Campus CrossWalk Magazine: 2007 Summer Issue -- Like All Great Rock Songs: Grace in Light of Weakness

: Summary: Like all great rock songs, the melody and rhythm of grace defies time, fad, and all attempts to analyze or define it. Like Paul, we should rejoice in the light of its message, for in our weakness the power of Christ is truly manifest.

As with all great rock songs (and most Beatles albums), there are particular Bible passages that have the power to change and shape your life, for the rest of your life. They can tint the lenses of your faith forever afterward.

And like all great rock songs (and most Beatles albums), these scriptures may fall through the cracks from time to time. You may go years after your initial ‘spiritual shock’ without even reading or thinking about your own personal life-changing verse.

But one day out of nowhere, you’ll bump into your passage or verse or psalm or parable and suddenly be reminded how incredible it is and how now, years down the road, you can read it, feel it, meditate on it, and see whole new facets of its incredible, life-changing wisdom you never saw before. They are living and vibrant. They jump off the page. They are electric; more powerful than a Gibson Les Paul through a Marshall Stack, more sublime than a Rickenbacker through a Vox AC30. These are the verses that summate your life as a Christian, the ones you want recited at your funeral, the ones you mutter wordlessly during your worst times, the ones you sing with joy when life is perfect.

What’s your favorite? If you don’t have one, consider adopting mine (and many others).

The passage (or should I say song?) that changed my life and continues to mold my life to this day, is buried in the middle of 2 Corinthians 12. I discovered it by chance in college when I was literally at my lowest and most ‘faithless’ moment. After one too many days and nights of feeling completely disgusted with myself for the choices I was making, I realized how quickly I was approaching “The Crossroads”—(you know, the stairway to heaven or the slow but smooth highway to hell).

At this point I threw open my Bible at random and was surprised to find “red letters” at the back of 2 Corinthians (I thought “red letters”—words of Christ—were only in the Gospels, Acts, or Revelation—who woulda thought?). When I looked at the words, it was at that point that my life immediately began to change:: “My grace is sufficient for you,
for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Something hit me heavy, deep, and powerful; like the first time I truly heard “A Day in the Life.” Somehow I had never even heard of this verse before (why was that?) I looked at the verses preceding it and those to follow. Paul had what he called a ‘thorn’—to speculate exactly what it might have been would miss the point—and he had pleaded with God to remove it. Perhaps Paul had many ‘thorns’, but this particular thorn was the mother load, the messenger from Satan: The one he could not master, regardless of how disciplined he was, regardless of how many self-help books he might have read or 12-step programs he might have considered.

He had even prayed to God (I imagine those prayers were more like banshee wails than silent prayers) to remove it, because he was powerless to do so. I often pray this way, and I imagine you do too.

And what was the Lord’s answer?: “My grace is sufficient for you,
for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Read it again, this time slower and louder (with feeling):: “My grace is sufficient for you,
for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

And like all great rock songs, this message from God, when heard properly, evokes a joyous reaction that unfortunately many (even the young) in our churches tend to miss: Paul didn’t analyze, Paul didn’t question, Paul didn’t argue, Paul didn’t keep silent, Paul didn’t make a point to “appreciate” God’s grace while self-centeredly trying to subdue his thorn—Paul did the only appropriate thing possible: “Therefore I will BOAST all the more GLADLY about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on ME. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. FOR WHEN I AM WEAK, THEN I AM STRONG.” (2 Corinthians 12.10, emphasis added)

On that April morning in ’96, I ‘heard’ grace for the first time. Not only did it spark a spiritual development that continues to this day, it filled me with two things I so desperately needed: hope and peace. In the years since, I have certainly had setbacks and failures and I still have thorns, but I am also learning how to brazenly boast like Paul.

Our message to the masses should be one of unadulterated grace for all those who are bold enough to accept it. Our barbaric yawlp on any campus should be the brazen proclamation of God’s Grace to those who desperately need hope.

Our preachers and ministers should boast loudly from the pulpits their shortcomings and weaknesses, for that’s when their message truly carries power—that’s when they really begin to communicate the true, living, and vibrant gospel. And if we are so incredibly worried about what is pleasing to our Lord, perhaps the first ‘pleasing’ thing we can do is consider his gift to us.

And like all great rock songs, 2 Corinthians 12.9 never grows old, never feels outdated, defies all trends and easily exposes all ‘posers’ in its wake. There is no conservative, no progressive, no liberal, no legalist—we are all the same, we are all weak, and we are all one in the wake of its melody. All else is only the irritating distractions of white noise.: “My grace is sufficient for you,
for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Mark Wylie currently serves as the Young Adult Minister for the University Church of Christ in Denver, CO. He and his wife Susan have been married for eight and ½ years, and they have a 2 year old son, Andrew. He also conducts open Bible studies on the DU campus during the fall and spring semesters.