God Is Strong When We Are Weak — But Not Like That

During my seminary days, I became enamored with the delightful paradoxes of scripture. I thought of them as “backwards” Bible verses, because they highlighted what I perceived to be kingdom absurdities that seem contradictory but make sense in the realities of God’s kingdom.

There’s a lot of these in the Sermon on the Mount—sayings of Jesus that depict the “upside-down” realities of God’s kingdom, like “love your enemies” and “blessed are the poor.” I took a whole class on the Sermon on the Mount in seminary. That class ended up being one of my favorites, probably because it appealed to my youth zeal and idealism.

In my years of ministry since that class, I’ve noticed how these upside down kingdom concepts kept showing up in the evangelical world as fortune cookie statements that sound profound but don’t make a lot of sense practically.

Another one of these upside-down statements is in 2 Cor 12:9, where Jesus tells Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9). Paul responded to this statement by saying, “therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (v10).

Practically, then, this statement can be misconstrued as a call to actually become weaker, thinking that would create an opportunity for the strength and power of Christ to shine through. A student might think, “if I study for this test, I’m relying on the flesh. So I can not study for the test, giving God the opportunity to be glorified through my weakness.” This is foolish, but it’s the kind of foolishness that Christians can easily convince themselves is actually otherworldly, spiritual wisdom.

For a seminary student, half listening to a lecture and half daydreaming about future ministry, verses like that can stay abstract. It can even feel like a spiritualized excuse for being passive and lazy, thinking “if God is strong when I’m weak, I’ll choose to be weak so God’s power can work in my ministry.”

You might have heard people weaponize this verse against Christian ambition, cultural engagement, or masculine courage. The implication, as it’s usually wielded, is that striving for excellence is suspect. The properly humble Christian should approach life with a pre-commitment to weakness, which is defined as “non-power” or “non-effort.” To be “weak” means to not try very hard, to not assert oneself very much, or to “lead with a limp.” To do otherwise would be putting confidence in the flesh.

This misunderstanding has contributed to producing a generation of Christians who spiritualize their passivity, expecting God to bless their half-hearted efforts because they were appropriately “weak.” That’s not what Paul meant. So, what does this text mean by “weakness?” And what did Paul mean by his response that he would “boast all the more gladly of my weakness?”

What Weakness Actually Means

The “weakness” Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 12:9–10 refers to utter dependence on God for everything. Christ said, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5) — which is another way of saying, “you are weak apart from me.” Compared to God, we are weak, and whatever human strength we have is a gift from him.

When Paul said, “therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses,” he was not saying he would try to become actually weaker, but to acknowledge he has no strength of his own apart from God. His “boasting” is simply an acknowledgement of God’s power at work in him. Paul knew he could do nothing apart from Christ, so he gave God the glory in everything. And his thorn in the flesh was a divine reminder of this — given precisely because of the extraordinary supernatural revelations he’d experienced.

Thus, “weakness” should not be confused with things like inaction, indiscipline, or ignorance. When we make this mistake, “strength through weakness” becomes a magic wand to wave over incompetence, as if God promises extra blessings to those who don’t try very hard.

This thread of God’s power working through human weakness runs through both of Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. Here are six observations about strength and weakness that can help clarify what he actually meant.

How Power and Weakness Converge in the Christian Life

First, God is the source of all power. All human strength is on loan from God. In 1 Corinthians 3:6, Paul says, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” Paul and Apollos worked hard, but the ultimate result was in God’s hands. “We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Cor 4:7).

Second, it is a sin to act as if the power comes from us. That’s the sin of boasting. “Boasting” is a recurring theme in Paul’s writing, especially in his letters to the church in Corinth, mentioning it some 37 times in those two letters. “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” (1 Cor 4:7).

This is the heart of the matter. Weakness doesn’t mean non-power. It means reliance on God’s power received as a gift. It means the righteous exercise of human power while always acknowledging God as the divine source. The issue isn’t power vs. non-power, but always giving God the glory for the power that operates within us (1 Cor 10:31).

