Power Made Perfect in Weakness

What is more, the apostle Paul showed as plainly as anyone could that man has been handed over to his own weakness, so that he would not be lifted up and fall away from the truth. This is how he puts it in his second letter to the Corinthians: [a]

“And so that I would not be lifted up by the sublimity of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given me, an angel of Satan to beat me. About this I begged the Lord three times, that it might leave me. But he said to me, My grace is enough for you, for strength is made perfect in weakness. So I will gladly boast in my weaknesses instead, so that the power of Christ may live in me.”

What then? Someone may object: did the Lord actually want his apostles to be beaten like that, and did he want Paul to endure such weakness? Yes, he did. The word says so. For strength is made perfect in weakness, and it makes a man better when, by way of his own weakness, he comes to know the power of God. How else could a man have learned that he is himself a weak thing, mortal by nature, while God is immortal and powerful, unless he had learned by experience what each of the two is? There is nothing bad about learning your own weaknesses by putting up with them. On the contrary, it does you good: it keeps you from thinking too highly of your own nature. But being lifted up against God and taking his glory for yourself makes a man ungrateful, and that has brought a great deal of harm on him. So a man must learn both of these by experience, and not be left without truth or without love, either toward himself or toward his Maker. Experience of the two together gives him true knowledge about God and about man, and it increases his love for God. And where love increases, there the power of God works out a greater glory for those who love him.

So these men set the power of God aside. They pay no attention to what the word says. They dwell on the weakness of the flesh and never take into account the power of the One who raises it from the dead. For if he does not give life to what is mortal, and does not bring what decays back into a state where it cannot decay, then he is not a God of power. But that he is powerful in all these ways we ought to see from our own beginning, since God took dust from the earth and formed man. And surely it is far harder and far less believable that bones and nerves and veins and the rest of a man’s frame should be made out of what did not exist at all, and that man should be made a living, reasoning creature, than that what was once created and then broke down into earth — for the reasons already given — should be put back together again, since it passed into the very things out of which man, who had no previous existence, was first formed. The One who at the beginning caused a man to exist who did not yet exist, and did it just when he pleased, will far more readily set up again those who once existed, when he wills that they should have the life he grants.

And that flesh will be found fit and able to receive the power of God, since at the beginning it received God’s skilled touches. One part became the eye for seeing, another the ear for hearing, another the hand for feeling and for working, another the sinews stretched out everywhere and holding the limbs together, another the arteries and the veins, the channels for blood and for air, another the various inner organs, and another the blood, which is the bond that ties soul and body together. But why go on? No count could express how many parts there are in the human frame, which was made in no other way than by the great wisdom of God. And whatever shares in the skill and the wisdom of God shares in his power too.

So the flesh is not left out of the wisdom and power of God that built it. But if the power of the One who gives life is made perfect in weakness — that is, in the flesh — then let these people tell us something. When they insist that flesh is incapable of receiving the life God grants, are they saying it as men who are alive at this moment and share in life? Or do they admit that they have no part in life whatever and are dead men right now? If they really are dead men, how is it that they move about and talk and do the other things that are the actions of the living and not of the dead? But if they are alive now, and their whole body shares in life, how can they bring themselves to say that the flesh is not fit to share in life, when they confess that they have life at this moment?

It is as if a man picked up a sponge full of water, or a torch that was burning, and announced that the sponge could not possibly share in water, or the torch in fire. That is exactly what these men do. They claim to be alive and to carry life about in their own limbs, and then they contradict themselves by presenting those same limbs as incapable of receiving life.

But if this present life, which lasts only a while and is so far below eternal life, can nevertheless do so much as to make our mortal limbs alive, why should eternal life, which is far more powerful, not make the flesh alive — flesh that has already kept company with life and is used to carrying it? That the flesh really can share in life is clear from the fact that it is alive; it goes on living as long as God intends that it should. And it is plain that God has the power to give it life, since he grants life to us who exist now. So then, since the Lord has power to pour life into what he has shaped, and since the flesh is capable of being made alive, what is left to keep it from sharing in freedom from decay, the happy and never-ending life that God grants?

