Gospel Strength
I’m sure you’ve seen them—they line church Youth Room walls and Christian school locker rooms. They often have a sports motif or maybe a picture of an eagle in flight. Motivational posters with Philippians 4:13 were a staple of my childhood, and maybe yours too. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” is easily memorized and also, sadly, too easily misapplied (Phil. 4:13 NKJV).
I will raise my hand and jump to the front of the misapplication line. I remember coupling this proof-texted verse with cultural messages of self-sufficiency and believing that the apostle Paul wanted me to know that I could do anything I put my mind to. I hadn’t yet learned the beauty of biblical context. I didn’t understand that the gospel message through Paul was one of rock-solid identity in Christ, no matter what life circumstances come our way. I just wanted to make the varsity basketball team. I needed a different understanding of the word “do,” and perhaps we all need a different understanding of the word “strengthens.”
Strength Training
I’m sitting in a study room in a public library writing this now. I drafted a sentence imagining how random people would define the word “strength,” but then I decided to put my money where my mouth is. Well, awkward-social-interaction currency, not real money. I left the study room and asked a few library patrons and employees what comes to mind when they hear the word “strength.” Interestingly, each one of them noted that strength could either be physical or mental. One man even said, “I think [strength] is more mental than physical.” They used synonyms like “capable” and “powerful.” Then, unprompted, they added the means through which strength typically is developed. Each person mentioned needing to endure difficulty in order to cultivate strength. One library employee mentioned first responders and law enforcement officers, noting both the physical strength they need to do their jobs and the emotional strength they develop through the traumas they witness. It’s interesting that the word “strength” is difficult to define apart from the necessary, preceding factors that produce it.
It seems to be common knowledge, at least here in an Ohio library, that strength is developed, rather than innate. Scripture is clear about how followers of Jesus develop strength. In Paul’s second letter of encouragement and instruction to the Corinthian church, he shares specific hardships he has endured as an apostle of Jesus Christ (11:16–33). He admits that it’s tempting to boast in his status, his pedigree, his painful trials, even in visions and revelations from the Lord. As he discusses the thorn in his flesh, given to him to keep him from becoming conceited (12:7), Paul clearly points readers to the only true source of strength. “Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:8–10).
Strength through Dependence
Here Paul echoes the same idea as the posterized verse in his letter to the Philippians—when we are in Christ we can be content in any circumstance, because inward reliance on Jesus supersedes outward achievement or ease. Strength actually comes about as we rely completely on Jesus. We reject the self-righteousness Paul was so familiar with before his heart and name change. We embrace, instead, God’s grace to us through Christ, which we could never earn or deserve. Grace accepted and relied upon can’t help but produce humble obedience, and therein lies the greatest strength there is.
Spiritual strength is cultivated in us as we reflect again and again on our utter dependence on God. We must remain in Christ. He has promised to remain in us (John 15:4), and in our submitted dependence we find the only true source of strength. We must not buy into the humanistic message that we have all we need within ourselves. Likewise, we should not embrace the North American, individualistic message that we are functioning at our highest potential when we don’t need anything from anyone. We were created to be dependent.
Earlier in 2 Corinthians Paul says, “For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again” (2 Cor. 1:8b–10). When calamity comes our way, we have graciously been given an opportunity to remember our own weakness and throw ourselves again onto the Rock of Ages. He is a safe refuge. Fatiguing muscles through weight training grows physical strength and returning again and again to the truth of our own neediness will grow the spiritual muscle of dependence on Jesus.
Strength Displayed Differently
Christ followers not only develop strength differently, but we also display strength differently to the world around us. We must reject the notion that strength is best displayed by hiding our weaknesses. The apostle Paul pushed all his chips in on the truth that God’s power is made perfect in weakness. God told him that was his design, and Paul had learned the beauty of obeying God’s voice.
I remember standing on a stage in front of hundreds of high school girls and sharing my battle with shame from childhood sexual abuse for the first time. I had felt clear direction from the Lord to include this dark part of my story and the healing he was bringing me, but it was terrifying. Satan uses shame to undermine our identity, so it feels counterintuitive to share openly about the shame-inducing wounds in our lives. Whether it is sin chosen over us or chosen by us, the lie whispered is: “What will people think if you share that? What kind of Christian witness is that?”
But sharing our vulnerabilities is exactly what it means to experience God’s strength in our weakness and to taste and see how good it is. His grace is put on full display when we talk about specific ways he has bound up our wounds, broken chains of shame, and freed us from slavery to sin. And we walk away amazed by Christ’s goodness, stronger because of our total dependence on him.
