6. Destroying Super-Spiritual Visionaries
6
Destroying Super-Spiritual Visionaries
Boasting in Weakness
1I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. 2I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. 3And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows—4was caught up to Paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell. 5I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses. 6Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say.
7To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
2 Corinthians 12:1–10
A. More Boasting (12:1)
“I must go on boasting,” Paul writes, probably in mimicry of a Corinthian slogan such as “One must boast” (cf. 2 Cor. 11:30). Yet the apostle adds, “Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord” (12:1).
Then the theme of foolish boasting continues, reaching its climax in 12:1–10. As Paul admits at the end of this boasting, “I have made a fool of myself, but you drove me to it” (v. 11). The way the Corinthians drove Paul to this particular topic for boasting is best explained by supposing that the false apostles not only claimed superiority in such things as rhetoric, eloquence, ability to command fees, leadership, and knowledge of the truth, they also claimed spiritual superiority. In support of their claims they could recount a continuing array of visions and revelations they were receiving. A confident “The Lord told me this morning . . .” may not only enhance one’s reputation as a man or woman of God, but may prove wonderfully coercive. Few will stop to ask in what way the Lord said this or that (By an audible voice? By quiet, personal conviction? By tongues?), or point out that the authority status of such revelations in the New Testament is less than is commonly believed. Fewer still will pause to remember that not every supernatural power is divine. Certainly the triumphalists won’t raise questions of this sort; their first reaction will be that such questions quench the Spirit. And so the claims of spiritual prowess are paraded out, and personal authority grows with the “sharing” of each vision.
Contrast Paul, the false apostles might remark. What visions has he claimed to see in recent years? Does he talk about any recent revelations from God? Oh yes, he goes on once in a while about his Damascus road conversion, and how he saw the resurrected Lord; but everyone knows you can’t build today’s spiritual giant out of yesterday’s spiritual experience. Has he known anything of real, spiritual vitality this past week? And if he has had any worthwhile visions, why hasn’t he talked about them?
The truth of the matter is that Paul is most reluctant to talk about his visions and revelations. Luke tells us of a number of visions that Paul received (Acts 9:12; 16:9–10; 18:9–10; 22:17–21; 23:11; 27:23–24) so Paul must have talked about some of them with his closest colleagues. This is not altogether surprising in those instances where guidance was involved, as others would have to be given the rationale for Paul’s plans, or where sharing the vision meant the apostle was admitting to his own deep discouragement or fear. What is remarkable, however, is that in his epistles Paul does not normally share the content of any vision or revelation (if there is a difference between the two terms, the latter has the larger range of meaning, the former being a revelation that involves apparent sight). In the text before us, Paul tells us at least one reason for his silence: he believes there is nothing to be gained by such talk, i.e., no spiritual profit for the Corinthians if he exposes his most intimate and supernatural spiritual experiences to them. Such talk may puff him up, or help to establish his reputation; but what good would it do? None, as far as the apostle can see; and so in the past he has held his peace.
Yet in this case, he is forced into it. Because he is driven by the fickle allegiance of the Corinthians and their spiritual danger, he reasons that more is to be lost by not boasting than by boasting; so once again he prepares to make a fool of himself (2 Cor. 12:11). In this case, unlike most of the previous entries on the list (cf. chap. 5), he cannot simply boast about the opposite in a cutting parody. What, after all, is the opposite of receiving visions and revelations except not receiving them? To boast about not receiving them would in this instance be both untrue and dangerous: untrue, because Paul had indeed received spectacular revelations; and dangerous, because it would be playing right into his detractors’ hands.
That is why Paul adopts a slightly different approach in these verses (12:1–10), an approach we shall unravel in the next few pages.
B. A Man in Christ—In the Third Person (12:2–4)!
“I know a man in Christ,” Paul says, “who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven” (2 Cor. 12:2). It sounds at first as if Paul is talking about someone else, a Christian of his acquaintance who enjoyed a spectacular visionary experience almost a decade and a half previously. But it is soon clear that Paul is actually talking about himself. This is obvious not because Paul knows the time and content of the vision—after all, the “man in Christ” might have passed such information on to Paul—but for three other reasons. First, Paul is forced to admit in verse 6, however reluctantly, that if he were to boast of such a vision, he would not be a fool—i.e., his boasting would be grounded in fact. Second, Paul ties together the experience of this vision with his own reception of a thorn (v. 7). This would make no sense if the man in Christ is not to be identified with Paul: Why should Paul receive a debilitating thorn to be kept humble after another person has enjoyed the “surpassingly great revelations”? Third, for Paul to boast about another person’s revelations when his detractors are out to demean the apostle himself, not some unknown third party, makes no contextual sense.
