Who Is Sufficient For These Things?

Who Is Sufficient For These Things?  In some ways, the Apostle Paul is like Moses. In other ways, he is an antithesis to Moses. Moses, of course, was Israel’s leader and law-giver during the Exodus and wandering years. Paul was a church leader and doctrine-explainer during the expansion years of the church’s first missionary journeys. Moses was rules-oriented, necessarily so. Paul was grace-oriented, emphatically so. Moses was zealous for the Lord, well educated, and yet murderous. Paul was zealous for the Lord, well educated, and murderous, too. Moses met God in a theophany in the burning bush and learned God’s name—“I Am Who I Am” (Exo. 3:14). Paul met God in a theophany on the road to Damascus and learned God’s name—“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5). Moses was sent on a mission by God to deliver the Hebrews. Paul was sent on a mission by God to evangelize the Gentiles.

Still one more link at least connects Paul and Moses, which squeezes into a single word: sufficient. Moses, balked in God’s presence at the task God gave to him. “But Moses said the Lord, ‘Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue’” (Exo. 4:10).

When the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew into Greek, eloquent was rendered by the same word that Paul used when he considered the task God gave him to do, sufficient. “Who is sufficient for these things?” (2 Cor. 2:16). Paul repeated the word three more times in the next paragraph, too. “Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor. 3:4-6).

Just as God validated and yet overruled the tension that Moses felt between his capacity and God’s calling, Christ also validated and yet overruled the same tension that Paul felt. “Then the Lord said to [Moses], ‘Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now, therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak’” (Exo. 4:11-12). “But he said to [Paul], ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’” (2 Cor. 12:9).

God does not eliminate the weakness but enters it. We know God’s power in a perfected, mature, and fully balanced sense when his grace meets our weakness at faith.