11. My Grace Is Sufficient
Covering 2 Corinthians Chapters 7-13:
Paul has now dispensed with the issue of mortality, our enemy and God’s. We do not identify ourselves as mortal on the one hand, but rather as the Life of Jesus made visible even through that mortality. But on the other hand, we know that mortality is NOT right, and so we groan in travail, turning every difficulty into God-with-us, that we might experience that moment for which God has prepared us our whole lives, our physical bodies SWALLOWED UP BY LIFE!!!
Now Paul turns to the consideration of our human weakness designed by God that we might know our All-Sufficiency as being always out from God. Yet our need for God expresses itself also as our need for one another as the Church.
Overthrown. It is yesterday, now, that I completed reading “Treasure in Weakness” into audio, one of the most overwhelming experiences in my writing career. I am not forcing God’s words; I am just, for the first time, believing that they are True. Yet I feel like the aftermath of an explosion. I don’t know quite what it means for me. I once said that the difference between the manifest sons of God and us right now is that they believe what God says and we do not. When I made that statement public, it was met with some mockery, but it was absolutely true.
Everything going forward, now, is found inside the revolutionary overthrow that is Paul’s Gospel, God through us into our world as All-Salvation Now.
Bringing Devotion to Completion. (Chapter 7) • 1 Possessing now these promises, beloved, we should cleanse ourselves from every lack and defilement of flesh and spirit, completing devotion, bringing devotion to completion, inside of the fear of God.
Devotion is our return to the Father; it is the proof that we know that we BELONG utterly and only to Him. It is God alone who makes us devoted, yet our experience of being made devoted by God is as a walk through everything that opposes. There is no way to the Tree of Life except that which passes by all things death. Yet Devotion is Jesus proven faithful and True, and Jesus is the One who carries all back into the Father. To complete devotion is to become the Ekenosis, the entrance of the Father into the knowing of creation.
Completion and Fear. Completion is God in appearance, that is, the Kingdom. Why the fear of God? That’s easy. We humans are prone to stupidity, able to use “God-with-us” to place ourselves above, to abuse those whom Jesus loves. – Not a good plan.
Kingdom: Completion is God having entered into appearance, now known by all, that is, the Kingdom. God has given us Jesus, written upon our hearts, Jesus, who makes us just like Himself, and with Him – Life swallowing up death. Our return to the Father is the devotion of our lives, cleansing ourselves from all else, that we might be wholly His.
Definition: The fear of God is the recognition that we do not use what God has given us for our own agenda, that we might control others. Because we fear God, we are not afraid of Him.
Grief that Fits God. • 10 For grief according to God works [by exchange], changing the mind into salvation without regret. The grief of the world, on the other hand, produces only death. ~ This is the very practical transition from the death found “before the cross” with the Life found inside the Most Devoted, yet what we need here is a definition of “repentance.” Our safety from our own folly is the ability to be wrong. The grief of the world is nothing more than hiding behind self-exaltation; the grief that fits God rests inside of Light.
Definition: Repentance means to change one’s mind. Grief that fits God means going silent about self and entering immediately into all that is Christ (see Romans 3:19 & 12:2). To “weep over sin,” “before the cross,” is to remain in death.
This Same Mind. This definition of “repentance” is critical because Paul is always writing out from great “heresy,” that is, the Eucharist becoming the Ekenosis. The Eucharist is “to remember,” literally, to bring Jesus into our minds. Paul begins the Ekenosis by saying, “Let this same mind be in you.”
Now we continue in Chapter 8. • 8 I do not speak as a directive, but through the diligence and enthusiasm of others, you also might prove the genuineness of your love. 9 For you know the grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, that being wealthy, He became poor for your sake, so that you through that poverty might be made wealthy.
“My Grace is sufficient” also includes, “My Grace will provide.” However, even though Paul is speaking of collecting cash, his use of “poor and wealthy” is figurative.
The Trade Jesus Makes. Paul is placing the intimacy of a life shared with Jesus, that is, our personal union with Christ, as the core out from which our life shared together as the Church is always coming. The metaphor of “poor and wealthy” is the trade Jesus makes, His Life for our life. It seems to us that we add nothing to Jesus while He adds all to us, making Him “poor” and us “rich.” But that is not how Jesus sees it, for in giving All for us, He makes us worth all.
Ruling Verse 5: “For the sake of” includes surrendering all in trade for the benefit of another. In giving Himself to us, Jesus withholds nothing, for He has given us all, making us rich. Yet Jesus does not count Himself poor, for receiving us in all that we are is His deepest desire (see John 17:24).
We Need One Another. • 14 But rather of equality. In the present time your abundance will be for those who need, so that also their abundance may be towards your need, so that there might be equality. 15 As it is written: “He that gathered much did not have too much, and he that gathered little had no lack.”
