God’s Grace Is Sufficient!

7th Sunday after Pentecost, 7/15/12
2 Corinthians 12:7-10

God’s Grace Is Sufficient!
I. A grace that saves us
II. A grace that changes us

Sometimes in our efforts to make something better, we actually make it worse or even ruin it.


I recall as a child having a small vegetable garden. I didn’t like the placement of the plants, so I decided to transplant them. The stress on the plants involved in digging them up and replanting them, however, ended up killing them.

I’m sure you could tell me similar stories from your life. You convince yourself that one more snip with the scissors will make it look better, so you do it and it ends up looking worse. You’re cooking and you figure one more dash of that special ingredient will make it taste better, so you shake some more in, but now it’s too much and it tastes worse. You’re doing some repair work using a set of ratchet wrenches. It feels tight enough, but you decide to give it one more turn. So that’s what you do, but that’s too much. The bolt snaps and now you’ve ruined it.

The Apostle Paul learned that lesson in answer to his prayers to the Lord. Jesus told him, “My grace is sufficient for you.” In other words, the Lord wanted Paul to know that he couldn’t add any effectiveness to the grace that God had given to him and that Paul was sharing with others through his preaching and teaching. In fact, when anyone tries to add something to the grace of God, they ruin it. God’s grace is sufficient.

Not a day goes by in which we don’t wish or fervently desire that things would be different in our lives. There were days in which Paul had that same wish. God answered Paul with the words, “My grace is sufficient.” God’s grace is sufficient for us, too. Let’s see how and why that’s so important as our God shares that truth with us this morning.

Part I.

There are times when I hear the account of the despicable things that despicable people do and I wonder why God doesn’t simply rid the earth of that person. I wonder why God would put up with that. I can’t help but think that such a person doesn’t deserve to live a moment longer on this earth. Perhaps that person has committed a terrible crime against one of society’s most vulnerable people. Or perhaps that person is saying or writing terrible things about the one true God. Or maybe that person is trying to wipe out Christians. Why doesn’t God simply put an end to that person, and violently so?

If that’s the way God always did things, then there would be no Apostle Paul. Paul lived a despicable life. He thought he was doing the right thing, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. He made it his purpose in life to wipe Christianity off the face of the earth. He persecuted men, women and children for their faith in Jesus Christ. He was a prime candidate for an early trip to hell.

But God showered his grace on Paul in a special way. You know the story. On his way to Damascus the Lord appeared to Paul and confronted him with his sin and his rejection of the Lord Jesus. He converted Paul from unbelief to faith in him as his only Savior from sin. That grace turned Paul’s life around completely—from spending eternity without Jesus to spending eternity with him.

And from that day on Paul lived to share that grace of God with others. Again, you know the story. We know of at least 3 missionary journeys that Paul took. On those journeys he shared the good news of Jesus as the Savior from sin. That good news converted idol worshippers into Christians. Paul gathered those Christians into congregations from one end of the Roman empire all the way to Rome itself and perhaps even to Spain. Most Christians regard him as the greatest missionary the Christian Church has ever seen.

But there was a problem. Paul tells us what it was with these words, “To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.” We can only guess what this thorn in the flesh was. One of the better guesses, in my opinion, is that Paul contracted malaria on his first journey and it plagued him. Satan meant for it to bring Paul down. God used it to keep him humble.

You see, Paul figured that, if he weren’t bothered by this “thorn in the flesh,” he could be a better preacher of God’s word, a more effective missionary for the Lord. He tells us, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.” Paul prayed about it intensely. His reasoning appeared to be solid. If the Lord took this thorn away from him, he could do more work for the Lord and more souls would be won for God’s kingdom.

But the Lord didn’t see it that way. The Lord felt it was better for Paul to continue to be afflicted. And why? Because it proved that the power to convert so many people to faith in Jesus resided in the grace of God and not in Paul’s human abilities. Even though the mouthpiece in some way was weak, the message still had the power of God to convert hearts that were hardened in unbelief to hearts that were on fire with love for the Lord Jesus.

