STRENGTHENING WORDS FROM THE SAVIOR’S LIPS – Charles Spurgeon

STRENGTHENING WORDS FROM THE SAVIOR’S LIPS

“And He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for you: for My strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” 2 Corinthians 12:9.

PAUL, when buffeted by the messenger of Satan, addressed his prayer to the Lord Jesus Christ, and not, as he usually did, to the heavenly Father. This is a somewhat remarkable fact, but it is clear from the passage before us. He says, “For this thing I besought the Lord thrice,” and that the Lord here is the Lord Jesus is pretty clear from the fact that he says in the next verse, “that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” His prayer was not directed to God absolutely considered, nor does he speak of the power of God, but his prayer was directed to the Lord Jesus Christ, and it was the power of the Lord Jesus Christ which he desired to rest upon him. It is an infallible proof of our Lord’s divinity, that He may be addressed in prayer; and this is one instance with several others, which show us that we may legitimately present our petitions, not only to the ever-blessed Father, but also to His Son Jesus Christ. There seems to me to be a peculiar fitness in a prayer to Jesus when the temptation came from a messenger of Satan, because the Lord Jesus has endured the same temptation Himself, and knows how to succor them that are tempted. Moreover, He has come to earth to destroy the works of the devil. In His lifetime He manifested peculiar power over unclean spirits, and was constantly casting them out from those whom they tormented. It was one of His few rejoicing notes, “I saw Satan like lightning fall from heaven.” It was by the name of Jesus that devils were expelled after Christ had risen into glory. “Jesus I know,” said the spirits whom the sons of Sceva endeavored in vain to exorcise. Devils felt the power of Jesus, and therefore it was wise and natural that the Apostle Paul should, when buffeted of Satan, turn to Jesus and ask Him to bid the evil spirit depart from him. Is it not a little remarkable also that this prayer was not only addressed to Jesus, but was offered in much the same manner as the prayer of our Lord in the garden? The Apostle prayed three times, even as our Lord did when He too was sorely buffeted by the powers of darkness. Paul’s thrice-repeated cry was intensely earnest, for he, “besought” the Lord thrice. And Paul, singularly enough, met with very much the same answer as his Master, for our Lord was not permitted to put aside the cup, (it could not pass away from Him unless He drank it), but an angel appeared unto Him strengthening Him, and so in Paul’s case the trial was not taken away from him, but he was strengthened by kind, assuring promises, and by being led to see that God would be glorified by his enduring the trial. I see, then, the Lord Jesus reflected in His servant Paul as in a mirror! I hear the three-times repeated prayer, I mark the cup standing unremoved, and I see the strength imparted in the midst of weakness! Our text fell from the lips of Jesus Christ, Himself, and if anything could make its language sweeter than it is in itself it would be this fact, that He Himself delivered the promises to His chosen Apostle. It is Jesus who says in the promises of the text, “My grace is sufficient for you; My strength is made perfect in weakness.” This truth of God casts a soft, mellow light upon the promises, helps us to interpret them, and enables us to derive all the greater comfort from them. When Jesus speaks, a special charm surrounds each syllable. The exact tense of the Greek promises are not easy to translate into English. The Apostle does not merely tell us that his Lord said these promises to him 14 years ago, but the tense connects the past with the present, as if he felt that the answer was not simply something past, but something which continued with him in its consoling power. The echoes of what his Lord had said were still sounding through his soul! I should not miss the Apostle’s meaning if I read it, “He has been saying to me, ‘My strength is sufficient for you.’” The promises had an abiding effect upon the Apostle’s mind not merely for the time reconciling him to the particular trouble which had afflicted him, but cheering him for all the rest of his life—strengthening him in all future trials to glory in his infirmities and render praise to God. It is a sweet thing to have a text of Scripture laid home to the heart for present uses, but when God the Holy Spirit so applies a promise that it abides in the heart for the term of one’s natural life, then are we favored indeed! Elijah’s meat gave him strength for 40 days, but what is that meat which endures unto eternal life? What bread must that be which feeds me through the whole period of my pilgrimage? Here, then, we have before us food which Jesus Himself provides, so nutritive that His Spirit can cause us to remember the feast to our dying day! O Lord, feed us now and give us grace to inwardly digest your gracious word. With this preface, which I beg you to remember during the discourse, since it indicates my line of thought, we now come to the text itself—a mass of diamonds, bright and precious! In the text we notice three things—first, grace all-sufficient; secondly, strength perfected; and, thirdly, power indwelling.

