God Strengthens His People - John Piper
If any king ever had the right to display all his glory by stepping on the backs of a rebellious people, it is God. But what does he do? He displays his glory by making his people strong. “Now unto him who is able to strengthen you . . . be glory forevermore . . . .” God magnifies his glory by making you strong with his gospel. God feels no threat from your strength at all. In fact, the stronger you are in faith and hope and love through the gospel of Jesus Christ, the greater he appears. God does not secure his strength by keeping his people weak. He magnifies the glory of his strength by making his people strong. “Now unto him who is able to strengthen you . . . be glory.”
-John Piper-
Labels: Strength
posted by Doug E. @ 10:22 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Praise God for that wonderful truth!
I read somewhere that the word used for glory could also be translated expression. Sometimes when I am reading and replace glory with expression, it changes the whole way I look at what is being said.
Nice post.
Hi Doug --
Let's remember that we are of less than mustard-seed-size faith, or else we would be moving mountains, as the Lord says. God is able to strengthen us, but the best of us are of "little faith" by the descriptive phrase Jesus used.
Just because God is able to strengthen us, doesn't mean that today we are at the point that we one day will be, "like Him, because we will see Him as He is," as I Jn says.
What happens when we begin to believe that God has made all His saints as strong as Christ already? Two things: a) we will despise the weaker Christian, rather than do what 1 Cor 12 says to do; b) we will often even toss the weaker Christian away as unsaved, because we will make the following syllogism: God makes His people strong; God has made His people strong now; only the strong are His people; the weaker people are unsaved.
So I suppose we should add a third thing: we would lose our humility: we would go from God strenthening the saints -- which brings Him glory! -- to canonizing as saints only those among us who are strong!
Hey Larry,
Thanks for stopping by and leaving your comments.
This quote by Piper is taken from a sermon on which in context gives greater explanation. Sorry if I cut the qoute too short. Piper here does not intend to say that all of God's people are already strong. In fact, he is speaking to people who are going through times of weakness. Sorry for the confusion.
Doug
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