This is one of the more profound and hopeful declarations in all of scriptures. It acknowledges mankind in all of our weaknesses, promises us the blessings of God in spite of those weakness. However, it is hopeful upon conditions.
[if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness]: This the quitessential requirement of all of the greatest blessings of God. They are available to us, but they all require some action on our part. The very first action is that we “come unto” Christ. The blessings of God are not handed out to all indiscriminately. The first step is ours. The Lord’s words are recorded in Matthew:
Matthew 7:7-8
7 ¶ Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:
8 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
The Lord stands ready to answer, but the first step is ours. We begin by exercising what Alma called a “a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe.” (Alma 32:27). We begin with the smallest of steps, a desire to know more, do more, or be more. The secret, of course, is that we act upon that desire. In Ether the verb is “come.” In Alma, we are told that we should “let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.” (Alma 32:27).
There are therefore two parts to the beginning of this important journey to the greatest blessings of God. We must desire, and must act upon that desire. What is fascinating is that in Ether we are told that one of the earliest phases of God’s interactive process with our progression is that he will “show unto [us our] weakness.” Who wants that? If we ask God for blessings, why does he show us our weaknesses instead of blessing us?
When the Lord was explaining how the God responds to our requests, he noted that God is a good Father, giving good gifts to his children:
Luke 11:11
11 If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent?
What is most interesting about these examples of the good father’s gifts is that the bad gift is something that has some semblance of the good gift. The bread and the stone are somewhat similar in shape. The breads in Israel was not the pan-formed loaves with which we are familiar, but rather rounded lumps. There would be a superficial shape resemblance between the stone and the bread. Similarly, the fish of Galilee would be somewhat long and thin, and therefore perhaps resembling a serpent (The statement in Luke is also found in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. For the shape-correspondencies, see Robert Guelich. A Foundation for Understanding the Sermon on the Mount. Word Publishing, Dallas. 1982, p. 358.)
The Lord is saying that a good father will not confuse something that only appears to be a good gift ( but is really bad), for the truly good gift. When applied to the statement in Ether, the Lord is telling us that this gift of showing us our weaknesses is a good gift, even though it might appear to be a bad gift. It is almost the symbolic reversal of the situation from Luke. This requires that we understand how our weaknesses might be a good gift. Fortunately, the Lord explains this.
[I give unto men weakness that they may be humble]: The weakeness are give to us for our benefit. We have these weaknesses whether or not we acknowledge them. Indeed, one of the great faults of humanity is that we refuse to acknowledge our weaknesses. This is the problem frequently exhibited by the Nephites:
Mosiah 11:19
19 And now, because of this great victory they were lifted up in the pride of their hearts; they did boast in their own strength, saying that their fifty could stand against thousands of the Lamanites; and thus they did boast, and did delight in blood, and the shedding of the blood of their brethren, and this because of the wickedness of their king and priests.
Alma 38:11
11 See that ye are not lifted up unto pride; yea, see that ye do not boast in your own wisdom, nor of your much strength.
Mormon 3:9
9 And now, because of this great thing which my people, the Nephites, had done, they began to boast in their own strength, and began to swear before the heavens that they would avenge themselves of the blood of their brethren who had been slain by their enemies.
The conflict of agency is that in order for our agency to work, we must able to act for ourselves. This is the essential definition of agency, as given by Lehi:
2 Nephi 2:26
26 And the Messiah cometh in the fulness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the fall. And because that they are redeemed from the fall they have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves and not to be acted upon, save it be by the punishment of the law at the great and last day, according to the commandments which God hath given.
The great and precious principle of agency requires that we be able to act for ourselves, and to the degree that we learn to act righteously we gain the path toward Godhood. However, the danger of our actions is that we take too seriously the acting for ourselves, and we begin to feel that it is we who are in control, and not God. We are the ones who build the rockets to the moon. We are the ones who build the great economies and the pleasant ways of life. We are the ones who accomplish. In many respects, much of this is true. The problem is not in our doing, but in our forgetting. In all of our gaining and using the strength we gain through agency, we are liable to forget the ultimate source of that agency. It is for this reason that the Lord says he gives us weaknesses. Were we so completely strong that we never saw ourselves in a dependent situation, we could easily forget that we needed anyone else, and indeed there are many who sadly forget this very thing.