Now Paul brings this same quality into our relationship together as the Church, as members of one another. You see, my shared life with Jesus has become an incredible equality, for just as His Abundance flows into my need, so my own abundance flows into His need. Indeed, the head says to the foot, “I need you” (1 Corinthians 12:21 – paraphrased). Then, as we are as the Lord Jesus to one another, so my abundance flows into your need, even as your abundance flows into my need.
The Flow of Abundance. Understand that this is NOT “communism,” for Karl Marx stole this line from the Life that is God inside of us and used it as a justification for violence out from supreme hatred. Christ Community is the Flow of pure Life and Love, with no shadow in it. Christ Community is the Father revealed inside of creation, the Blessing.
Ruling Verse 8: Jesus is made complete as Christians love each other with the same Love by which He loves each of us. Jesus meets our need by giving His Abundance fully to us. We meet His need in return by giving that same unending Abundance to one another as His completion inside His Body, His form inside of creation. Our life together as Communities of Christ is a flow of Life and Love, with no shadow in it, a reciprocity of abundance and need.
Ruling Verses Bubbling Up. (Ch 9) • 6 Consider this: “The one who sows sparingly, will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows upon good-speaking, will also reap upon blessings.” 7 Give as each one proposes in the heart, neither out from grief nor out from necessity, for God loves a hilariously cheerful giver. • 8 God is powerfully able to make all grace abound into you, so that you may abound always, in every way, having all sufficiency in every good work.
Paul is describing synergeoing with God. Paul first used that word three months earlier, in 1 Corinthians 3. He will embed synergeoing with God into the Ruling Verse of the Bible less than six months after writing this description. We can see now how the ruling verses were always inside of Paul, bubbling up here and there as needed in each moment.
Synergeoing with God. “Synergeoing with God making all things good” is the best and simplest way of stating God’s purpose for our lives forever. But our verses here take that simple statement and expand it in two directions, first, into the complexity of our life together as the Church and second, into the immense power and ability that is GRACE, that is, God-with-us.
Ruling Verse 1: God’s purpose for us is that we might synergeo with Him to bring all things into goodness. This is our work, shared with God inside the overflowing might of His Spirit flowing out from us (Ruling Verse 3). Grace is our shared life with God out from which His abundance flows in power. We know with certainty that all that is needed, to turn every interaction we share together as His Body into such goodness, is always abounding through us.
The Circle of Life. • 10 The One who continuously supplies seed to him who sows and bread for food, will supply abundantly, will multiply your seed for sowing, and will increase the fruits of your just innocence, 11 enriching you inside of everything into all simplicity and generosity, which works thanksgiving and the speaking of good grace through us to God.
God is just this continuous, circular Flow, from God through Jesus to us and from us through one another back to God. This is the Flow of LIFE, the back and forth exchange between the Root of Essence and the Means of Devotion. Think of the words, “Jesus is perfect and you are not,” how those words just SHATTER any thought of such Life. These verses, then, are a description of that REFUGE coming up, “My strength is made perfect inside of your weakness.”
Abundance of Provision. The key thought of giving is “having all sufficiency in every good work.” Abundance of provision is a teaching entirely of God, for Abundance is His nature. We do not divert that flow of Abundance to vision-less, and momentary self-agendas, but rather – in every good work, that is, a flow of Abundance as we synergeo with God every moment, making all things good. This Flow, then, is the essence and meaning of LIFE.
Life: Life is giving; giving is Life. As we give, God through us, so we have “all sufficiency in every good work.” God gives all that He is to us through Jesus; we give all that we are back to Him in return through one another. It is reciprocity, the return to God, that enables this Flow to continue unhindered.
Our Warfare. (Chapter 10) • 3 For even though we do walk inside of the flesh, we do not wage war according to the flesh. • 4 For the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, but are God-enabled towards the tearing down of fortresses, 5 overthrowing arguments, and every high thing or barrier lifting itself up against the knowledge of God, taking captive every thought into the submission of Christ, 6 along with your readiness to dispense justice to all who hear amiss, even when your own submission inside of Christ has been made full.
God through us now into our world is two things always working together. By 5:20, we speak into others, “Be reconciled to God, know your precious union with Jesus.” Yet we also cast down the false spirits that prevent our brethren from knowing Jesus inside of them.
Protect the Church. Now that we know Paul’s purpose, we no longer consider chapters 7-11 as a “sidetrack.” Rather, we see Paul carefully laying out the whole picture before arriving at the finale. Everything from 5:19-29 on cannot be about anything other than the meaning of “God through us into our world.” The flow of Abundance is rivers of Spirit providing for God’s people, and our weapons of war are to protect the Church.
