What Does 2 Corinthians 12:9 Mean?

(9) **And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee.**—The words fit in, more or less, with each of the two views that have been discussed above. From one point of view, however, it seems infinitely more in harmony with our thoughts of God, that the prayer to be relieved from pain should be refused, because it was working out a higher perfection than was attainable without it, than that a deaf ear should have been turned to a prayer to be relieved from the temptation to impurity. Such a prayer seems to us to carry with it something like an assurance of its own prevailing power. Some of the better MSS. omit the possessive “My,” and with that reading the words take the form of a general axiom affirming that, in the highest sense, “might is perfected in weakness.” The last word is the same as that translated “infirmity” in the next clause. The variation, as concealing this, is so far unfortunate. **Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities.**—The word, as has just been said, is the same as the “weakness” in the answer to his prayer. He finds not comfort only, but actual delight, in his consciousness of weakness, because it is balanced by the sense that the might of Christ *dwells in him and around him.* The word for “rest” is literally, as a like word in John 1:14, *to dwell as in a tent,* and suggests the thought that the might of Christ was to him as the Shechinah cloud of glory encompassing him and protecting him.