By Mark Grace, CCCNZ Ambassador
A i a koutou ahau me te ngoikore, me te wehi, me te tuiri nui.
Na ou i ai foi ia te outou ma le vaivai, ma le mata‘u, ma le gatete tele;
I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling.
1 Corinthians 2:3
What is the Apostle Paul saying?
He didn’t come to them with confidence in his speaking ability. He didn’t come to them with confidence in human theories, philosophies, or ideas.
He came to them in weakness. He came to them in weakness, with a message of weakness:
That God himself in the person of his son was nailed to a wooden cross.
That God himself raised Jesus from the dead through the power of the Spirit.
That God himself in public, at the hands of the Roman Republic and Jewish authorities, was crucified.
He wants them to know that this message of weakness is the very power of God.
He wants them to know the best thing he can do is rest his faith on Jesus Christ and him crucified. He wants us to know the best thing we can do is rest our faith on Jesus Christ and him crucified.
You’ve heard the expression ‘resting on your laurels’. I know what it means, but then I realized last week that I don’t know what it means. I mean, what are laurels? According to google, laurels are your achievements.
The saying means ‘don’t rest on your achievements’. There’s a good side to this expression (get off your backside and do something useful) but there’s also a sad side: your achievements are never enough.
The passage is saying don’t rest on your laurels. Rest on His laurels.
What’s the result of this? Paul can be real. He uses simple words and simple ideas. He’s humble. He can be real because he’s not reliant on himself.
His faith doesn’t rest in himself. His faith rests in the objective reality that Jesus, having been crucified, rose from the dead—and so can ours.