Ruling Verse 4: From 2 Corinthians 5:19-20 on, Paul’s concern is “God through us into our world.” “God through us” includes the word of reconciliation towards others and the flow of abundance inside the Church, but it also includes the weapons of our warfare by which we protect all the Church of Christ. We cast down all that opposes the knowledge of God entering into the knowledge of all.
Refuge and Outlook. I am bringing in only one verse from Chapter 11. This one verse gives us the big picture. • 28 Besides these outer things, the tumult coming on me every day, my anxious care over all the churches.
I am placing this as Refuge and Outlook, the true seeing of one who bears an apostolic heart. Paul has listed all the difficulties he has experienced during his, now twelve years of ministering Christ. Then he dismisses them all as “outward things.” Let’s just ponder these words, “the tumult coming on me every day.” The Greek word means “uprising, commotion, insurrection.” English “tumult” means “commotion, bustle, uproar, disorder, disturbance.”
Anxious Care. Yet this daily “noisy commotion” is Paul’s “anxious care” for all gatherings of believers on the planet. Tumult takes travail to another level. In Chapter 12, Paul will show us his utter rest inside of Jesus, so this is not talking about uncertainty in himself. Paul is resting utterly in Jesus his All-Sufficiency, yet he is always looking out from there and seeing all the troubles of all his fellow Christians, making their troubles his own.
Ruling Verse 9: Resting inside of Jesus as our All-Sufficiency (see 2 Cor. 12:9), we share His heart. And in sharing His heart, we look out upon all who belong to Him across the earth. The anxious care of Jesus now becomes our anxious care as well. In spite of all the tumult, we CARE for every gathering of those who call upon Him in some way.
2 Corinthians 12:7-10. • 7 Therefore, so that I should not become arrogant in the surpassing excellence of the revelations, the things unveiled to me, a thorn in my flesh was given to me, an angel of Satan, that he might strike me, so that I would not become arrogant. 8 I begged the Lord three times that this might depart from me. • 9 But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is brought to full completion inside of your weakness.” • Most gladly, therefore, I will boast in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest, dwell, spread as a tent over, and abide upon me. 10 Therefore, I take pleasure inside of weaknesses, inside of insults, inside of hardships and constraints, inside of persecutions and being attacked; inside of distress and anguish, for the sake of Christ; for in whatever way I might be weak, then I am strong.
Fleeing from Horror. In September of 2011, when the HORROR of the “above-you” Jesus was thrust at me once again, I fled into my Bible, I RAN into 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, the only refuge I want. And I stayed inside those words, writing them over and over, until that moment some days later when I saw a vision of a God who carries me.
However, verse 7 is the entrance into such a refuge, and we must begin there. It was not without reason that Augustine blocked Christians from seizing hold of the big verses of the gospel, especially filled with all the fulness of God. Our fatal flaw is that we have hearts to rule and all authority, but no power whatsoever. The propensity to use God to place one’s self over others is the wickedness of Adam. And from that horror we also must flee.
No Self-Agenda. We don’t really know what Paul’s description of his humiliating affliction actually means, though we know that it was deeply personal to Paul. For myself, God has given me the qualities and limitations of Asperger’s on the one hand and hedged my way with thorns on the other hand. That is, I have never “put myself up” without God immediately bringing me down. I have known humiliation more times than I could count. God could not be giving me this Flow of Gospel Word any other way. – So that I should not become arrogant.
This is the Gospel meaning of being a “eunuch,” no self-agenda, no chance of using God to abuse others. It is the meaning of “sackcloth,” no sufficiency in self, no inward fortitude nor outward ability, but sufficiency only in God.
My Grace Is All. Being made a highway for God is Kingdom, but “My Grace sufficient” is Covenant. Seeing in one blinding flash that we do not, cannot, and will never please God, shuts us up about ourselves that we would never again speak as if we live separately from Jesus. But that light does not save us. What saves us is Jesus, giving Himself to us, His strength made perfect and complete inside our human weakness. “My Grace is all that you need.” Grace, a shared life with God our Father inside of a shared Life with Jesus. Nothing else.
Finally, to “boast in one’s weaknesses” is to speak Christ. People imagine that such speaking is contrary to Christ, but only because they do not know the Glory of the Gospel.
From Silence to Boasting. Kingdom: The wickedest action we could do would be to take the Flow of the knowledge of God through us and use it to place ourselves “above” that we might abuse our brethren. The FEAR of God is so valuable to us, for God alone keeps us. We are silent about ourselves as if we are something in self.
Covenant: Grace is a life shared with God inside of a life shared with Jesus. Jesus is all that we need. This is the Covenant, that we complete Jesus even as Jesus completes us.
Speak Christ: We are weak. God made us weak so that we might be filled with all that Jesus is. Jesus completes us; He fills our every weakness with His mighty power. Therefore we boast, not in our “superiority,” but in our weaknesses, that Jesus fills all that we are. We do not make ourselves “strong” or “fix” ourselves, for Jesus is the only strength we need.
