Perfected in Weakness

He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater

He sendeth more strength when the labors increase

To added affliction 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

Fear not that thy need shall exceed His provision

Our God ever yearns His resources to share

Lean hard on the arm everlasting, availing

The Father both thee and thy load will upbear

His love has no limit; 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

Annie Johnson Flint

"He Giveth More Grace"

And He said unto me, 

     'My grace is sufficient for thee: 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.

Paul of Tarsus 

II Cor. 12:9

Galatians 5:18

"If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law." Someone today catching just that snatch of conversation is very likely to hear it in terms of the strong implicit debate between those who think you should order your life by "rules" and those who think that what matters is "doing what comes naturally," living "spontaneously" or "authentically." And it isn't just our cultural climate that makes us assume that's the sort of conversation we're overhearing. For four hundred years the religious and theological climate has conditioned us to hear a religious version of the same point. Ever since the Reformation at least, a large number of Christians have assumed that the foundation of Paul's thinking goes like this: He spent the first part of his life trying to keep the rules of his religion, and then discovered not only that he couldn't but that rules weren't the point. God didn't want rule-keeping; he wanted "spontaneity." God had forgiven him all his rule-breaking, in and through Jesus Christ, and was now giving him his Spirit, who would produce the "fruit" without all that horrible moral striving.  

But is that what the conversation at the next table was really all about? 

In this way of interpreting... Paul's message, within this way of thinking, is, "You're free from all that! The Spirit will guide you from within, and you don't need to bother about all those rules that come at you from somewhere else, from tradition or philosophy or the Old Testament! Stop worrying about all that moralism; lighten up and be spontaneous. You don't have to try!1

Shortly thereafter, N.T. Wright describes what Paul really meant:

"If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Mosaic Law." This has nothing whatever to do with preferring spontaneity to rules. It has everything to do with the new covenant in which God is pouring out his Spirit upon those who are "in Christ" so that in them the life which the Law wanted to produce, but could not, will at last be fulfilled (see Romans 8:1-11). ...In other words, you do not have to become a Jew... to be a flourishing and fruitful member of God's people.2

1.  N.T Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters [Harper One: New York, NY; 2010] pp. 190-191

2.  Ibid.,  p. 193

Surreptitious Takeover

Another passage which sits tightly alongside Romans 12 is found near the start of the letter to the Philippians: 

This is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you can figure out properly things that differ from one another, so that you may be blameless and innocent for the day of the Messiah, filled with the fruits of righteousness which come through Jesus the Messiah to the glory and praise of God. (1:9-11) 

The part I have put in italics show how the same theme works out. Thinking of and praying for his beloved people in Philippi, Paul wants them, of course, to grow in love; but this love is not a matter of "undisciplined squads of emotion," but a thought-out habit of the heart -- the heart knowing why it approves what it approves and why it disapproves what it disapproves.  

...Part of the problem in contemporary Christianity, I believe, is that talk about the freedom of the Spirit, about the grace which sweeps us off our feet and heals and transforms our lives, has been taken over surreptitiously by a kind of low-grade romanticism, colluding with an anti-intellectual streak in our culture, generating the assumption that the more spiritual you are, the less you need to think. 

I cannot stress too strongly that this is a mistake. The more genuinely spiritual you are, according to Romans 12 and Philippians 1, the more clearly and accurately and carefully you will think, particularly about what the completed goal of your Christian journey will be and hence what steps you should be taking, what habits you should be acquiring, as part of the journey toward that goal, right now.1

1.  N.T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters [Harper One: New York, NY; 2010] pp. 157-158

Mental Homework

Commenting on the book of Romans, N.T. Wright says:

