He was crucified through weakness, yet He liveth through the power of God.
For we also are weak in Him, but we shall live with Him through the power of God toward you.
“He was crucified through weakness, yet He liveth through the power of God.”
Here, in one brief, concise statement, is gathered all that the days from what we call Good Friday to Easter Monday represent. On the one side, the cross: “He was crucified.” On the other side, the resurrection: “He liveth by the power of God.”
Then the statement is carried forward into the life of believers. The principle and experience of the Lord Jesus are transferred to Christ’s people: “We also are weak in Him, but we shall live with Him through the power of God.”
“He was crucified through weakness.” This is the cross at its very lowest and deepest level. It is indeed a picture of utter weakness.
You cannot read the accounts of the trials, condemnation, and crucifixion of Jesus without being impressed by His apparent helplessness and weakness. So it does appear, you see.
But mark this: it is not the statement that Jesus was crucified because the adverse forces were too strong for Him. That is not what it means. When it says that He was crucified through weakness, it does not mean that those forces—whether human, worldly, or satanic—were too strong for Him.
This statement of His being crucified through weakness contains the profoundest secret of God’s way of redemption and victory. We shall not understand it—we shall not understand anything in the Bible—if we do not see it in its largest setting and context.
I want to say that to you: it is a very important key to anything in the Bible. Very few things in the Bible can be taken by themselves. We have to see everything in its main setting and connection, and here is a great example of that fact.
What is this profound secret of God’s method in redemption and victory? What is the great, full setting and context of this statement about His being crucified through weakness?
It is this—nothing less than this: it is Almighty God operating in a great reverse movement in this universe. The cross of the Lord Jesus is God acting in reverse.
Now, you know what that means if you go back again—where we have been several times in these days—to that great disruptive, disorganising, disintegrating movement amongst angelic created beings.
The Bible tells us that one of the superior angels made a bid for power in heaven. He made a bid for authority in his own right. He set himself to be an independent, self-sufficient centre of a movement, the head of a movement.
Evidently, he made his thoughts and ambitions known among angelic hosts, with the result that he gained a following. Many fell to his kingdom and entered into complicity with him to take power and to be independent of God.
They sought to be a law unto themselves—to have it in themselves and not in God, and from God. That revolt disrupted heaven’s harmony, the harmony in the universe.
We are told later in the New Testament of “the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation” and are reserved in everlasting chains. That is what happened. That is when it happened.
What happened just then? It was a bid for power: to take power out of God’s hands and to have it in their own hands; to forsake the position of dependence upon God and become independent; to make a course of their own without reference to God.
It was revolt against the throne, resulting in being cast out of heaven. That leader, cast out of heaven, came into this creation with that same evil ambition.
He injected the idea into the mind and thoughts of man. In effect, he said, “Look here, why should you be bound, limited by obligation to God and dependence upon God, and have to have everything by reference to Him?”
“Why not be a law unto yourself? Why not be as God, knowing, and therefore being able to do—to have the things in yourself and not in Him? Take things into your own hands and assert your independence.”
That is the meaning, the heart of it, the nature of it. What had happened in heaven was repeated on earth through the temptation and the suggestion. Adam took himself out of the realm of God and fell into another realm which was not of God.
Now notice: the whole principle, nature, and motive of that twofold movement was a quest for power—a quest for power on the part of the evil one and of man; a way of independence and rejection of divine authority.
There is a long and terrible history connected with that beginning. The whole history of the human race is the history of man seeking pre-eminence, man seeking superiority, man seeking to have in himself what alone belongs to God.
Man hates anything in the nature of submission, subjection, and subordination. Man hates authority. It is all a quest for power.
Are we not seeing that in our own time? Have we not seen it in our own lifetime, with the most terrible results? It seems that there can never be a movement in this world but someone will try to go one better.
It is so nationally and internationally. It is so socially. It is part of human nature in the social world. Someone sees something that someone else has, wears, or possesses, and they imitate it—but try to go one better.
All the terrible story of criticism, denouncing, defaming, and reproach is, after all, the working of that thing in human nature which must put down the other person in order to get on top. It is a horrible thing in this universe.
Everywhere, that thing is at work—the spirit of power politics. What a fight there is today internationally, just to be ahead of the other one, ahead of the other one and above the other one.
There is no end except the destruction of the race, the destruction of the race—God’s creation being spoiled. The enemy knows what he is after. He is out, despite God, for the spoiling and destroying of His creation.
That is the setting and the context of this. God is not going to fight the enemy on his own ground.
One of the laws of the Christian life is just this: you cannot meet carnality with carnality. You may not fight spiritual battles with carnal weapons. You must not give back what is given to you. There are two different realms with God altogether.