There can be no serious doubt, then, that Paul is referring to himself when he tells what happened to the man in Christ. The important question is why he uses this circumlocution. The answer can only be that he is so embarrassed to have to boast at all that the closest approximation he can manage to the conduct he finds so despicable is to write of himself in the third person. And even so, he writes not of a great apostle but of a man in Christ, so that when his readers discover a few verses later that Paul is really talking about himself, they will not place him in a super-Christian class, a cut above the common herd. Whatever revelations Paul received came to him, not as to an extraordinary apostle, but as to a Christian, a man in Christ. Not a trace of merit theology or lurking pride peeps through Paul’s language.
This second canonical epistle to the Corinthians was apparently written about A.D. 55 or 56. Whether we reckon up the “fourteen years” inclusively or not, this puts the visionary experiences into the silent decade of Paul’s ministry, roughly A.D. 35–45, years about which we know almost nothing save that he spent them in Syria and Cilicia (Gal. 1:21). Doubtless Paul was already discharging the responsibilities the Lord laid on him at his conversion—to carry the name of Jesus “before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel” and to suffer for that same name (Acts 9:15–16). Probably much of the suffering and some at least of the beatings and floggings listed in 2 Corinthians 11 were inflicted during that period: and now we learn that the same period, unreported by Luke in the book of Acts, also brought Paul the most astounding revelation he ever received. Our knowledge of Paul and of the other apostles is very fragmentary; and were it not for these chapters of 2 Corinthians, it would be incomparably more so.
What, then, happened to Paul on this occasion? We may summarize what Paul tells us of it in three points:
1. Paul was caught up to “the third heaven,” to “Paradise” (12:2, 4). Jews of the period often spoke of a multiplicity of heavens (cf. Paul’s “all the heavens” in Eph. 4:10, rendered “the whole universe” by the NIV); but the exact number of them was not agreed. Some of the intertestamental sources speak of five, seven, ten, or some other number of heavens. Seven is perhaps the most common (e.g., Testament of Levi 2:7; Assumption of Isaiah 6:13; Babylonian Talmud Hagigah 12b); but it is unlikely Paul is saying he was caught up to the third heaven of seven, since the point of his account is the unexcelled blessedness of what he saw and heard. Paul must be using a three-heaven scheme in this passage; and if so, Calvin’s view, that third heaven indicates here what is highest and best, is probably correct. Certainly many sources speak of three heavens, and some of them relate the third heaven to paradise (e.g., 2 Enoch 8; Apocalypse of Moses 37:5).
The word “paradise” is a loan-word from Persian, in which it referred to the “park” a nobleman might own as part of his estate. Adopted by Greek-speaking Jews, it soon came to refer to the Garden of Eden, the first paradise. Because many Jews thought of the final state as a restoration, in some sense, of Eden, that final state of blessedness came to be called the last paradise (cf. Rev. 2:7). Everything in between is the hidden paradise (cf. Luke 23:43). To identify paradise with the third heaven, therefore, is to make the third heaven the place of God’s presence and the supreme goal for all who know him. Paul uses the language of his heritage to label the sphere to which he was caught up. The verb rendered “caught up” suggests a rapid transfer, not a slow ascent. How did this take place?
2. Paul is uncertain what state he was in during this revelation (12:2–3). Twice he speaks of his experience of being caught up to the third heaven in these or similar words: “Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows.” To put it another way, Paul does not know whether he was caught up to the third heaven like an Enoch, body and all, or only in spirit, temporarily leaving his body behind. Clearly Paul does not think it matters too much. “Ignorance of the mode does not take away the certain knowledge of the thing” (Bengel). Possibly the false apostles focused a lot of attention on the details of their experiences, and less on their visionary substance. If so, Paul distances himself from his opponents in this respect as well.
Nevertheless Paul’s repeated remark has been misunderstood in some recent commentaries and studies. It goes beyond the evidence, for instance, to argue that Paul could not imagine human life apart from either a natural body or a resurrection body, on the ground that he does not care to make the distinction between bodily existence and immaterial existence. Some reason this way because they do not believe the Bible teaches anything about an intermediate state. They hold that when a believer dies he immediately receives a resurrection body with no point of continuity with his dead natural body.
That interpretation misses the point in this passage. Paul says he does not know his state when he experiences the vision; but the fact that he can articulate the alternatives, “whether in the body or out of the body,” shows he is perfectly comfortable with either, and can envisage either as an appropriate mode in which to enjoy his sojourn in paradise.
Of course, Paul did not write these words to settle such questions, but simply to express his own uncertainty as to the state he was in when he was caught up into the third heaven.
3. The revelations Paul received were beyond all normal spiritual experience (12:4). Paul heard “inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell.” Some see only one restriction in these words: i.e., the things Paul saw were inexpressible, not in the sense that these were ineffable, but in that Paul was forbidden to express them. In that case the next words, “things that man is not permitted to tell,” add nothing new, but merely clarify the meaning of “inexpressible things.” Parallels are often adduced from Philo or the mystery religions.
The parallels do not strike me as very convincing. For instance, in Apuleius (Metamorphoses 11.23), Lucius finds no difficulty articulating what he is forbidden to tell (on the grounds that his readers are pious and will themselves keep the secret!); so the alleged parallel is not very close. The easiest way to understand “inexpressible things” is to take it to mean “ineffable.” This means there are two restraints on Paul’s communication of his vision: first, it was inexpressible or ineffable; and second, even if he wanted to disclose the ineffable (presumably by using many metaphors), he was in any case forbidden to do so.