For Paul, the mind is central to Christian character: virtue is the result of thought and choice. ...[T]his helps us... to understand the exhortation in chapter 6 to "reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (6:11). This is calling for an act, not of guesswork, nor of fantasy or speculative imagination, but of mental deduction: you are in the Messiah; the Messiah has died and been raised; therefore, you have died and been raised; therefore, sin has no right to hold any sway over you. That mental homework, and that alone, is the basis for the appeal which follows instantly: "So don't let sin reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its desires" (6:12). All of this -- and much more, actually, but at least all of this -- stands now behind Paul's deceptively brief instruction at the start of chapter 12: don't let yourselves be squeezed into the shape dictated by the present age, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.1

1.  N.T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters [Harper One: New York, NY; 2010] pp. 154-155 

Renewal of the whole

According to N.T. Wright’s interpretation of Paul’s epistle to the Romans, “Paul summons to let the mind be renewed, and so to be transformed all through.”  He then quotes that passage in its entirety, only with his own translation from the original Greek text. His translation appears below with some helpful insights of his own following thereafter:

So, my dear family, this is my appeal to you by the mercies of God: offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and appropriate worship. What’s more, don’t let yourselves be squeezed into the shape dictated by the present age. Instead, be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you can work out and approve what God’s will is, what is good, acceptable, and complete. (12:1-2)

…Paul sees that in Jesus Christ the long-awaited age to come has already begun. And that is where Christians must consciously choose to live.  …God’s new age has come thundering in through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but the present age acts as a powerful undertow, preventing the incoming waves from having their full force. The undertow of the continuing present age does its best to persuade those who through faith and baptism are already part of the age to come that in fact nothing much has changed, and that they should simply continue as they were, living the same life that everyone else is living.  “The way the world is” is a powerful, insidious force, and it takes all the energy of new creation, not the least of faith and hope, to remind oneself that the age to come really is already here, with all its new possibilities and prospects. 

The antidote to the power of the present age, then, is to have the mind renewed so that one can think clearly about the way of life which is pleasing to God, which is in accordance with God’s will, good and acceptable and (here it is again) “perfect,” teleios, complete.  This renewal of the mind is at the center of the renewal of the whole human being, since the darkening of the mind was identified as central to the problem of idolatry, dehumanization, and sin in an earlier chapter of Romans.1

1.  N.T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters [Harper One: New York, NY; 2010] pp. 148-149, 152

Domesticated Jesus

In After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters, Bishop N.T. Wright makes the following observation concerning Jesus as the great "moral example" to be copied. He writes:

Many people, reading a chapter about Jesus and virtue, would expect a discussion of Jesus himself as the great example. Surely, many will think, part of the point of his life was to show us how it's done?
...Making Jesus the supreme example of someone who lived a good life may be quite bracing to contemplate, but it is basically safe: it removes the far more dangerous challenge of supposing that God might actually be coming to transform this earth, and us within it, with the power and justice of heaven, and it neatly helps us avoid the fact, as all four gospels see it, that this could be achieved only through the shocking and horrible events of Jesus' death. Jesus as "moral example" is a domesticated Jesus, a kind of religious mascot.  

... [Jesus himself] doesn't go about saying, "This is how it's done; copy me." He says, "God's kingdom is coming; take up your cross and follow me." Only when we learn the difference between those two challenges will we have grasped the heart of the gospel and, with that, the taproot of a reborn virtue.  

...The way of life he was modeling was precisely not something that could be reduced to rules... Nor, certainly, was Jesus saying that people should "do what comes naturally": indeed, what comes "naturally" from the heart, was precisely the problem, as far as he was concerned. The only way we can get to the heart of understanding the moral challenge Jesus offered, and offers still today, is by thinking in terms not of rules or of the calculation of effects or of romantic or existentialist "authenticity," but of virtue. A virtue that has been transformed by the kingdom and the cross.1

1. N.T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters [Harper One: New York, NY; 2010] pp. 125-127, 132

The way to & The way of

The way to the kingdom is the way of the cross, and vice versa -- as long as you remember that "the kingdom," once again, is not "heaven," but the state of affairs in which God's kingdom has come, and his will is being done, on earth as in heaven.

-- N.T. Wright, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters [Harper One: New York, NY; 2010] p. 116