I. GRACE ALL-SUFFICIENT

In the text even the most superficial observer notices a promise of grace all-sufficient. In the case of our Lord Jesus, the Spirit so rested upon Him as to be sufficient for Him at all times. Never did the Spirit of God fail to uphold the man Christ Jesus under the most arduous labors, the most terrible temptations, and the bitterest suffering; and therefore He completed the work which His Father gave Him to do, and in death He was able to exclaim, “It is finished!” The Lord here assures His chosen servant that it should be the same with him—“My grace,” said He, “is sufficient for you.” To bring out the full meaning of these few promises, I will give you four readings of them. The first is a strictly grammatical one, and is the first sense which they bear. Taking the promise translated grace to mean favor or love—for that also is included in the promise charis—how does the passage run? “My favor is sufficient for you.” Do not ask to be rid of your trouble, do not ask to have ease, comfort, or any other form of happiness—My favor is enough for you, or as good Dr. Dodge reads it, “My love is enough for you.” If you have little else that you desire, yet surely it is enough that you are My favored one, a chosen subject of My grace. “My love is enough for you.” What a delicious expression! You do not need an explanation. Repeat the promises to yourselves, and even now conceive that the well-beloved looks down on you, and whispers, “My love is enough for you.” If you have been asking Him three times to deliver you from your present affliction, hear Him reply, “Why do you need to ask Me anymore? My love is enough for you.” What do you say to that? Do you not answer, “Yes, Lord, indeed it is. If I am poor, if You will me to be poor, I am content to be severely tried, for Your love is enough for me. If I am sick, so long as You will come and visit me and reveal Your heart to me, I am satisfied, for Your love is enough for me. If I am persecuted, cast out and forsaken, cheerfully will I bear it if a sense of Your love sustains me, for Your love is enough for me.

Yes, and if I should be left so alone as to have no one to care for me in the whole world, if my father and my mother should forsake me, and every friend should prove a Judas—‘Your love is enough for me.’” Do you catch the meaning, and do you see how Paul must have been comforted by it if he understood it in this primary and most natural sense? “O Paul, it is sufficient for you that I have made you to be a chosen vessel to bear My name among the Gentiles; it is enough for you that I have loved you from before the foundation of the world, that I redeemed you with My precious blood, that I called you when you were a blasphemer and injurious, that I changed your heart, and made you love Me, and that I have kept you to this day, and will keep you even to the end by My love. My love is enough for you; ask not to be set free from this buffeting; ask not to be delivered from weakness and trial, for these will enable you the better to enjoy My favor, and that is enough for you.”

We will now read our text another way, keeping to our authorized version, but throwing the stress on the first promise—“My grace is sufficient for you.” What grace is this? Note who it is that promises. It is Jesus who speaks; therefore it is mediatorial grace, the grace given to Jesus Christ as the covenant head of His people which is here intended. Think of it a minute. It is the head speaking to the member, and declaring that His grace is enough for the whole body! The anointing oil has been poured upon the head that it may go down the beard and descend to the garments, and, lo, one poor member of the body is mourning and complaining, for it is fearful of being omitted in the plenteous anointing, but the head comforts it by saying, “My anointing is enough for you, since it is enough for all My members.” It is the head; Christ, in whom all fullness dwells, speaking to one of the members of His mystical body and saying, “The grace which God has given to Me without measure on behalf of all the members of My body is sufficient for you as well as for the rest of them.” Beloved, seize the thought! The Lord has given to Christ all that the whole company of His people can possibly need—no, more than that—for, “It pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell,” and of His fullness have we all received, and grace for grace, and from that fullness we hope continually to draw forevermore. This is the grace which is sufficient for us! It greatly tends to help faith when you can see the relation that exists between the Redeemer and yourself, for Jesus is your covenant head, and God has been pleased to give Himself and all His infinite riches to the Lord Jesus Christ as your federal representative; and as your covenant head, the Lord Jesus assures you that the stores laid up in Him on your behalf are sufficient for you. Can you limit the mediatorial power of Christ? Don’t you know that God gives not the Spirit by measure unto Him? Be you, then, assured that Christ’s grace is sufficient for you!

