, lured her on, ‘and she took some [of the fruit] and ate it.’”[48]

Ever since the Fall, God has continually worked to cause His people to realize their utter dependence on Him. He does this through bringing us to the point of human extremity where we have no place to turn but to Him. One of the more dramatic and prolonged illustrations of this is found in His miraculous provision for the Israelite nation in the desert.

After living forty years in the desert, Moses recounted their experiences in the book of Deuteronomy. This is one of his more vivid recollections:

Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.

DEUTERONOMY 8:2-3

Note how Moses recalled the Israelites’ utter extremity and total dependence on God:

God humbled the people and caused them to hunger before He fed them. He deliberately brought them to the end of themselves. The description in Psalm 107:5 is apt: “They were hungry and thirsty, and their lives ebbed away.” Then He fed them miraculously with food they had never tasted before. God wanted them to be acutely aware of the fact that He was feeding them; they were dependent on His provision every day. “Every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD” is not the revealed Word of Scripture but rather the commanding word of God’s providence —“For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm” (Psalm 33:9).

P. C. Craigie’s comments on this portion of Scripture help us see what God was doing to the Israelites:

The wilderness tested and disciplined the people in various ways. On the one hand, the desolation of the wilderness removed the natural props and supports which man by nature depends on; it cast the people back on God, who alone could provide the strength to survive the wilderness. On the other hand, the severity of the wilderness period undermined the shallow bases of confidence of those who were not truly rooted and grounded in God. The wilderness makes or breaks a man; it provides strength of will and character. The strength provided by the wilderness, however, was not the strength of self-sufficiency, but the strength that comes from a knowledge of the living God.[49]

On the very first page of the notebook I use during my morning devotions and prayer time, I have written these words from J. A. Thompson’s commentary on this passage in Deuteronomy:

Already during the forty years of wandering God had taught Israel utter dependence on Him for water and food. Hunger and thirst could not be satisfied by human aid but only by God. The need for such divine provision in the hour of their extremity could not but humiliate the people. . . .

The provision of food, which Israel did not know previously, made plain the lesson that it is not mere food that gives life. Without the divine word the food itself may not be available. . . . Nothing was possible without Him, and even to eat they had to await His pleasure.[50]

Why do I review Dr. Thompson’s comments almost every morning? I sense the need to constantly remind myself of my utter dependence on God in every area of life. I don’t have to gather manna every morning; God has so graciously provided that the food I need for the day is already in the cupboard or the refrigerator. In those circumstances it is easy to forget our dependence on God. But the fact is I am just as dependent on God for water and food as were the people of Israel in the desert.

God provided for the Israelites through a continual miracle every day for forty years. He has provided for me and my family through His providential circumstances, also for many years. God wanted the Israelites to realize and remember their utter dependence on Him, so He used an extremity of need and a miraculous provision to capture their attention and teach them a lesson that is difficult to learn. Still, they forgot. How much easier it is, then, for us to forget when God is supplying our needs through ordinary, mundane ways.

It is even more difficult, however, for us to learn our dependence on God in the spiritual realm. A lack of money for food or to make the monthly mortgage payment gets our attention very quickly, and the need is obvious. The money is either available or it isn’t. There’s no pretending. But we can pretend in the spiritual realm. We can exist for months —going through the motions, perhaps even teaching Sunday school or serving as an elder or deacon —depending on nothing more than mere natural human resources.

The possible extremity of physical circumstances and my very real dependence on God to meet physical needs serves as a daily reminder of my spiritual dependence on Him. The physical dependence illustrates the spiritual dependence, reminding me of Jesus’ words, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Dr. Thompson’s words remind me that I am as dependent upon God as the Israelites were. My dependence may not be as obvious, but it is just as real and just as acute as if I had to wait daily for God to rain down manna from heaven. And if I am dependent in the physical realm, how much more dependent am I in the spiritual realm, where our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual forces of evil (see Ephesians 6:12)?

THE SUFFICIENCY OF GRACE

Before we can learn the sufficiency of God’s grace, we must learn the insufficiency of ourselves. As I have said, the more we see our sinfulness, the more we appreciate grace in its basic meaning of God’s undeserved favor. In a similar manner, the more we see our frailty, weakness, and dependence, the more we appreciate God’s grace in its dimension of His divine assistance. Just as grace shines more brilliantly against the dark background of our sin, so it also shines more brilliantly against the background of our human weakness.

