Sufficiency of Grace

Excerpt from John Piper sermon 12/31/72:  Your Calamity in 1973

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Two Responses to Calamity

The answer to this question will, I think, become clear to us if we consider that there are always two possible responses to our calamities.

1. We may react with bitter resentment and curse God for his harshness and swear that if this is the way he is, we want no part of him.
2. But then there is the response of faith, which, like Abraham, hopes against hope and against all outward appearances (2 Corinthians 4:18; “unseen”), is confident that God is faithful, and so confesses with Job: “though he slay me yet will I trust him” (Job 13:15).

Only the second of these two responses demonstrates the sufficiency of Christ’s grace and the perfection of his power, because it is only be the power of Christ that a man can respond in this way to suffering. So in answer to our question how the two purposes of God in suffering are connected we can say this: The reliance upon God which we learn through suffering is the means by which we experience and demonstrate to others the grace and power of Christ.

This understanding of the connection between these two texts in 2 Corinthians is confirmed by Paul’s words in Philippians 3:8–11. He says that he desires to have a righteousness that is not his own based on law, but one that is through faith in Christ in order that he may know him and the power of his resurrection. In other words, having a righteousness based on faith was the means by which Paul experience and demonstrated the power of Christ.

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