What Does 2 Corinthians 12:9 Mean? — Owen on Strength in Weakness
⏱ 14 min read
You have prayed for the thing to be taken away, and it has not been taken away. The marriage that did not become what you hoped. The body that still does not work the way it used to. The grief that came in February and was supposed to be gone by June and is still here. The temptation you have been confessing for fifteen years that has not yet released its grip. My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. You have read the verse, and the reading has not changed the thing, and now you are at the point of asking what the verse actually means — not the cross-stitched version, not the wall-art version, but the version that the Apostle Paul lived inside of for the rest of his life after the thorn was not removed.
This is the slow version. Three substantial passages from John Owen’s Communion with God, read at the speed Owen intended, alongside the verse, for the woman who is tired of trying to be strong and is ready for the older account of what sufficient grace actually meant. The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women carries this kind of slow reading into a daily companion if you would like a place to take the practice afterwards. (For the rest-of-the-soul side of this same conversation, the rest of Hebrews 4 — what Owen said Sabbath really was is the closest companion piece. If the weakness has been showing up most acutely on the hard workdays, a prayer for strength at work sits beside this one. And if the underlying instinct to fix yourself has been the part that has worn you out, the sin of trying to sanctify yourself — John Owen on communion walks the larger ground.)
For now — read slowly.
Paul wrote 2 Corinthians around AD 56. He was, by the metrics of the early Christian movement, one of the strongest figures in it — the missionary who had planted churches across Asia Minor, the theologian who had argued down the council at Jerusalem, the prisoner who had survived shipwrecks and floggings and stonings. And he opens chapter twelve by telling the Corinthians, almost reluctantly, that he had been given a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to keep him from being exalted above measure by the visions he had received. Three times he asked the Lord to take it away. Three times the answer came back: My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.
The thorn was not removed. Paul lived with it until his death. The verse you have been reading is the answer the Lord gave to a man whose petition was refused.
The first passage: the bottom of all peace
“‘Thy Maker,’ saith he, ‘is thine husband; the Lord of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth shall he be called.’ This is the bottom of all peace, confidence, and consolation, — the grace and mercy of our Maker, of the God of the whole earth.”
— John Owen, Communion with God
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly.
Owen is quoting Isaiah here, but the line he lifts out — this is the bottom of all peace — is the one that does the work. The bottom. Not the surface. Not the upper register of the spiritual life where the warm feelings are. The bottom. The thing the peace stands on when everything above it has been removed.
You have been trying, perhaps for years, to find peace in things that are not the bottom. The peace of a marriage being repaired. The peace of a diagnosis being clear. The peace of the children being settled. The peace of the finances being steady. Each of these is real peace, in its measure. None of them is the bottom. The bottom is older, deeper, lower than any of them, and the way you know the bottom from the upper layers is that the bottom does not move when the upper layers do.
This is what Paul learned in the years after the thorn was not removed. The upper layers of his life — physical comfort, freedom from the messenger, the experience of unmolested ministry — were not given. The bottom was. The grace and mercy of our Maker. The thorn stayed; the bottom held. Paul came to understand, slowly, that the sufficient grace of the verse was not the grace that removed the thorn but the grace that was underneath the thorn the whole time, the grace that does not change when the circumstance does not change, the grace that is the bottom of all peace.
For you, this is the part that quiets the long argument with God about why the thing has not been taken. The grace was never going to be that the thing was taken. The grace is — and has been the whole time — the thing underneath the thing that did not change when the thing did not change. You may have been measuring the grace by the wrong metric. The metric you have been using is did the situation improve. The metric Owen would suggest is did the bottom hold.
The bottom has held. You are still here. You are reading slowly. The bottom held.
The second passage: an inexpressible mercy
“To give a poor sinful soul a comfortable persuasion, affecting it throughout, in all its faculties and affections, that God in Jesus Christ loves him, delights in him, is well pleased with him, hath thoughts of tenderness and kindness towards him; to give, I say, a soul an overflowing sense hereof, is an inexpressible mercy.”
— John Owen, Communion with God
This is the passage that turns the verse from doctrine into balm. Read it twice.
Notice what Owen is not saying. He is not saying that the comfortable persuasion is something the soul produces by trying harder. He is not saying it is the reward for sufficient devotion. He is saying it is given — a mercy, an inexpressible mercy, something the Lord gives to the poor sinful soul that has been wondering, perhaps for decades, whether He is truly tender toward it.