And so we come to this: “He was crucified through weakness.”
In the cross of the Lord Jesus, all that evil thing which arose in the heart of Lucifer, did its mischief in heaven, and then produced its fruit in us—all that evil thing of ambition, pride, and quest for power—has got to be undone.
It has got to be undone, destroyed. “He was crucified through weakness.” It is the picture of man absolutely emptied of all selfhood in terms of self-sufficiency, self-strength, and power in himself.
Now, we have noted in these gatherings that this has ever and always been God’s method with those who have really come into His hands. There is one principle, one law, one proof, running right through the Old Testament.
Whenever and wherever God took up a vessel or an instrument by which to show forth His power, He did not make something according to the standards of this world in greatness and importance. He proceeded to empty that vessel and bring it to the place of absolute and utter dependence upon Himself.
Study all your Old Testament characters in relation to God in the light of that. Study Israel in the light of just that. It is a great weakening, an everything discipline—taking away all self-confidence, all self-sufficiency, all self-assurance, and all power and authority from man himself.
So He did with Abraham and all who followed. That was God’s law in all His activities: the law of emptying all self-pride, because He is going to destroy and undo this evil thing.
That is the Old Testament. Come to the New Testament—to the teaching of the Lord Jesus. His teaching is all on that line, all on that line.
You are not allowed to turn on your persecutors and give them what they give you. Indeed, you have got to give them just the opposite. You are not allowed to vindicate yourself, stand for your own rights, preserve your own reputation, or show that you are as good as the other person.
His warning in His teaching is always that His servants, disciples, and followers will have to go the way that He Himself went: despised and rejected of men, and not answering back.
His teaching and His example—in life and in death—are the heart of that amazing and marvellous silence: “As a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His mouth”; the Lamb led to the slaughter, unresisting.
Think of His encounters with those who tried to trap Him and corner Him by arguments and questions. It was not self-defence. We know quite well that He could have brought forth an argument, a case, or an answer which would have sent them all away in perfect shame.
They tried to ensnare Him: “Is it right to give tribute to Caesar?” You see the trap, do you not? But you know His answer: “Show Me a coin. Whose superscription is this?” “Caesar’s.”
Caesar’s image was stamped upon the coin. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” There was silence.
We could go on with such instances. He could very skilfully have made out a case for Himself and put both the Jewish authorities and the Roman authorities to complete shame, if He had been so disposed. But He was silent. He was silent.
He knew that for this purpose He came into the world, that this was the will of God for Him. He would make out no case by which He might escape this thing.
Something had got to be undone. That temporal power in Rome, and that religious power in Israel—oh, it was mighty power in this world. It looked as though it was more powerful than He, the Son of God.
See the Jewish rulers playing with Him, mocking Him. Having carried out their trumped-up charge and case, and passed their sentence upon Him, they, as it were, tossed Him into the hands of Pilate, the Roman ruler.
Pilate began to taunt and play with the Jews in return about Him. Here was the victim, apparently—the plaything of world power on both sides, religious and temporal. And deliberately, deliberately, He let them do it.
He was going to destroy that power on both its sides. He was going to bring down that authority to the very dust. He was going to humble that thing beyond recovery.
But He could not do it on the basis of man’s strength, power, and sufficiency. Not at all. All that had to be emptied out, because He was there in His cross as the representative of this Satan-governed, dominated, energised humanity when He was made sin.
In Himself, as we have sung in our hymn, He went down to weakness and defeat. Through weakness, on that side, He was going to do it. He must empty all that out in Himself and be crucified through weakness.
But He liveth by the power of God.
There is all the difference of two realms between the great power of Satan, the great power of this world, temporal power, human sufficiency, and the power of God. Room has got to be made for another kind of power to come in.
You know, dear friends, if you have any spiritual experience at all, that while you hold on, God stands away. While you will not let go, He stands apart. While you are in strength, the Lord just lets you get on with it.
It is never until you let go, until you yield and surrender, until you subject yourself to the will of God whatever it costs, that God steps in and undertakes.
That is the law of the spiritual life. It comes right home. We know it to be true. How often we have wanted our own way. We have thought, we have stood for what we wanted, and we have known that in those times the Lord was not with us. He was letting things take their course until we came to this point and yielded to God.
Then the thing changed, or began to change. That is the principle, you see, of the cross. There is a strength in us which has got to go in order to make room and way for the strength of God.
“He was crucified through weakness” in order to undercut and empty out all that which had come into this cosmos, which had invaded this creation through the usurping power of Satan.
Oh, that is the context. You cannot understand the cross until you see it related to that eternal issue. And then, on the other side, “He liveth by the power of God.” He liveth by the power of God.