I will read the text again, and this time put the stress in the center. “My grace is sufficient for you.” It is now sufficient. You are buffeted by this evil spirit, but My grace is sufficient for your present need. Paul, you have been beaten with rods, stoned, shipwrecked, and in perils often—and in all these My grace has been sufficient; and now I tell you this present trouble, though it is somewhat different in shape from the rest, is nevertheless such as I am well able to meet. My grace is sufficient for you in this also. The nearness of an object increases its apparent bulk, and so the affliction under which we are at present laboring seems greater than any we have known before. Past trials appear when we have passed them to have been small things compared with present troubles, and therefore the difficulty is to see the sufficiency of grace for present and pressing afflictions. It is easy to believe in grace for the past and the future, but to rest in it for the immediate necessity is true faith. Believer, it is now that grace is sufficient; even at this moment it is enough for you. Do not say this is a new trouble, or if you do say it, remember the grace of God is always new! Do not complain that some strange thing has happened to you, or if you do, remember blessings are provided in the grace of God to meet your strange difficulties. Tremble not because the thorn in the flesh is so mysterious, for grace is mysterious too, and so mystery shall be met by mystery. At this moment, and at all moments which shall ever occur between now and glory, the grace of God will be sufficient for you! This sufficiency is declared without any limiting promises, and therefore I understand the passage to mean that the grace of our Lord Jesus is sufficient to uphold you, sufficient to strengthen you, sufficient to comfort you, sufficient to make your trouble useful to you, sufficient to enable you to triumph over it, sufficient to bring you out of it, sufficient to bring you out of 10,000 like it, sufficient to bring you home to heaven! Whatever would be good for you, Christ’s grace is sufficient to bestow; whatever would harm you, His grace is sufficient to avert; whatever you desire, His grace is sufficient to give you if it is good for you; whatever you would avoid, His grace can shield you from it if so His wisdom shall dictate. O child of God, I wish it were possible to put into promises this all-sufficiency, but it is not. Let me retract my speech—I am glad that it cannot be put into promises, for if so, it would be finite, but since we never can express it, glory be to God, it is inexhaustible, and our demands upon it can never be too great! Here let me press upon you the pleasing duty of taking home the promise personally at this moment, for no believer here need be under any fear, since for him also, at this very instant, the grace of the Lord Jesus is sufficient!

II. STRENGTH PERFECTED

In the last reading which I will give, I shall lay the emphasis upon the first and the last promises— “My grace is sufficient for you.” I have often read in Scripture of the holy laughter of Abraham, when he fell upon his face and laughed; but I do not know that I ever experienced that laughter till a few evenings ago, when this text came home to me with such sacred power as literally to cause me to laugh! I had been looking it through, looking at its original meaning, and trying to fathom it, till at last I got hold of it this way—“My grace,” says Jesus, “is sufficient for you,” and it looked almost as if it were meant to ridicule my unbelief; for surely the grace of such a One as my Lord Jesus is indeed sufficient for so insignificant a being as I am! It seemed to me as if some tiny fish, being very thirsty, was troubled with fear of drinking the river dry, and Father Thames said to him, “Poor little fish, my stream is sufficient for you.” I should think it is, and inconceivably more. My Lord seemed to say to me, “Poor little creature that you are, remember what grace there is in Me, and believe that it is all yours. Surely it is sufficient for you.” I replied, “Ah, my Lord, it is indeed.” Put one mouse down in all the granaries of Egypt when they were the fullest after seven years of plenty, and imagine that one mouse complaining that it might die of famine. “Cheer up,” says Pharaoh, “Poor mouse, my granaries are sufficient for you.” Imagine a man standing on a mountain, and saying, “I breathe so many cubic feet of air in a year; I am afraid that I shall ultimately inhale all the oxygen which surrounds the globe.” Surely the earth on which the man would stand might reply, “My atmosphere is sufficient for you.” I should think it is; let him fill his lungs as full as ever he can, he will never breathe all the oxygen, nor will the fish drink up neither the entire river, nor the mouse eat up all the stores in the granaries of Egypt! Does it not make unbelief seem altogether ridiculous, so that you laugh it out of the house, and say, “Never come this way again, for with a mediatorial fullness to go to, with such a Redeemer to rest in, how dare I for a moment, think that my needs cannot be supplied?” Our great Lord feeds all the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air, and the cattle on the hills, and guides the stars, and upholds all things by the power of His hand, how then can we be straitened for supplies, or be destitute of help? If our needs were a thousand times larger than they are they would not approach the vastness of His power to provide. The Father has committed all things into His hands. Doubt Him no more. Listen, and let Him speak to you—“My grace is sufficient for you. What if you have little grace, yet I have much; it is My grace you have to look to, not your own, and My grace will surely be sufficient for you.” John Bunyan has the following passage which exactly expresses what I myself have experienced. He says that he was full of sadness and terror, but suddenly these promises broke in upon him with great power, and three times together the promises sounded in his ears, “My grace is sufficient for you; My grace is sufficient for you; My grace is sufficient for you.” And “Oh! I thought,” he said, “that every promise was a mighty promise unto me; as, ‘My,’ and ‘grace,’ and ‘sufficient,’ and ‘for you’; they were then, and sometimes are still far bigger than others are.” He who knows, like the bee, how to suck honey from flowers, may well linger over each one of these promises and drink in unutterable content—