The phrase affecting it throughout, in all its faculties and affections is doing careful work. Owen is making the distinction between knowing a thing in the head and feeling it in the whole soul. You have known, intellectually, that God loves you. You have known it since the children’s sermon. You have known it through the catechism. You have known it through the verses on the wall. The knowing has not always reached your faculties and affections. It has stopped at the level of doctrine and not penetrated to the level of felt persuasion. The thorn has, sometimes, been the very reason it has not penetrated — because the thorn looks, on its surface, like evidence against the love. Surely if He loved me, this would have been taken. The argument is honest. It is also wrong. Owen, gently, is saying that the persuasion of His love is its own gift, given to the soul, affecting it throughout, separate from the question of whether the thorn was taken.
This is, in fact, what the verse is offering. My grace is sufficient for thee. The sufficient grace is not the removal of the thorn. The sufficient grace is the inexpressible mercy of the comfortable persuasion that He loves you, delights in you, is well pleased with you — given to you while the thorn is still in your flesh, given to you in the very years the thing has not been taken, given to you so that the strength of His love is made perfect in your weakness. The weakness is not in the way. The weakness is the place where the persuasion lands deepest, because the weakness is the place that knows it cannot manufacture the persuasion for itself.
For the modern Christian woman who has been performing strength for decades — keeping the household running, keeping the work moving, keeping the cheerful face on, keeping the small failures hidden — this is the passage that asks her to put the performance down. The persuasion of His tenderness is given to the soul that is poor and sinful, not to the soul that has finally arrived. Owen’s Puritan vocabulary feels stark to modern ears, but the comfort it contains is precisely calibrated to the soul that has been trying, by its own effort, to deserve the love. The deserving is not the way in. The receiving is the way in.
What does 2 Corinthians 12:9 mean, then, when you take Owen’s reading seriously? It means the sufficient grace is the felt persuasion that He is for you, given to the very weakness that has been telling you He could not possibly be. The weakness is where the grace becomes most legible. The thorn is the page on which the love is written.
A pause, mid-essay. If this slow reading is the kind of pace you have been hungry for — the verse held against the older father, the cross-stitched line returned to its actual paragraph — the Bible Study Workbook for Women is the daily form of it. One hundred and forty days, one passage and one short reflection a day, slow enough to let the sufficient grace finally reach the faculties and affections it has been waiting to reach.
The somatic that goes with weakness made strong
Pause here. The teaching has a body, and the body has been carrying the strain of being strong the whole time the mind has been reading about strength made perfect in weakness.
Sit somewhere quiet. Let both feet rest flat on the floor. Notice, without changing anything, where your body has been holding itself up — the shoulders, the jaw, the small of the back, the place behind the eyes. The chronic carriage of strength is held in those places. Now let one slow inhale come in, and on the exhale — slower than the inhale — let one of those holding-places drop. Just one. The shoulders, perhaps. Or the jaw. Whichever is loudest.
Stay there for the length of one more slow inhale and one more slow exhale. Notice that the body has not collapsed. The chair is still holding you. The floor is still under your feet. The work the muscle was doing was not, after all, what kept you upright. Something else was. The chair. The floor. The bottom Owen named.
The somatic is the bodily version of my strength is made perfect in weakness. The body learning that it is allowed to lower one of its braced places is the body learning, at the cellular level, what Paul learned at the theological one — that the holding is not, finally, on your own muscle. The holding is on Him. The lowering is safe because the bottom is real.
Then take one more slow breath and continue reading.
The third passage: the saints’ first notion of the Father
“‘They that know thee will put their trust in thee.’ Men cannot abide with God in spiritual meditations. He loseth soul’s company by their want of this insight into his love. They fix their thoughts only on his terrible majesty, severity, and greatness; and so their spirits are not endeared. Would a soul continually eye his everlasting tenderness and compassion, his thoughts of kindness that have been from of old, his present gracious acceptance, it could not bear an hour’s absence from him; whereas now, perhaps, it cannot watch with him one hour. Let, then, this be the saints’ first notion of the Father, — as one full of eternal, free love towards them.”
— John Owen, Communion with God
This is the most piercing of the three passages, because of what it says about the picture of God that the modern Christian woman is most likely to be carrying when she comes to 2 Corinthians 12:9. Read it once at speed, then read it again, slowly.