We have looked at Paul’s words in Romans 5:20: “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more.” He could have just as aptly said in 2 Corinthians 12, “But where human weakness increased, grace increased all the more.” That is essentially what he said in different words in verse 9: “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” My power is made perfect in weakness. On this Philip Hughes wrote,

Indeed, the abject weakness of the human instrument serves to magnify and throw into relief the perfection of the divine power in a way that any suggestion of human adequacy could never do. The greater the servant’s weakness, the more conspicuous is the power of his Master’s all-sufficient grace.[51]

In this passage, God equates His grace with His power as specifically displayed in our weakness. This power infusing our weakness is a concrete expression of His grace: His power comes to our aid through the ministry of His Spirit in our lives. This is the mysterious operation of the Holy Spirit on our human spirit through which He strengthens us and enables us to meet in a godly fashion whatever circumstances we encounter.

Notice I said the Holy Spirit strengthens us and enables us to meet in a godly fashion whatever circumstances cross our paths. God’s grace is not given to make us feel better, but to glorify Him. Modern society’s subtle, underlying agenda is good feelings. We want the pain to go away. We want to feel better in difficult situations, but God wants us to glorify Him in those circumstances. Good feelings may come, or they may not, but that is not the issue. The issue is whether or not we honor God by the way we respond to our circumstances. God’s grace —that is, the enabling power of the Holy Spirit —is given to help us respond in such a way.

God’s grace is sufficient. The Greek verb translated “is sufficient” is the same one translated “will be content” in 1 Timothy 6:8: “But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.” This helps us understand what sufficient means. Food and clothing refer to the necessities of life, not the luxuries. If we have the necessities we are to be content; that is, we are to realize they are sufficient. God may give us more from time to time, but we are to be content with the necessities.

So it is with God’s grace in the spiritual realm. God always gives us what we need, perhaps sometimes more, but never less. The spiritual equivalent of food and clothing is simply the strength to endure in a way that honors God. Receiving that strength, we are to be content. We would like the “luxury” of having our particular thorn removed, but God often says, “Be content with the strength to endure that thorn.” We can be confident He always gives that.

John Blanchard said, “So he [God] supplies perfectly measured grace to meet the needs of the godly. For daily needs there is daily grace; for sudden needs, sudden grace; for overwhelming need, overwhelming grace. God’s grace is given wonderfully, but not wastefully; freely but not foolishly; bountifully but not blindly.”[52]

There is a lesson about grace in the way God distributed the manna to the Israelites in the desert. Exodus 16:16-21 says,

“This is what the LORD has commanded: ‘Each one is to gather as much as he needs. Take an omer for each person you have in your tent.’”

The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. And when they measured it by the omer, he who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little. Each one gathered as much as he needed.

Then Moses said to them, “No one is to keep any of it until morning.”

However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them.

Each morning everyone gathered as much as he needed, and when the sun grew hot, it melted away.

Three times the text mentions that each person could gather “as much as he needed.” There was an ample supply of manna for everyone. No one need go hungry because everyone could gather as much as he needed. Not only was there an ample supply, God in some mysterious way saw that no one had an overabundance, regardless of how much manna he gathered: “He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little.” Furthermore, the gathering was to be a day-to-day activity. They were to gather only what was needed each day —except on the day before the Sabbath. They were not allowed to store up for the future.

God’s distribution of the manna illustrates the way He distributes grace. There is always an ample supply; no one ever need go without. But there is only as much as we need —and even that is on a day-to-day basis. God doesn’t permit us to “store up” grace. We must look to Him anew each day for a new supply. Sometimes we must look for a new supply each hour!

This thought of God’s ample but day-by-day supply of grace is beautifully expressed in the first stanza of Lina Sandell Berg’s lovely hymn “Day by Day”:

Day by day and with each passing moment,

Strength I find to meet my trials here;

Trusting in my Father’s wise bestowment,

I’ve no cause for worry or for fear.

