1 Corinthians 2.3 observes, I came to you in weakness—timid and trembling.
Weakness is a despised attribute in the world even among Christians. We try and pretend its not something God honors but it is.
We turn this godly virtue on its head when we quote the Bible’s promise, ‘when we are weak then we are strong.’ We like that ending strong part pretending we are never really weak. But the verse really means when we are really weak that’s when we are really strong in the eyes of God not man.
The problem is our God models for us weakness and humility over and over but we try and try to ignore it.
When God decides to make His personal appearance upon the earth He comes in the form of a baby. A baby is totally vulnerable. In the mystery that is the Trinity, no doubt the Father kept a sharp eye on the Son but in the end God has come as an infant to be carried, and cared for by humans prone to accidents.
As God grows He chooses to live obscurely among the peasant stock working as the friendly neighborhood carpenter. Over thirty years God lives among us as one of us without revealing to us Who He is or demanding from us the honor and allegiance due Him.
When God finally does choose to go public He does so as a servant, defining that role as the greatest of all. God spends His final three years being maligned and mishandled by men whom He created whose power was nothing compared to Him Who holds the universe together by His will.
While ten thousand angelic warriors are awaiting His command to attack He chooses instead to suffer alone enduring the shame and malice of men. Men think in the end they have killed God having nailed Him to a cross and struck Him with a spear and finding no pulse remaining in His human veins.
Yet after three days of silence He returns, demonstrating it is truly Him risen from the dead by His invitation to touch His nail holes and feel the scar where the spear entered His side. The Almighty is alive then what does He say?
He commands His followers to serve, to give, to lead and to love in the same manner He choose. This example He set was all about weakness, going last, elevating everyone else and enduring everyone’s unjust criticism, reproof and disdain without seeking revenge.
God plans to reveal His awesome power at the end, when the world as we know it is over, when He calls every human to account for their response to Jesus, when He establishes His Kingdom and He takes His throne as King of kings and Lord of lords among all those who lived a humble life as He did when they lived on earth as people who were weak so that God could be seen as strong.
It is the meek whom He promises will inherit the earth.