Nevertheless, there are within all of us weakness that can show us our dependant status, or need for God among all of our successes. We have these weaknesses so that we might be humble, so that we might – in the midst of all of our strengths – humbly bow before God and come to him. This is the next essential step. We begin with a desire that moves us to come unto the Lord. When we come, we are shown our weaknesses so that we understand that this path cannot be one that we blaze alone. We must not only come unto Christ, we must walk with him.
[my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me]: Here is the promise. The Lord had just told us that our path begins in the recognition of weakness. That does not sound enticing, and it sounds quite the opposite of effectiveness. How do we do that in which our skills are weak? How do we accomplish a task for which we have acknowledged weaknesses? It would appear to be hopeless, without this marvelous promise that it will work. Christ tells us that his grace is sufficient for us. What is “sufficient” grace? Whatever other theological discussions might be had about such a term, the meaning here should be evident. Our weaknesses won’t make the process work, but Christ’s grace will. It is the matching of our powerlessness with his matchless power that creates the team that will achieve the goal. We whom might fail without assistance are assured not only of assistance, but sufficient assistance. This is hope. This tells us that the process will succeed. If. If we humble ourselves before God and Christ. If we strip ourselves of that heady self-assurance of our mortal agencies successes, and realize that in this most important of mortal tasks, we do require some assistance.
[for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them]: Here is the promise. We begin in weakness, we end in strength. The very things that were our weaknesses are accounted as strengths. How does those seeming counterintuitive process work? How does weakness become strength? The simple answer, of course, is “through faith.” The Lord tells us that faith is required in the process. It is still too simple, however, to accept such a simplistic statement. How does it happen? What does faith do to effect such a tremendous transformation?
Is the Lord telling us that if we are physically weak, that through faith we may become strong? Yes and no. While there are conditions that exercise cannot overcome, to the extent that the model of exercise may be applied to the process of gaining strength, the answer would be yes. If we physically pick up weights and begin to use them, we work the muscles that were weak and by doing work against resistance, we may get stronger. This does not work if the weight we pick up is a piece of paper, or if we hand on to a machine that does the motion for us. We only get stronger if we work against resistance. If we do, we become stronger.
There is a final step in this process, and that is enduring to the end. Nephi reminds us that our beginnings may be excellent, but is the persistence in the path that matters:
2 Nephi 31:16
16 And now, my beloved brethren, I know by this that unless a man shall endure to the end, in following the example of the Son of the living God, he cannot be saved.
We may begin by obeying the commandments. We may begin to turn our weaknesses into strengths by overcoming those weaknesses. When we conquer our weaknesses, then they have become a strength to us. However, should we return to the weaknesses, we deny the strength and lose it. The true transformational benefit of our work against resistance comes when we can become that new person, and not revert to the previous man of weakness. We must endure to the end.
This is the model for the weaknesses-become-strengths that the Lord promises. First, the weaknesses humble us to the point where we are willing to have faith in the grace of God to overcome. Second, we begin to exercise faith because we begin to do. The next critical step is that we actually work against resistance. Depending upon the nature of our weakness, this is almost guaranteed. By working on that very area in which we have the greatest difficulty, we have the greatest resistance. Doing what we do most easily does not transform us, it only highlights the ease the talent we have been given. This is the reason why the step is not just work, but is work against resistance. Agency exists so that there may be opposition in all things (2 Nephi 2:11). Agency does not work when things are easy, but when they are difficult. Like rocks in a tumbler, it is the rough knocking of agency that refines us. If we place a rock on a cushioning environment, and protect it from all potentially rough encounters, that rock comes out much the same as it entered. It may have its strengths, but none of its weaknesses have been polished off to transform an unsightly rock into a thing of visual beauty.