III. POWER INDWELLING

Now mark, the Greek promise here used, interpreted “rest,” is the same promise employed by John when he says, “The word was made flesh, and,” as the Greek runs, “tabernacled among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” The passage before us means just this, “I glory in infirmities that the power of Christ may tabernacle in me.” Just as the Shekinah light dwelt in the tent in the wilderness beneath the rough badger skins, so I glory to be a poor frail tent and tabernacle that the Shekinah of Jesus Christ may dwell in my soul. Do you catch the thought? Is it not full of beauty? See, then, what he means—first, he puts the power of Christ in opposition to his own power because if he is not weak, then he has strength of his own; if then what he does is done by his own strength, there is no room for Christ’s strength; that is clear, but if his own power is gone there is space for the power of Christ. If my life is sustained by my own strength, and my good works are done in my own strength, then there is no room for Christ’s strength; but the Apostle found that it was not so and therefore he said, “I glory in my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may tabernacle in me.” But what is the power of Christ? Let the text I quoted tell you—“The glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” What power, then, was this which Paul expected to tabernacle in him but the power of grace and the power of truth? It must be so, because God had said, “My grace is sufficient for you.” Paul catches at that promise, and he cries “this is the truth of God, and I rely upon it”; and he therefore expects that the grace of God and the faithfulness of God would tabernacle in him, and shine forth within his soul. This is the power of Christ which he expected to rest upon him. What more could we desire? What is the power of Christ? I answer next, it is Christly power—the kind of power which is conspicuous in the life of Jesus. There was a power in Christ peculiar to Himself, as all can see who read the New Testament—a power unique and altogether His own. You know what the power of Alexander was—it was a power to command men, inspire them with courage for great enterprises, and keep them in good heart when called to endure hardships. You know what the power of Demosthenes was—it was the power of eloquence, the power to stir the patriotic Greeks, to break the fetters of the Macedonian. But what was the power of Jesus? It was power to suffer, power to be made nothing of, power to descend to the very depths for love of God and love of men. There lay His power—in those five conquering wounds, in that majestic mournful face, more marred than that of any man, in that great agonizing heart which sent forth sweat of blood when men were to be pleaded for before the Lord. Love and patience were Christ’s power, and even now these subdue the hearts of men, and make Jesus the sufferer to be Jesus the King. Therefore Paul says, “I glory in my infirmities that this same power may tabernacle in me. I triumph in weakness, in reproaches, in poverty, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake, that I may suffer, humble myself, be obedient and prove my love to God even as Jesus did. When I am weak then am I strong”—he meant strong to prove his love by enduring the weaknesses and afflictions which he accepted for his Master’s sake. What was this power of Christ? I answer again, it was a part of the “All power” which our Lord declared was given unto Him in heaven and in earth—“Go you, therefore, and teach all nations.” Paul desired to have that power living in himself, for he knew right well that if he had to “go and teach all nations” he would have to suffer in so doing, and so he takes the suffering cheerfully, that he might have the power! The glory of the Lord shone forth beneath the badger skins of the tabernacle even as the mighty converting power of Christ which dwelt in Paul was gloriously revealed while he endured reproaches and persecutions, sufferings and death for Jesus’ sake. What was Christ’s power again? I answer, to complete my sermon; His power lay in His weakness, His humiliation, His dependence upon God, His faith in God, His perfect consecration to the Father; and Paul says that he was made to suffer, and to be weak, that this same power to become nothing that God might be glorified, might rest in him! I have done when I say just this. Dear brothers and sisters go home and never ask the Lord to make you strong in yourselves! Never ask Him to make you anybody or anything, but be content to be nothing and nobody! Next, ask that His power may have room in you, and that all those who come near you may see what God can do by nothings and nobodies! Live with this desire, to glorify God! Sometimes when God honors us in His service, a great, “I” stands in the Lord’s way. Tremble when you see a poor, weak preacher made useful in converting souls—then all the papers and magazines begin to blaze his name abroad, and silly Christians—for there are plenty of them—begin to talk him up as if he were a demigod, and say such great things about him, and describe him as wise, eloquent and great. Thus they do all they can to ruin the good brother! If the man is sensible he will say, “Get you behind me, Satan, for you smell not of the things that are of God”; and, if God gives him great grace, he will retire more and more into the background, and lie lower and lower before his God—but, if you once get a man to feel himself to be great and good, either a fall will happen, or else the power of God will withdraw from him, or in some other way the Lord will make His people know that His glory He will not give to another. The best of men are flesh and blood, and they have no power except as God lends them power, and He will make them know and feel this. Therefore, neither exalt others nor exalt yourselves, but beseech the Lord to make and keep you weakness itself, that in you His power may be displayed. God grant it may be so, for Christ’s sake. Amen.

Charles Spurgeon