Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Christian is both powerful and weak. This is true of individual Christians — and it was true of the apostles too. In the passage before us, Luke begins with a reference to the power the apostles exercised, and he traces that power in five distinct areas of the church's life. The apostles were blessed with overwhelming power! And yet that power did not prevent them from experiencing suffering. They knew weakness, they got arrested, they got flogged — all for exercising their power from God. Spiritual power is not incompatible with weakness, with being scorned by the world, with suffering persecution. That was preeminently true in the life of Jesus Christ. And so, brothers and sisters, as you and I look at the apostles of Christ, I want you to see first Christ, and then the apostles, and then yourself. Our Lord Jesus is infinitely powerful, but He became weak — weak enough to die for us. And in the same way, the apostles were full of spiritual power but weak enough to suffer persecution and pain. And so it should be for us. We ought to be full of spiritual power as we follow our crucified Messiah, but also weak enough to suffer.