The people who invent another Father beyond the Creator, and who call him the good God, are fooling themselves. What they bring in is a feeble, worthless, careless being — not to say a spiteful one, full of envy — since they claim that our bodies are not given life by him. They say that the things which everyone can see remain immortal, such as the spirit and the soul and the rest, are made alive by the Father; but that the one thing which is made alive in no other way than by God granting it life is abandoned by life. That leaves them only two things they can confess: either their Father is weak and powerless, or he is envious and malicious. For the Creator does give life to our mortal bodies even here and now, and he promises them resurrection through the prophets, as I have shown. So which of the two turns out to be more powerful, stronger, or truly good — the Creator, who gives life to the whole man, or their so-called Father? He pretends to be the giver of life to things that are immortal by nature, things that have life always present to them by their very nature; but he does not kindly give life to the things that needed his help in order to live, and leaves them carelessly to fall under the power of death. [f]

So which is it? Does their Father not give them life although he has the power to do it, or is it that he does not have the power? If it is because he cannot, then on that account he is not a powerful being, and he is not more perfect than the Creator, since the Creator grants what he, as we must see, is unable to supply. But if he does not grant it while he has the power to, then he is proved to be not a good Father but an envious and malicious one.

And if they point to some cause on account of which their Father does not give life to bodies, then that cause has to turn out greater than the Father, since it holds him back from doing good; and his goodness will be shown to be weak, on account of the cause they bring forward. Now anyone can see that bodies are capable of receiving life. They live to the extent that God is pleased for them to live, and since that is so, these people cannot maintain that bodies are altogether incapable of receiving life. So if bodies that are capable of sharing in life are not given life on account of some necessity or some other cause, then their Father is the slave of that necessity and that cause. He is not free, and his will is not his own to control.

Bodies did in fact go on existing for a very long time, as long as it was God’s good pleasure that they should flourish. Let these people read the Scriptures and they will find it: the men who came before us passed seven hundred, eight hundred, and nine hundred years of age, and their bodies kept pace with the stretched-out length of their days and shared in life as long as God willed that they should live. [h]

But why bring up those men? Enoch pleased God and was taken up in the very body in which he had pleased him, pointing ahead to the taking up of the righteous. Elijah too was caught up while still in the substance of his natural form, showing in advance, as a prophecy, the taking up of those who are spiritual, and showing that nothing stood in the way of their body being carried off and caught up. For it was by the very same hands that shaped them at the beginning that they received this removal and taking up. In Adam the hands of God had grown used to arranging, ruling and holding up their own handiwork, and to carrying it and setting it wherever they pleased.

Where, then, was the first man set? In paradise, of course, as the Scripture says: “And God planted a paradise eastward in Eden, and there he placed the man he had formed.” And afterward, when the man proved disobedient, he was thrown out of it into this world. That is also why the elders who were disciples of the apostles tell us that the men who were taken up were carried to that place — for paradise has been prepared for righteous men, men who have the Spirit, and it was there that Paul the apostle, when he was caught up, heard words that cannot be spoken by people in the condition we are in now — and that there those who were taken up will remain until everything is brought to its end, as a first taste of immortality.

Suppose someone imagines it impossible that men should have survived for such a length of time, or thinks that Elijah was not caught up in the flesh but had his flesh burned away in the fiery chariot. Let him consider Jonah, who was thrown into the deep and swallowed down into the whale’s belly, and then at God’s command was thrown out safe onto the land. And again, when Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael were thrown into the furnace heated seven times over, they came to no harm at all, and not even the smell of fire was on them. The hand of God was there with them, working out marvels in their case that man’s nature could never accomplish. What wonder is it, then, if in the case of the men who were taken up that hand did something marvelous too, working in obedience to the will of God the Father? And this is the Son of God, as the Scripture reports Nebuchadnezzar the king to have said:

“Did we not throw three men bound into the furnace? And look, I see four men walking in the middle of the fire, and the fourth is like the Son of God.”

So neither the nature of anything created nor the weakness of the flesh can prevail against the will of God. God is not subject to created things; created things are subject to God, and everything yields to his will. That is why the Lord declares, “The things that are impossible with men are possible with God.”

