A Heart for Weakness Part 2: Weak-Together
Disaster
Then the day before I was due to fly out of the Philippines the Taal volcano erupted and all flights were cancelled. The airline was uncontactable by phone and by the time we reached one of their offices the next available flight to Hong Kong for ministry was close to when I was due back in Perth. In the end I was forced to wait an extra four days in Manila and depart on another airline. All during this waiting period we were being told the volcano could blow up any time, and my insurer informed me I’d failed to tick the natural disaster box on my policy! Many people were praying for a safe exodus, but in large scale things like this the sovereign will of God is surely unchangeable. I couldn’t really conceive he’d silence the volcano just for me. However, I did believe the Spirit would speak to me during my “delay”.
Seeing beyond Weakness
In the middle of my final night in Manila the Lord started speaking about a sin which seems to ground my intolerance of weakness in others. Instead of seeing human weakness as a bother, I need to see it as an opportunity for a display of the grace of God. After all it is only through weakness, struggle and feebleness that people come to Christ and grow in him. In the classic passage in 2 Cor 11-12 Paul did not say, “Who is weak but I am strong/superior/past-that.”, but “Who is weak, and I am not weak?” (2 Cor 11:29). Similarly, “To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak” (1 Cor 9:22). The apostle is weak by choice because he has learned to submit his will to the will of him who sent him. Paul understood that the purpose of the weakness of the cross was the glory of God in immortalising our frail humanity (1 Cor 1:25; 2 Tim 1:10). He understood this because Jesus personally taught him. After pleading with Christ to extract the “thorn in the flesh” the word of the Lord was, ““My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”” (2 Cor 12:9). The heart of genuine apostolic ministry consists in living out the reality that in the good and sovereign will of God in Christ all human weakness becomes the realm where grace is experienced. Mature Christians accept that every weakness exists to sustain a dependence on grace. This is a potent Christocentric perspective, but the Lord had yet more profound things to say.
A Needy Father
On my first night in Hong Kong around 3.30 am, as I was praying, I sensed how the Father needed the weakness of Jesus in order to be fully revealable to our broken humanity. To manifest himself as God for us and the perfect Father he could not do without a weakened Son. The way the Father relates to the greatest struggles in his Son’s life is the revelation of his Fatherhood. In Gethsemane the Father is revealed as “Abba!”, in the cross he is Christ’s sustainer, and in the resurrection his vindicator/justifier (1 Tim 3:16). The mystery of death is that it represents the ultimate state of human weakness through which the glory of the Father can be fully revealed, in resurrection (Rom 6:4). In the wise counsel of God it has been eternally decreed not only that divine revelation is concentrated in a human being, Christ, but that revelation is a human being transformed through weakness, Jesus.
Weak-Together
As this is true of Jesus it is also true of the Father’s relationship with the rest of his children. The Father needs our weaknesses, not to be God, but to reveal himself. This paradoxical wisdom of God confounds all worldy common sense. In seeing the purpose of God in permitting my own weaknesses in encountering other weak people and in his speaking to me I see into the goal of it all and stand amazed. “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! 34 “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counsellor?” 35 “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” 36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” (Rom 11:33-36)
To glory in weakness in its function is to be the channel of the revelation of the Father’s heart binds me to God in Christ in a way that “levels” deity and humanity. Through the sharing of weakness with the Lord, and teaching others to do I same, I sense our joy, love etc. will constantly increase. By our I mean the Father and me. To share weakness is the hidden key (1 Cor 2:7; Col 2:3) for togetherness between humanity and God. As the fellowship of the Father -Son increased through sharing in Christ’s unsurpassable weakness this is our way of ever-deepening communion with God.
Conclusion
The Father has only one point of reference, Christ for me. As people who “have been crucified with Christ” (Gal 2:20; 5:24; 6:14; Romans 6:6) this must be our only frame also. The time is past for all our immature annoyances and reactiveness; they are not a part of our new identity in Christ. The weaknesses of the children of God no longer belong to them, “You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” (1 Cor 6:19-20). Christ has taken possession of all our limitations for his glory, honour and praise. Let’s echo Paul, “I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Cor 12:9). In the light of these extraordinary things a truly renewed mind (Rom 12:1) values weakness as one of God’s greatest gifts. The supreme excitement of the resurrection awaits us frail, groaning people (1 Cor 15:43).
I feel like joining with the heavenly host singing the Song of the Lamb, “Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations!” (Rev 15:3). May it be so for us all, always.