He whose heart is kind beyond all measure

Gives unto each day what He deems best —

Lovingly, its part of pain and pleasure,

Mingling toil with peace and rest.[53]

Such a day-by-day parceling out of grace —and only as much as we need —may seem inconsistent with the abundant generosity of God we saw in earlier chapters. This is not the case at all. Rather, as we saw previously in this chapter, God continually works to keep us aware of our dependence on Him. We were created for a simple, childlike dependence on Him, but since the Fall we have tended to resist that dependence. God well knew this tendency when He gave this warning through Moses to the Israelites:

You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today.

DEUTERONOMY 8:17-18

It is noteworthy that this warning occurs shortly after the reminder in verses 2-3, which we already studied. There the Israelites were reminded of their days of extremity and very obvious dependence on God for their daily food. But God warned them that, even after forty years of such conscious dependence, the day would come when they would look around at their bountiful supply of food and say, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.”

Such a self-sufficient attitude is obviously detrimental to our relationship with God, so He works to keep that from happening. He allows our respective thorns in the flesh to remain, giving us grace sufficient to cope with them only day by day. From time to time He brings extraordinary crises into our lives, as He did when Paul was forced to say, “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9). Despite his ever-present thorn, Paul was brought to a crisis extremity to learn anew to rely not on himself but on God.

Whether it is the continuing thorn in the flesh or the extraordinary crisis that sometimes occurs, both are intended by God to keep us conscious of our human weakness and our dependence on Him, so that we might experience the sufficiency of His grace and the adequacy of His power. As John Calvin said, “For men have no taste for it [God’s power] till they are convinced of their need of it and they immediately forget its value unless they are continually reminded by awareness of their own weakness.”[54]

Paul’s attitude toward his weakness was vastly different from our usual modern response. We abhor weakness and glory in self-sufficiency and man-made accomplishments. Even Christians flock to hear the sports superstar or the popular entertainer give his or her testimony, simply because of that person’s fame and status. How many of us would make any effort to hear a man who said, “I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses. . . . I delight in weaknesses. . . . For when I am weak, then I am strong”?

I think of how I have struggled with my own weaknesses instead of delighting in them. I think of the disappointment of failing to reach important goals, of humiliations suffered that were too painful to ever share with anyone, of somewhat minor but very annoying lifetime physical infirmities. Only in the last few years have I realized what a significant contribution those disappointments, heartaches, and frustrations —especially in their cumulative effect —have made on my walk with God and my service for Him. I think I am only beginning to understand a little bit the validity of Paul’s statement, “When I am weak, then I am strong.”

Sometimes when I am introduced as a speaker, I cringe inwardly as the person introducing me waxes eloquent about my accomplishments. I sit there and think, What if they knew the other side of the story? Would they all get up and leave? Yet ironically, it is the other side of the story, the humiliations and heartaches, the failures and frustrations —not the successes and accomplishments —that have qualified me to be there to speak. Those difficult times have driven me to the Lord. I’ll be honest. It wasn’t that I wanted to lean on God; I had no other choice. But I am finally learning that in weakness I find strength —His strength.

Philip Hughes said, “Every believer must learn that human weakness and divine grace go hand in hand together.”[55] Paul had learned that lesson well. He said, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Paul had learned that God’s grace is indeed sufficient; His divine enabling through the power of the Holy Spirit would sustain him in the midst of the torments of his thorn, and in the depths of other weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and difficulties (verse 10).

As we noted earlier, it had been fourteen years since Paul received those surpassingly great revelations. If we assume the thorn was given to him at about the same time, and that the three instances when he pleaded for its removal occurred soon afterward, we can say that Paul had had almost fourteen years to prove the sufficiency of God’s grace.

Paul was no ivory tower theologian. He did not write from the comfortable confines of a minister’s study or a counselor’s office (nor, for that matter, does any competent pastor or counselor today). Paul wrote from raw experience because he had “been there.” The anguish he experienced was real anguish, and the grace he received was real grace. It was not theoretical, nor make-believe, nor merely “whistling in the dark” to keep up his courage. No, Paul experienced a very concrete expression of God’s love and power as the Holy Spirit ministered comfort and encouragement to him in the midst of affliction.

Paul was not the first of the biblical writers to tell of the sufficiency of God’s grace. Jeremiah, a prophet of God who endured much hardship and affliction could say,

I remember my affliction and my wandering,

the bitterness and the gall.

I well remember them,

and my soul is downcast within me.