We said in our opening statement that here is the cross at its lowest and deepest level, suffering and utter weakness. How the picture changes in a very short time.
The power of God comes down from heaven and begins its operation, completely converting and transforming the first members of the church—men who, up to that time, had resented with all their souls the very idea of weakness.
When He spoke of being put to death, it was an intolerable idea—an intolerable idea. When He was crucified, they were offended. To them, He had suffered defeat and undoing. Such a thing was inconceivable, unimaginable. Their whole human nature rose up against it.
“If that happens, then the day is lost. If that happens, everything has gone.”
Look at them on the day of Pentecost, when the other power—not of man, but of God—comes down. What a wonderful chapter Acts 4 is, when they beheld the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men.
They had no explanation and no answer. They were completely defeated in every attempt to explain and understand it. But the men had got the secret: “This Jesus, whom ye crucified”—this Jesus, who was crucified through weakness—in His name.
What a revolution in these men! But now it was not their own strength. It was not their own authority. It was something from heaven, and it completely changed their standard of value and their ideas about power.
They went out into this world and met it on both its sides: the religious system of Judaism in its hostility to their Lord and Master, and the temporal worldly power on its pagan and heathen side in its antagonism.
They met it in full force and overcame it—not by human strength, often in the direst weakness, in every temporal and physical way where naturally they could never have stood up to the situation at all. Yet this power came through, and on they went.
The world was overcome. The power of Satan was broken. It was another power, not the power of man, and it had come along the line of the emptying and weakness of that old Satan-dominated creation, where the principle of self-sufficiency had been altogether undercut.
This is an explanation of spiritual experience. You see it so often. Are you a candidate for power? Are you in quest of power? Do you ask for power? Is that word and idea of power a great idea for you?
Oh, the tragedy—the tragedy of a misconception of power.
So many pray for the power of the Holy Spirit. Yes, the Holy Spirit is mightily powerful. But their prayer for the power of the Holy Spirit is to make them something in themselves: a great preacher, a great missionary, a great Christian worker, or something like that, with a reputation.
If the Holy Spirit is going to come upon you and me, and into you and me, in terms of power, He is going to empty us first of all of all our own strength and reputation. Make no mistake about it.
You must study the lives of these apostles again, especially the chief of them, the Apostle Paul, in the light of that great truth. The power of God did come upon these men. But look at their idea of themselves, their estimate of themselves.
See how they were all the time keeping this thing not only before their own eyes, but before the eyes of everybody else: that no flesh should glory in His presence; that the glory should be His alone, not one iota attributed to man.
Intellectually, emotionally, volitionally—in any way whatever—man is not going to have his flesh ministered to in the things of God, not one little bit. By the Holy Spirit, it is going to be of God, and all of God, and all the glory is going to be of God.
That is the law of Christ crucified and Christ risen. Now it is transferred to us, to the church, to believers: “We also are weak in Him.”
I said before today that there is probably no man alive who, more than Saul of Tarsus when he was unsaved, had this ambition for power.
You see him: asserting himself, taking things into his own hands, being the authority to bring everything down under him.
And there was no man, after he met Jesus Christ and came into the power of His cross, who more fully exemplified being crucified through weakness. What a change! What a change in that man!
But have we any reason to question that the power of God worked in and through that man? Why, the power that worked in and through him nearly two thousand years ago is still working through Paul in our own lives as his ministry comes to us.
It is power that overreaches time, overreaches all limitation. It is the power of God.
It is a costly way. This is what the Lord means when He says, “If any man would come after Me, let him take up his cross and deny himself.”
Himself. I make difficulties for our friends in other countries with their language if I change that and say, “deny his self.” But we English know what that means: his self.
That is really what the Lord meant: the self-life. Say, “No.” Say, “No,” negatively. “You are not going to come in. You are not going to dictate. You are not going to order my course.”
Any self-interest, any self—no, I deny you a place and any right. It is the Lord, and the Lord only, Who is to be in the place of lordship: dictating, determining, directing, and supplying.
Mine is a life not of dependence upon anything that is in myself, but utter dependence upon Him. The nearer we get to the Lord Jesus in the depth of the cross, the lowest depth of the cross—crucified through weakness—the nearer we get to the power of God.
The power of God.
I think I have said enough about this passage. There it is. We are confronted with tremendous forces, great power all around and within.
That power will win, gain, and succeed just in proportion as we live outside of Christ, just in proportion as we live on the ground of our own strength.
That power will be defeated and neutralised just in the measure in which we live on the ground of Christ crucified through weakness and living by the power of God.
Shall we pray?