There is a verse found in the Book of Job chapter twenty-six (v7) that is a commentary on the creative activity of God, it says, “He stretches out the north over the void and hangs the earth upon nothing.” The words ‘stretches’ and ‘hangs’ both use the tense suggesting continuity and this emphasizes the link between God’s power and what is called ‘nothing’ and, that He does not alter this at all, in all His works His power functions in the context of nothingness and weakness. The Biblical revelation confirms this fact over and over again, God takes up the weak, forgotten, rejected nothings and transforms and uses them by His power.
The famous Latin phrase captures it for us, “creatio ex nihilo,” “creation out of nothing.” The unbreakable connection between the creatures ‘nothing’ and God’s ‘something,’ man’s weakness and God’s power is found in many expressions as God goes about His business. What wonderful hope for us lies here in the juxtaposition of these two words- CREATION and NOTHING! But we often take a long time to embrace and cooperate with Him in His way of doing things, we struggle over it, yet wellbeing in our soul comes as we assent in faith and so discover increasingly that “His power is brought to fullness in our weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12v9) It will be healthy for us to take a little trip through Bible history, concentrating first on the women God used to fulfill His purposes; at the crucial points He always side steps the fertile, virile ones and takes up the barren.
Sarah is the first of those who have no strength to whom God comes and in very old age she bears Isaac whose name means ‘laughter’ and she and her husband certainly were the first of many who laughed and rejoiced as they experienced God’s faithfulness and greatness emerging in their frailty and weakness! Rebekah, the wife God chose so significantly for Isaac was infertile too, yet the continuity of His purposes was dependent upon them having a son and in due time her womb was opened and she bore Jacob and Esau. Then came Rachel, beloved wife of Jacob whose womb the Lord shut and then later opened so that she conceived and brought forth Joseph and, at the end of her life, Benjamin.
In the book of Judges which records a period when “every man did that which was right in his own eyes,” the unnamed wife of Manoah is unable to have children and the Lord in mercy comes and opens the natural functions supernaturally giving her Samson one of the more prominent judges of Israel, a mixed man to be sure, but one through whom God continued His purposes in those sad days so blotched with sordid happenings. The first of the line of prophets, Samuel comes from the barren Hannah, she cries out to God for a son who, if God answers her, she will give back to Him. The name she gives her son has the meaning, “heard of God,” and we know how the purposes of God were continued through his prophetic ministry at the end of which he is the bridge to the emergence of the period of the kings of Israel.
The New Testament narrative opens with the same theme, Elizabeth, the elderly wife of Zechariah the priest has no child and suddenly the angel of God appears saying that out of this barren and weary one will come he who shall be ‘the prophet of the highest.’ Yet all that has occurred through the many centuries through these women is eclipsed by the coming of Jesus; in His conception there is no man involved at all; the Holy Spirit overshadows the believing Mary and so this faithful virgin ‘nothing’ becomes the mother of He Who is the Savior of the world.
It is not by chance that she was called the “most blessed of all women,” and should almost paraphrase some of Hannah’s prayer when she magnifies the Lord for all that He is going to do. “He has looked on the humble estate of His servant, He who is mighty has done great things, He has shown strength with His arm; He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts: He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate:” (Luke 1v48-52) She prophetically rejoices representing the many women who had gone before; those that had no strength God took up to participate with Him in His redemptive purposes! Compare Hannah’s prayer found in the first book of Samuel chapter two and see how these two women, so many generations apart were glad in the Lord. Whilst we are thinking of the women God incorporated so vitally into His purposes we ought to mention Ruth the outsider, she was far from forgotten, or the weak Tamar, an alien of Israel too, both of them, though of no account in the eyes of men were remembered by God. But if God takes up the forgotten, the rejects, the ones having no strength, the “nothings’ among women, what of the men; does God employ the same pattern? Certainly He does and the lineage begins with Abraham in whose life the same theme is worked out in meticulous detail, the complications caused when he interposed his own strength, pre-empting God by fathering Ishmael through Hagar, did not stop God’s purpose but the dubious results of this act are with us to this day.
God waited till he had no strength and so Isaac was born through the mother of His choosing. Moses was brought to great weakness before God appeared to him in the bush and only then did he accomplished the work God had called him to do, the one who had become weak enough to be described as, “very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth.” (Numbers 12v3) was now God’s vessel of deliverance. At every crucial point in the history of Israel the same ‘motif’ is presented to us. David the ‘forgotten’ son is God’s choice for king; his father had neglected to think of him as qualifying for kingship at all for Samuel had to ask Jesse, “are all your sons here?” (1 Samuel 16v11) Yet these examples and the many more that can be found in the scripture are all overshadowed by the Lord Jesus Himself Who when He was questioned confessed total dependency upon His Father in heaven. “I can of myself do nothing,” He says and repeats it again as recorded in John’s gospel chapter five, (v 19&30) which, for the Jewish hearers, implied emphasis.
On the night of His betrayal, in the most profound conversation He ever had with His disciples He said that they would discover their weakness; this would be especially true of Peter who would deny Him, even after His great affirmations that he would die with Jesus if necessary. Then the Lord promised the Holy Spirit and said, “For without Me, you can do nothing.” (John 15v5) Holy Spirit power flourishes where He finds weak vessels in which He may abide. Jesus was, at the cross, the weakness of God that proved stronger than every other power. We could say that this power of Christ, inhabits eternity and now through Jesus inhabits the creation and is the power that should inhabit the church.
It is not the power of domination but of transformation. It is not external force and energy that subdues all under its heel, but the indwelling power that springs forth in a new creation. Someone talked to me a while ago, and even wrote to me concerning two words sometimes used by theological scholars, synergism and monergism. They sound somewhat scary but do not be put off by them for they describe two distinct concepts concerning salvation. By whose energy (ergism) are we saved? Is it a merging of say, five percent of man’s power and ninety-five percent of God’s, (that would be what many mean by synergism) or is it one hundred percent of God’s power? (This would be monergism) Unfortunately there is a lot of argument about these things and some, in order to protect God’s part in salvation and rule out the idea of man’s ability to contribute his own energy to it use the word monergism. We can safely say that it is heresy to think that man can contribute, by his own power, to his own salvation.
This however does not let us off the hook; it does not preclude our cooperation with God in all that He is doing. I believe it was John Wesley who frequently used the word ‘prevenient’ (to come before) to define an aspect of God’s grace at work in man. By His prevenient grace God acts upon man’s will so as to make it free and able to respond to Him as He comes to them with His gospel truth; until that happens man is dead to God and unable to respond. I suspect that it is better to use the word synergism (in this sense) when describing salvation and the Christian life because it is His energy and ours too as we are quickened and sustained by God’s power. Yet, “it is not I, but Christ,” (Galatians 2v20) surely expresses the difficulty in speaking and writing of these things! It is cooperation, our powers having been loosed so that we can cooperate with Him in our nothingness and weakness through the power of the Holy Spirit Who indwells us.
God’s grace works to renew and transform us so that we become glad sharers with Him in the life, gifts and calling He has given. We then confess with increasing understanding, “I work out my own salvation with fear and trembling”, and, “it is God that works in me, both to will and to do of His good pleasure,” (Philippians 2v12&13) and, “when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2Corinthians 12v10b)