A Fully Capable Christ. • 3 Since you seek a proof inside of my speaking Christ, who is not weak into you, but is fully capable inside of you. 4 For He was crucified inside of weakness, yet He lives out from God’s power. For we also are weak inside of Him, but we will live together with Him out from God’s power into you.
The point of the Gospel is that Jesus is real, that He really lives inside of us, and that He really is capable of accomplishing all. The proof of speaking Christ is not found in us, in any outward display. Indeed, the very Christ of God “failed,” being crucified inside of weakness. But Jesus is no longer weak.
Speak Christ: Jesus walked in weakness and was crucified, yet now He Truly lives inside of us in power. Thus, when we speak Christ, we do not boast in outward performance, for Jesus in us is all the power of God, a fully capable Christ.
Proving Ourselves inside of Jesus. • 5 Test yourselves, whether you are inside of the faith; prove yourselves. Or do you not acknowledge to yourselves that Jesus Christ is inside of you, that is, if you are not fake? 6 I hope now that you will know that we are not fake.
Speak Christ: We acknowledge that Jesus Christ is inside of us, both personally, and together as a local fellowship. To “prove ourselves” is to prove the Lord Jesus, that He is faithful and True. This is living inside of faith. We speak Christ through faith because we are not fake.
Let’s now sum up the flow of Gospel Word through all of 2 Corinthians. One thing this letter has done for me is to remove all restraint in setting out the Gospel as it is actually found, there in the words on the page.
Two Main Themes. Here is my take. God has placed all of Himself into our very human weakness, and that is way, way, way too much for us. Yet we rest in Jesus as fully capable, as all that we need.
Paul has two main themes in 2 Corinthians. The larger is 5:19-20, that just as God was in Christ reconciling all to Himself, so now He is in us, as a Word spoken that calls forth that reconciliation. Then the second theme is that God dwells inside our human weakness and need, fully compatible to Himself. We want our forms to be swallowed up by life, but never to “escape” them. The foundation of both themes is the inter-relationship between Jesus written upon our hearts as the Covenant, and then making us to be just like Himself. The capstone is that Jesus and our human weakness fit together perfectly.
All the Ruling Verses Together. Through these mighty things, Paul weaves the three HOW’s of our redemption, the Cross through which we enter, the Blood that always carries us, and the confidence in which we walk inside the Victory of Jesus’ resurrection. Then, coming out from God turning us around, Paul sets out both the boundaries of our vision and its scope, we separate ourselves from worldly identity and we fight in the Spirit for the entire Church of Christ.
Paul begins all of this with an expansion of the most important description of the ruling verse of 1 Corinthians, that is, our anxious care for one another, sharing suffering and sharing comfort. And he closes the letter with the admonition that Jesus is indeed inside our hearts, otherwise, we’re just fake.
Reading for Next Time. Galatians is next. I have three lessons for the Gospel Comments for Galatians. Those lessons are “Apostolic Authority Unleashed,” “From Union to Covenant,” and “Walk inside of Spirit.” Because these three topics intermingle somewhat throughout Paul’s emotional outburst, I will approach Galatians partly thematically. Thus “Apostolic Authority Unleased” will include Gospel Comments throughout all of Galatians.
Some say quite strongly, “Well, I will take the ‘gospel according to Jesus,’ to obey His commandments, rather than Paul’s claim of ‘it’s all just grace.’” First, they do NOT know Paul’s Gospel, for their hearts are blinded by their own dishonesty, and second, it was Jesus speaking through Paul.
Let’s Pray Together. “Lord Jesus, You are enough for us. It is Your comfort with which we comfort each other in all our difficulties; it is Your Victory celebration in which God always leads us. Lord Jesus, You live for real inside each of our hearts, and You live inside our sharing together. Lord Jesus, You are every Word God speaks fulfilled, written all through the pathways of our human hearts of flesh.
“Lord Jesus, You trade Yourself for us in all ways, making us to be like Yourself in knowing the Father and in loving one another. And Lord Jesus, through You we know the great Treasure that is our Father, that we are filled with all the fulness of God, even in our mortal frame.
“But most of all, Lord Jesus, You have given us Your Heart, that we might share Your same Care for all our Christian brethren. We know, Lord Jesus, that we can do nothing for the world or for creation except there be a Church standing forth as God through her into her world.
“Together with You, Lord Jesus, we tear down fortresses of refusal in the lives of our brethren, we overthrow arguments about the Bible as if it is good and evil. Together with You, Lord Jesus, we eliminate every barrier against the knowledge of God in Your entire Church. Lord Jesus, we belong to You, and Your power fills our human frame. Out from the life we share with You, we bring God’s judgment to all, Jesus proven faithful and True.”