It’s God’s grace that saves us, not any human power or element. God’s grace is sufficient. It’s that grace that saves us.

This section of God’s word has special application for me as a preacher of the gospel. The power to create and nourish faith in Jesus is in God’s grace, not in my physical power or knowledge. I suppose an application for you is that we don’t need to resort to gimmicks to convert people. We just need to share the grace of God.

But unless I’m wrong, don’t you often find yourself wrestling with God the way Paul did? What’s your thorn in the flesh that you have prayed fervently over? A health thorn in the flesh? Just think how much more you could do as a child of God if you didn’t have that problem. A financial thorn in the flesh? Just think what you could do with a little more money. A relationship thorn in the flesh? If only God would grant healing in that relationship, you’d be free to address other things in your life. So, what’s your thorn in the flesh? There are times that God removes them eventually. But at other times his answer is the same as the one he gave Paul. It would appear Paul suffered from his thorn in some way until the day he died. And then God’s grace was sufficient for him. Paul entered life in heaven. And there’s your point of contact with this text! We forget that we are sinners living in a sinful world. We reveal our sinfulness every day. One of them is in our failure to completely trust our gracious God. His goal for us is not to live a pleasant life here, but to live a perfect life with him in heaven. His grace has already accomplished that goal for you. Forgiveness is yours, won for you by Jesus’ death on the cross. Heaven is your home because Christ won it for you. Isn’t that really all that we need? God’s grace is sufficient. It’s a grace that saves us.

Part II.

In some countries of the world today, if you are a Christian, the only employment offered to you involves the lowest, dirtiest, and most unsanitary tasks. In some countries of the world today, if you convert to Christianity, you may never see or speak to your family members again. In some countries of the world today, if you are a Christian, you are not protected by the laws of the land and are in danger of being beaten and robbed or worse. In those countries of the world today, being a Christian means you will suffer for your faith.

St. Paul knew what that was like. He speaks about the insults, hardships, persecutions and difficulties. In another letter he wrote about the beatings, the whippings, and the stoning he endured. In the end, he was martyred for his faith in Jesus. Don’t you think that more than once Paul was tempted to tell God, “Christianity should be easier than this, Lord!”?

But being a Christian shouldn’t be easy—not then and not now. Remember, we’re Christians living in a sinful, unbelieving world. That world hates a God who is holy and has declared an absolute standard of right and wrong, who demands morality and condemns immorality, who created us and demands that we are responsible to him. Our world refuses to believe in or acknowledge such a God.

What’s more, even when our world decides to become spiritual, it refuses to accept that there is only one God who alone is the way and the truth and the life. That will never due for our world. Instead, it wants to construct its own god to fit its own way of life.

But our God has changed us. We have been set apart from our world and set apart for our God. We live for him, not for ourselves. We live to serve him, not ourselves. We live now to inherit life with him forever. That life is ours by faith in Jesus Christ.

Having that faith with the certainty of that life changes the way we experience this life. It turns things upside down. Paul states it like this, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” In the world’s view, only a weak person would suffer for their faith. But such sufferings are marks of our connection with Christ and his almighty power. With the power of Christ on our side, we overcome all things. And all of this happens only by the grace of God. God’s grace is sufficient, a grace that changes us.

Is your faith in Jesus along with the standards of right and wrong that he has set causing you trouble at work or school? Is your faith in Jesus and the morals that come with it causing you difficulties in your relationship with someone else? Is your faith in Jesus causing you to pass up some of the things this life has to offer? I hope so, because if it isn’t, then there’s something wrong with your faith. The grace of God has changed you, making you a child of God, a member of God’s eternal kingdom. Isn’t that sufficient? When we honestly analyze it, we’ll agree it is. God’s grace is sufficient! Amen.