Are You a Strong or Weak Christian?

A few months ago, I had a great conversation with a friend of mine, talking about popular conceptions of strength and weakness as it relates to the Christian life. The conversation was birthed out of a discovery I had made as I read through a small book that proposed strategies to control anger. One such meditation was particularly disturbing; the author used 1 Samuel 18:8-9 as an example to showcase the kinds of people that put on displays of envy, as it says in the text that after hearing about David's military exploits, Saul "eyed David from from that day and forward."

Here is the author's exhortation; I know it's a little lengthy, but it is such a descriptive explanation of the mentality of our moralistic, do-it-ourself hearts:

Weak people quickly surrender to eny. Weak, discontented people allow envy to creep into their hearts... Solomon said, "Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before envy?" Only the strong can withstand envy. Are you jealous of the possessions that other have? Then you are weak. Are you envious of the talents, the attention, the praise, or the popularity of someone else? If so, you are a weak person. Only the strong can stand before envy... Jealousy is so strong that it grabs hold of hearts and quickly kindles the fire of wrath in them... Jealousy is a characteristic of a very weak person... David was a strong man because he lived to please God... You derive your strength from the one you want to please. If your desire is simply to please yourself, you will never be any stronger than you are right now and will remain a weak, uncontrolled person. If you seek to please God, you will learn to control your anger in the power of His might. Living a God-focused life enables you to learn to depend on the power of His strength. Are you weak or strong? Do you control envy and anger or do they control you? "Are you a Saul or David?"

Weakness and strength; what a fantastic opportunity to point us back to the Gospel! Because Jesus was strong for me, I am free to be weak! Yes! I will never defeat envy! I will never defeat jealousy! But God released me from sin's power and on my knees, I can approach His throne, knowing that because I am weak, I will fail. I will sin. I will succumb to temptation because I am a sinner that has been raised to life by the grace of God! I HAVE NO STRENGTH! It's all of Him!

I got angry when I read this excerpt from the book; I was eagerly anticipating the freeing message of the Gospel, but the only thing that seemed to be uplifting was the sentence, "Living a God-focused life enables you to learn to depend on the power of His strength." I hope I know what he's saying, but I don't know for sure. He and I may agree, but from what this excerpt seems to communicate, this author seems to endorse a "do more, try harder" version of sanctification.

2 Corinthians 12:9 says that His strength is made perfect in weakness! It is through our ready admission of how pathetically sinful we are that God's strength is most clearly displayed! If we are so strong, why does it matter if He is at all?

Tullian Tchividjian said in Part 10 of his sermon series on Ecclesiastes (as is fantastically apropos to this discussion):

We still have questions about the Gospel because we still haven't embraced beggarhood. We still haven't seen that we are needy and helpless beggars. We even deny beggarhood, as Christians, in the way that we think of spiritual progress. We think of spiritual progress in terms of getting stronger and stronger and more and more competent. Before you're a Christian you need Jesus a lot, and the goal is that when you get Holy Spirit magic power you start needing Jesus less and less and less; and we always qualify it by saying, "Thanks be to Jesus who is providing the power," but we're utilizing it and getting stronger and stronger. That is the reason why, for many Christians, when they think about "Gospel", what the Gospel is and what the Gospel does, they think it needs only to be applied to people outside the church. We would never say this, but spiritual growth is [equal to] becoming less and less dependent on Jesus.

 This is the state of our spirit, even after we believe the Gospel! Our sinful hearts are so quick to run away from the truth that we cannot do anything to save or sanctify ourselves; we are constantly looking for ways to become "stronger", when all we should be doing is begging that God makes us more and more comfortable with our weakness. The only thing that should get stronger and stronger in us is the reflex in our knees to hit the ground and seek God constantly.

And even the attitude of repentance is singularly enabled by the grace of God. Without Him transferring us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light and softening our hearts we would have no desire at all to love Him or serve His people.

In all this, I want to affirm God's only-ness in our sanctification. He reveals Himself piece by piece, and we can do naught but respond in amazed love, admiration, and service.

We don't need to be strong, because He is.

He is our hope.

.DSN.