Pastor Barry's  "Chapter & Verse"  Day 59

February 28;    2 Corinthians 13:9;    59/260(II);    ‘Made Complete’

2 Corinthians 13:9 For we are glad when we are weak and you are strong. And this also we pray, that you may be made complete.

Paul, as he closes his (really the Holy Spirit’s) second letter to the Corinthian church is sharing some final thoughts.  Paul is surely not weak, no one in the Bible had greater revelation than Paul as to who the church is because of the provisions of the Lord Jesus.  Remember that Paul had incredible religious training as a Pharisee.  Once he was Born Again, after the Lord Jesus confronted him on the road to Damascus, Paul purposed in his heart to share the simple life changing truths of the gospel.  Paul was weak in the sense that he no longer trusted in his formal religious training that brought pride and arrogance, but humbly shared God the Father’s love for humanity, exhibited by sending Jesus to die for us.  The gospel that Paul taught the Corinthians would make them spiritually strong.  He taught them the incredibly powerful truths that he had been taught by the Holy Spirit.  Paul the Apostle, chosen by the Lord, refusing to allow anything to keep him from doing the Lord’s work, was diligent to teach the body of Christ who they were.  Paul prayed that not only would the church in Corinth hear the truths that would make them strong, but that they would live their lives being doers of what was taught.  When the Corinthian church became doers of the Word, they would be made complete.  ‘Complete’ means improved, equipped, trained, disciplined.  The word also means to make necessary repairs.  Paul, receiving such powerful revelation by the Holy Spirit taught it to the Corinthian church.  His prayer for them was that these truths would make them complete, able to continue the work of Jesus Christ.