Third, God’s power usually works through the natural abilities he gives us. God’s power normally operates in our lives in the form of spiritual gifts. Most of the time, spiritual gifts are ordinary abilities sanctified and empowered by the Spirit, such as teaching, helping, serving, exhorting, contributing, giving (1 Cor 12:4–6, Rom 12:6–8).

God distributes these disproportionately. Some people have greater gifts, others have lesser. Regardless, God providentially arranges them such that those with seemingly “weaker” gifts are regarded as vital to the life of the church (1 Cor 12:22). On occasion, God works in extraordinary or miraculous ways to demonstrate clearly that his power is at hand. But the ordinary pattern is sanctified human effort.

Fourth, God may use suffering and affliction to humble us. Paul said he faced afflictions so severe that he despaired of life itself (2 Cor 1:8–9, 6:4–10). That’s what Paul’s thorn in the flesh was about. Without question, Paul was a man of extraordinary gifts, and God afflicted him with a thorn in his flesh to keep him from becoming conceited. But this must not be regarded as a mandate for Christians to justify incompetence or lack of effort by calling it weakness.

Fifth, Paul’s approach in Corinth was contextual, not universal. Corinth’s most glaring sin was boastful arrogance — they were enamored with displays of miraculous power. So Paul chose not to showboat his gifts in their presence because it distracted from his focus on the cross (1 Cor 2:2). His restraint was strategic. His opponents even ridiculed him as a lightweight because of it (2 Cor 10:10).

Sixth, Paul explicitly reserved the right to display power when needed. His weakness, fear, and trembling in Corinth (1 Cor 2:3) were not spiritual absolutes for every believer in every context. Elsewhere Paul says the opposite: “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Tim 1:7). The restraint in Corinth was a ministry strategy, not a theology of Christian passivity.

Weakness, therefore, does not mean a pre-commitment to non-power. It does not mean God promises extra blessings to those who don’t try very hard.

What does it mean to “boast in our weakness”?

So what does it mean to “boast in our weakness?” First, it doesn’t mean “don’t try very hard so God gets the glory.” Paul says elsewhere, “whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward” (Col 3:23-24). A Christian can be disciplined, hard working, and even powerful, yet when he acknowledges God as the animating force behind all his excellent efforts, he is “boasting” in God, not in himself. When we acknowledge God’s power behind every excellent work we do, we are “boasting in our weakness.”

A good example of this can be seen in Proverbs 21:31. It says, “The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord.” Both sides of the strength/weakness paradox can be seen here. The line, “the horse is made ready for battle,” is where human effort and preparation come in. When men go to battle, they must do their preparations for the battle to succeed. There are various “battles” and challenges we face in our lives, and we have work to do to face them. The second line, “but the victory belongs to the Lord,” is where we boast in our weakness. We can do nothing on our own. Our preparations, planning, hard work, excellence, courage, and follow through—all these things are gifts from God who enables us to do these things. To “boast in our weakness” is to do all these things with all our might, yet acknowledge God’s power at work within us as we do them.

Therefore, the Christian life is not a posture of strategic non-effort waiting for divine compensation. It’s a race. Run it like you intend to win.

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This essay expands on material from my forthcoming book with Canon Press, which makes this argument at length and applies it to some specific figures in contemporary evangelicalism who have gotten this badly wrong.

The book is about why the church keeps losing, and why we’ve been taught to feel good about it. The first half diagnoses what I call Loser Theology: the idea that passivity, retreat, and defeat are somehow more Christlike than engagement, courage, and power. The second half is the remedy — what high-agency Christianity actually looks like in practice.

It’s a pastoral book, not a political one. It came out of sitting across from men in my office who had been told by trusted teachers that ambition is pride and power is corruption. I wrote it for them. I'll have a title and release date to share soon. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it!