Owen is naming a specific spiritual problem. The soul, he says, fixes its thoughts only on his terrible majesty, severity, and greatness; and so their spirits are not endeared. The picture of God in the soul is a true picture as far as it goes — He is majestic, He is severe in a sense, He is great — but it is an incomplete picture, and the incompleteness costs the soul its ability to abide with Him. The God of the partial picture is the God you can revere from a distance but cannot draw near to. The God of the partial picture is the God you can serve but cannot enjoy. The God of the partial picture is the God who can give you a thorn and refuse to remove it, but in whose presence, after the refusal, you cannot rest.
The cost of the partial picture is the inability to abide. It cannot watch with him one hour. The hour of prayer is too long because the God being prayed to is too terrible to be near. The Bible is read for duty because the God speaking through it is too severe to be heard. The thorn is borne grimly because the God who let it stay is too distant to be loved through it.
Owen’s correction is not to soften God’s majesty. He keeps the majesty. He simply asks the soul to continually eye his everlasting tenderness and compassion, his thoughts of kindness that have been from of old, his present gracious acceptance. The full picture includes the tenderness. The full picture includes the thoughts of kindness from of old — the everlasting kindness, the kindness that was there before the thorn arrived and will still be there after the thorn is finally gone. The full picture includes the present gracious acceptance, the now-acceptance of the soul that is currently inside the unfinished thing.
When this picture becomes the soul’s first notion of the Father, it could not bear an hour’s absence from him. The hour of prayer becomes short, not long. The Bible becomes too short, not too long. The thorn becomes the very occasion of nearness, because the thorn is the place the Father’s tenderness is most present, most needed, most given.
This is what Paul was inside of. The thorn was not removed. The everlasting tenderness was not withdrawn. The sufficient grace was the felt nearness of the One whose first notion in Paul’s soul was no longer the terrible majesty alone but also the everlasting compassion underneath it. Paul came to glory in his infirmities, not because the infirmities had become pleasant but because the infirmities had become the place his Father met him most tenderly.
For you, this is the part the contemporary church often does not preach plainly. The Father whose first notion in your soul is severity alone cannot give you the consolation 2 Corinthians 12:9 is offering. The verse will read as a divine refusal — He will not remove it; I must cope — instead of as a divine gift — He has given me Himself; the thorn is the place where I will know Him. The corrective is not to lower your reverence. It is to widen the picture. The Father is, also, full of eternal, free love toward you. The thorn-bearing soul that comes to know this — continually eye it, Owen would say — finds that the thorn becomes the very channel through which the love arrives.
What does 2 Corinthians 12:9 mean, in Owen’s full reading? It means the grace was always going to be sufficient, because the grace was always going to be Him, given to you in the very place you assumed His absence proved His displeasure. The strength made perfect in weakness is the strength of His love, perfecting itself in the place that finally has nothing left to perform.
(The sibling articles in this verse-by-verse series sit at what does Romans 8:28 mean? — Augustine on all things working together and what does Jeremiah 29:11 mean? — Spurgeon on plans to prosper.)
What the sufficient grace will actually feel like
The verse is not a promise that next Tuesday the thorn will hurt less. Paul did not record, anywhere in the surviving letters, that the thorn ever stopped bothering him. What he recorded was that he learned to take pleasure in infirmities, that he gloried in the weakness, that the weakness became the doorway through which the strength of Christ came to rest upon him. The shift was not in the thorn. The shift was in the soul carrying it.
For you, what this looks like across a year of slow daily reading is small. The first month, the thorn will feel exactly the same. By the third month, you will notice — once, then again — that the felt nearness of the Father is more available to you on the days the thorn is sharpest. By the sixth month, you will have stopped praying primarily for the thorn to be removed and begun praying primarily for Him to keep being near you inside of it. By the year, you may find that the question what does 2 Corinthians 12:9 mean has stopped being a question and become a description — this is what it means, and I am living inside of it, and the bottom has held.
The thorn may still be there. The bottom will still be there. That is the answer the verse was offering all along.
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A daily home for the practice
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Bible Study Workbook for Women. Each day a short passage, a slow reflection, room for one honest sentence — the small daily anchor that keeps the soul near the One whose grace, in the unremoved places, is already sufficient.
The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women carries Owen’s slow vocabulary — the bottom of all peace, the inexpressible mercy, the saints’ first notion of the Father — into a daily companion built for the woman whose thorn is still in her flesh and whose grace, she is slowly learning, has been sufficient the whole time.
