{"id":1748,"date":"2022-06-24T09:35:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-24T13:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=1748"},"modified":"2022-06-24T09:35:00","modified_gmt":"2022-06-24T13:35:00","slug":"his-grace-is-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2022\/06\/24\/his-grace-is-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"His Grace is Enough"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In the ancient world, successful people were expected to boast.
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Highly regarded teachers, politicians, and public officials were encouraged to polish their resumes and roll them out before the watching world as often as they could.\u00a0 Caesar Augustus ordered that his achievements literally be carved in stone all over the empire.\u00a0
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Soldiers competed for high honors that could only be won in combat.\u00a0 One of the bravest (and most reckless) acts was scaling one of the rickety ladders that would be set against the walls of a besieged city.\u00a0 Glory was reserved for the legionnaire who was first over the top, placing himself within reach of the city\u2019s desperate defenders.\u00a0 If he survived, he received the coveted corona muralis<\/em> or \u201cwall crown.\u201d\u00a0 This would be equivalent to an American combatant receiving a Medal of Honor.\u00a0
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When the apostle Paul established a brand-new church in the Greek city of Corinth, he could hardly have known that these young believers were going to drive him crazy.
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They wanted to know if Paul had a knockout resume.\u00a0 What was his spiritual pedigree?\u00a0 How many people had he led to Christ?\u00a0 Had he won any Medals of Honor for preaching?
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Bible students have long regarded 2 Corinthians \u2013 the second of two existing correspondences between Paul and the Christians in Corinth \u2013 as the most personal of all his letters.\u00a0 His emotions range all over the map \u2013 from joy to despair to hope to exasperation.\u00a0 Paul refuses to play the boasting game.\u00a0 Other wannabe preachers and missionaries might come into town and strut their accomplishments, but he will not be drawn into such petty one-upmanship.
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Then he seems to change his mind.\u00a0 You want my resume?\u00a0 Fine.\u00a0 Let me spell out my proudest moments.\u00a0
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What follows, says Bible scholar N.T. Wright, is \u201cone of the finest and indeed funniest bites of rhetoric anywhere in the New Testament.\u201d\u00a0
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Paul writes, \u201cI\u2019ve worked much harder, been jailed more often, beaten up more times than I can count, and at death\u2019s door time after time. I\u2019ve been flogged five times with the Jews\u2019 thirty-nine lashes, beaten by Roman rods three times, pummeled with rocks once. I\u2019ve been shipwrecked three times, and immersed in the open sea for a night and a day. In hard traveling year in and year out, I\u2019ve had to ford rivers, fend off robbers, struggle with friends, struggle with foes. I\u2019ve been at risk in the city, at risk in the country, endangered by desert sun and sea storm, and betrayed by those I thought were my brothers. I\u2019ve known drudgery and hard labor, many a long and lonely night without sleep, many a missed meal, blasted by the cold, naked to the weather\u201d (2 Corinthians 11:23-27, The Message<\/em>).\u00a0
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This is not normally how one would present a record of accomplishments.
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Paul makes it clear that his resume is not a recitation of how often things have gone well, but how often things seem to have run off the rails.\u00a0
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Then he adds this strange anecdote:\u00a0 \u201cIf I have to \u2018brag\u2019 about myself, I\u2019ll brag about the humiliations that make me like Jesus. The eternal and blessed God and Father of our Master Jesus knows I\u2019m not lying. Remember the time I was in Damascus and the governor of King Aretas posted guards at the city gates to arrest me? I crawled through a window in the wall, was let down in a basket, and had to run for my life\u201d (11:30-33).\u00a0
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What made you a celebrity in the Roman world?\u00a0 It was \u201cgoing over the wall.\u201d\u00a0 Well, Paul says, I did just the opposite.\u00a0 When King Aretas and his henchmen were closing in, I went down the wall<\/em> in the middle of the night and then ran like a scared rabbit.\u00a0
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Here we have to believe that when this letter was read aloud to the Corinthians, there was smiling and laughter.\u00a0 As Wright observes, Paul has created a parody of the whole culture of boasting.\u00a0
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But then he becomes deeply serious.
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In the chapter that immediately follows, he describes receiving a mysterious \u201cthorn in the flesh.\u201d\u00a0
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\u201cI was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in constant touch with my limitations. Satan\u2019s angel did his best to get me down; what he in fact did was push me to my knees. No danger then of walking around high and mighty! At first I didn\u2019t think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that, and then he told me,
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My grace is enough; it\u2019s all you need.<\/em>
My strength comes into its own in your weakness<\/em>.
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\u201cOnce I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ\u2019s strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride\u2026 And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become\u201d (2 Corinthians 12:7-10, The Message<\/em>).
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According to Scripture, \u201csuccessful people\u201d don\u2019t boast about their own accomplishments.\u00a0 They have no need to do so.
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Instead, they look at the raw data of their lives and say, \u201cIsn\u2019t it amazing that God is using even my hardest moments to turn me into the person he has always wanted me to be?\u201d\u00a0

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In the ancient world, successful people were expected to boast.\u00a0Highly regarded teachers, politicians, and public officials were encouraged to polish their resumes and roll them out before the watching world as often as they could.\u00a0 Caesar Augustus ordered that his achievements literally be carved in stone all over the empire.\u00a0\u00a0Soldiers competed for high honors that could only be won in… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1749,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[101,458],"class_list":["post-1748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-grace","tag-weakness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1748"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1750,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1748\/revisions\/1750"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}