This teaching that a person must willingly submit their life to the death of the cross with Christ–it seems foolish to the worldly mind.  But this cross experience is the equalizer, for it places all of mankind in the same location before God.  And that is a place of weakness.

To admit that you can’t make it anymore in this old world, that your old life is selfish and devoid of true love, that you are in need of someone stronger than you to lift you out of the mire of evil thoughts and actions–that is weakness.

The worldly mind would think, how utter pathetic!  How weak and helpless!  But it is this very weakness that God has chosen!  “God has chosen the weak things of this world to confound the things that are mighty” (I Cor. 1: 27).

The apostle Paul is saying that God has chosen those who know they are…