Berean Standard Bible
But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest on me. That is why, for the sake of Christ, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
King James Version
And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.
About this verse
This is a prayer answered with no — and the no comes with a reason: "My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness." It is one of the few places in Scripture where we hear the risen Christ's direct reply to a Christian's specific prayer, and the reply keeps the affliction and changes the man. Power, it turns out, is not displayed despite weakness but completed in it.
Paul had pleaded three times for the removal of what he calls a thorn in the flesh — and he never tells us what it was. The anonymity has proved merciful: every sufferer since has been able to write their own thorn into the blank. He is writing to Corinth, where rival teachers boasted of credentials and strength; Paul's counter-résumé is deliberately upside down — "I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties."
This passage belongs to the chronic condition, the unhealed illness, the prayer answered with silence. It does not explain the thorn or promise its removal. It reports what a sufferer found at the bottom: "when I am weak, then I am strong" — not spin, but the discovery that grace arrives precisely where capacity ends, and rests there.
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