Men of the present day, who know nothing about how God arranges things, may find it incredible and impossible that any man could live so many years — yet those who came before us did live to such an age, and those who were taken up do live, as an advance pledge of the length of days to come. They may find it impossible that men came out unhurt from the whale’s belly and from the fiery furnace — yet they did come out, led out as though by the hand of God, so that his power might be declared. In the same way now, there are people who do not know the power and the promise of God and who set themselves against their own salvation, thinking it impossible that God, who raises the dead, should have power to grant them everlasting duration. But the unbelief of men of that stamp will not cancel the faithfulness of God.

Now God will be glorified in his handiwork, fitting it so that it matches his own Son and is modeled after him. For by the hands of the Father — that is, by the Son and the Holy Spirit — man was made in the likeness of God: man, and not merely a part of man. The soul and the spirit are certainly a part of the man, but they are certainly not the man. The complete man consists in the mingling and union of the soul, which receives the Spirit of the Father, with that fleshly nature which was molded after the image of God. [p]

This is why the apostle declares, “We speak wisdom among those who are complete,” calling those people complete who have received the Spirit of God and who through the Spirit of God speak in all languages, as he himself used to speak. In the same way we also hear many brothers in the church who have prophetic gifts, who through the Spirit speak all kinds of languages, who bring the hidden things of men out into the open for the general good, and who declare the mysteries of God. These are the men the apostle calls spiritual — spiritual because they share in the Spirit, and not because their flesh has been stripped off and taken away and they have become nothing but spirit.

For if anyone takes away the substance of flesh, that is, of God’s handiwork, and understands what is left as purely spiritual, what he has then is not a spiritual man but the spirit of a man, or the Spirit of God. But when the spirit that is blended here with the soul is united to God’s handiwork, the man is made spiritual and complete because of the outpouring of the Spirit, and this is the man who was made in the image and likeness of God. But if the Spirit is missing from the soul, then such a man is of an animal nature; being left fleshly, he will be an incomplete being. He has the image of God in the way he was formed, but he does not receive the likeness through the Spirit, and so this being is incomplete.

In the same way, if anyone takes away the image and sets aside the handiwork, he can no longer understand what is left as a man, but only as some part of a man, as I have already said, or as something other than a man. The flesh that was molded is not by itself a complete man; it is the body of a man and a part of a man. Neither is the soul, taken by itself, the man; it is the soul of a man and a part of a man. Neither is the spirit a man, for it is called the spirit and not a man. It is the mingling and union of all of these that makes up the complete man.

And this is why the apostle, explaining himself, makes it clear that the man who is saved is a whole man as well as a spiritual man. He says this in his first letter to the Thessalonians:

“Now may the God of peace make you holy and complete; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept whole and without complaint at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

What was he after in praying that these three — soul, body and spirit — should be kept until the coming of the Lord, unless he knew that the three would be put back together and united, and that they would have one and the same salvation? This is also why he says that the complete are those who present the three parts to the Lord without offense. So the complete are those who have had the Spirit of God remaining in them, and who have kept their souls and their bodies blameless, holding on to faith in God — that is, the faith that is directed toward God — and keeping their dealings with their neighbors right.

This too is why he says that this handiwork is the temple of God. He declares:

“Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God lives in you? So if anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him; for the temple of God is holy, and that temple is what you are.”

Here he plainly declares the body to be the temple in which the Spirit lives. The Lord speaks the same way about himself:

“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

And it is added, “He said this, however, about the temple of his body.” And the apostle does not only acknowledge our bodies to be a temple; he calls them the temple of Christ. He says this to the Corinthians:

“Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of a prostitute?”

He is not saying this about some other, spiritual man; a being of that sort could have nothing to do with a prostitute. He is calling our body, that is, the flesh that continues holy and pure, the members of Christ, and saying that when it becomes one with a prostitute it becomes the members of a prostitute. And this is why he said, “If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him.”

How then is it not the worst kind of blasphemy to claim that the temple of God, in which the Spirit of the Father lives, and the members of Christ, do not share in salvation but are handed over to ruin? And that our bodies are raised not out of their own substance but by the power of God, he says to the Corinthians:

“Now the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God has both raised up the Lord and will raise us up by his own power.”