It is easy to formulate [God's omnipotence] in terms of an abstract contrast between awareness of our finite power and a supposedly infinitely powerful deity who can, according to a famous definition, will everything except a contradiction. This approach, however, will not do, because if God is simply power magnified to an infinite degree, then God is little distinguishable from a tyrant or the devil. It is better that we remember two things, only apparently in tension with one another. The first is that Paul centres his notion of divine power on the salvation achieved by Christ on the cross and the power of the proclamation of the gospel to reconcile lost sinners to their loving creator. To call Christ 'the power of God and the wisdom of God' (1 Cor. 1.24) privileges a certain way of exercising power. This must not, however, be sentimentalized, as it often is in an era which has become too conscious of excesses committed in the name of divine power. There is much talk of non-coercive love and power, and indeed, the cross is a sign that in one respect God indeed does not coerce. But that is not the whole story, for the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is an act of power of another kind and, although in no way to be divorced from the divine action on the cross, is coercive of reality in a strong sense. As John Donne's great sonnet celebrates, death the coercer is coerced. These two central insights together entail that in some way or other we must hold together the power that is made real in the suffering of Jesus and that manifested, on the one hand, in his 'works of power' and, on the other, in his being raised from the dead.
(p. 16, Colin Gunton, The Christian Faith)
I think that massive quotation is massively helpful. Our doctrine of God's omnipotence needs to come out of the exercise of God's power in both Christ's cross and his resurrection.