Yet this I call to mind

and therefore I have hope:

Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed,

for his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.

LAMENTATIONS 3:19-23

Even Job, in the midst of suffering and despair, when he acknowledged he could not find God anywhere (see Job 23:8-9), could still say, “But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold” (verse 10).

Perhaps the most frequent and dramatic utterances of the sufficiency of God’s grace in the midst of human frailty and affliction occur in the Psalms. Consider, for example, David’s testimony in Psalm 13:

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts

and every day have sorrow in my heart?

How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Look on me and answer, O LORD my God.

Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;

my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”

and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

But I trust in your unfailing love;

my heart rejoices in your salvation.

I will sing to the LORD,

for he has been good to me.

In this psalm, David recounted his experience of passing from the depths of despair to the heights of rejoicing. What enabled him to make such a dramatic transition? Although God’s grace is not explicitly mentioned, we may be sure it was indeed the grace of God at work in him.

Asaph, another of the psalmists, experienced a different kind of thorn. He compared his experience as a godly man with that of the wicked and became discouraged. He said,

For I envied the arrogant

when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. . . .

This is what the wicked are like —

always carefree, they increase in wealth.

Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure;

in vain have I washed my hands in innocence.

PSALM 73:3, 12-13

But then he discovered the grace of God and could say,

Yet I am always with you;

you hold me by my right hand. . . .

My flesh and my heart may fail,

but God is the strength of my heart

and my portion forever.

PSALM 73:23, 26

The testimonies of God’s power made perfect in human weakness do not end with the completion of the canon of Scripture. Down through the centuries men and women of God have experienced and borne witness to the sufficiency of His grace. One of the more beautiful expressions of this is found in the well-known poem of Annie Johnson Flint, “He Giveth More Grace”:

He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater;

He sendeth more grace when the labours increase;

To added afflictions he addeth his mercy,

To multiplied trials, his multiplied peace.

When we have exhausted our store of endurance,

When our strength has failed ere the day is half done;

When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,

Our Father’s full giving is only begun.

His love has no limits, his grace has no measure,

His power has no boundary known unto men;

For out of his infinite riches in Jesus,

He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again.[56]

I urge you to read this poem slowly, reflectively, and prayerfully. Apply its message to your own burdens, afflictions, and trials. Ask God to make its truths real to you in your particular situation.

APPROPRIATING GOD’S GRACE

God said to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you.” God, who is “the God of all grace” (1 Peter 5:10), is the giver of grace, but that does not mean we Christians are passive recipients of it. Rather, we are to appropriate His grace.

Paul urged Timothy to “be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:1). Grammatically, the verb is in the imperative mood; that is, it expresses a command or request. Paul wanted Timothy to do something; he wanted Timothy to appropriate God’s grace and be strong in it.

Timothy apparently had a problem with timidity. In the same letter Paul had already said, “God did not give us a spirit of timidity” and “So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me his prisoner” (2 Timothy 1:7-8). And to the Corinthian believers Paul had written, “If Timothy comes, see to it that he has nothing to fear while he is with you” (1 Corinthians 16:10). Timothy had a problem with timidity, and Paul wanted him to deal with it by appropriating the grace of God, “Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.”

In chapter 12 we will explore how we actually appropriate the grace of God. At this point I want to call your attention only to the necessity of our doing it, to the fact that we are not simply passive recipients of God’s grace. Just as the Israelites had to gather day-by-day the manna God graciously provided, so we must appropriate day-by-day the grace that is always sufficient for every need.

There is one more truth I want us to see from Paul’s words to Timothy. Timothy needed moral strength because he was prone to timidity. So Paul wrote, “Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.” What is your greatest need just now? Is it contentment in a very difficult situation? Paul would say to you, “Be content in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.” Is it patience or forbearance in very trying circumstances? Then be patient in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. Is it moral purity in a romantic relationship? Then be pure in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. Whatever your need at this time, you too can experience the reality of God’s words to Paul: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

God’s grace is sufficient. It is sufficient for all your needs; it is sufficient regardless of the severity of any one need. The Israelites never exhausted God’s supply of manna. It was always there to be gathered every day for forty years. And you will never exhaust the supply of God’s grace. It will always be there every day for you to appropriate as much as you need for whatever your need is.