Both restraints tell us important things. The first may be clarified by a parallel problem. Suppose you learned the language of some isolated tribe in the interior of New Guinea from a tribesman who made the trek out to the “civilized” world. The tribe, let us say, is pre–Stone Age in its technology; and your assignment is to penetrate that tribe and explain to the people, using their language and no visual aids, exactly what electricity is and what it can do.
You might proceed by saying that electricity (presumably you would have to transliterate the word) is something like a powerful, invisible spirit that runs faster than the wind along hard things like vines. These hard things, unlike vines, are made by men, and are often strung up on tree trunks with their branches lopped off. The electricity is made at one end of these “vines,” and the vines carry the electricity into all the houses. When it gets inside, it goes into some other things that man makes. One of these looks a little like a box; but when electricity gets inside of it, the top heats up like fire, and the cooking can be done indoors and without smoke. When the electricity gets inside other things that man makes—small, round things—they fill the house with light, as if they were little suns.
So far, of course, you haven’t ventured into batteries, motors, moving staircases, electric clocks, thermostats, refrigerators, pocket calculators, or computers; and already the assignment seems pretty formidable. The problem lies not with the native intelligence of the tribal folk but with the limitations of their experience. They have few mental hooks on which to hang this new information, because they have not seen or experienced most of the things you wish to describe, or anything very much like them. That is why you have resorted to so many metaphors and similes: wires are something like vines that man makes, a stove is a bit like a box whose top gets hot when the electricity enters, and so forth.
How then shall we describe, as it were, the throne room of God? If a Paul is caught up into the third heaven and witnesses remarkable things, how could he possibly talk about them with any fluency except to those with similar experience? The same is true, of course, whenever prophet or apostle was permitted to see something of the glory the Lord. If these privileged visionaries were permitted to talk about their experiences at all, they were invariably restricted to metaphorical language of some sort. Thus Ezekiel summarizes his inaugural vision this way: “This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of the one speaking” (Ezek. 1:28b). Something similar takes place in John’s vision of the exalted Christ (Rev. 1:12–17).
God’s throne and glory, the paradise he is creating for his own, the new heaven and the new earth, all evoke imagination-stretching ideas by the use of symbols and metaphors; but our knowledge of them is fragmentary and often symbolic. If the new heaven and the new earth is “the home of righteousness” (2 Peter 3:13), we can begin to understand, by extrapolation, that everything that takes place there is just, honest, right, untainted by sin; but the full ramifications of even such a simple statement still leave us behind, even as they draw us onward.
What Paul saw in his vision was inexpressible. This does not mean that he underwent an experience so mystical he could not put it into words, still less that, although the experience involved objective features, it was the sort of thing that could not be talked about under any circumstances, but that the things Paul saw were inexpressible once the apostle returned to his normal sphere of service. No one around Paul had enjoyed similar revelations, so there was no bridge of common experience on this topic. The vision remained fundamentally “inexpressible.”
At the same time, Paul tells us the things he heard are those “that man is not permitted to tell” (2 Cor. 12:4). This does not make them superfluous or useless, but private: i.e., they were not given to Paul so that he would pass them on to the church, but solely for his own benefit. The New Testament often encourages Christians to live with eternity’s values and prospects in view, recognizing that we are but pilgrims in transit down here. Most of us are largely shielded from the quantity and quality of the trials Paul faced; and we often do not live up to the light we have already received. But God’s purpose for Paul involved the apostle in staggering sufferings, formidable opposition, and quite incredible challenges; and so to fortify him for his service and sufferings, the God of all hope displayed to the apostle a little more of the glory to come than most of us perceive, so that it would serve as an anchor for his soul in the roughest weather. Even the glimpses of glory the New Testament gives us have as their purpose the promotion of holiness, steadfastness, and faith, not the satisfaction of idle curiosity (e.g., 2 Peter 3:10–14; 1 John 3:2–3). Therefore it is not surprising if the spectacular revelations afforded the apostle to the Gentiles, this “man in Christ,” were designed for his own special strengthening to help him persevere to the end undaunted—not to satisfy the curiosity of immature believers like the Corinthians who would use the material to bolster their pride, not to increase their faith. For this reason, the things Paul heard were both inexpressible (in that they could not be adequately presented to others with no personal experience of them) and secret. They were entirely beyond the normal spiritual experience of most believers.
Apart from this, Paul does not tell us what he experienced; for to do so would obviously have violated the restraints on communication God himself had imposed. Nevertheless, God in his mercy providentially brought Paul to tell us this much, so that even if our minds cannot fully explore this revelation’s content, our imaginations may glimpse a small gleam of the surpassingly great glory that was shown Paul and will one day be ours. In that sense, we too in a small way share in the encouragement and upward call which these revelations provided for the apostle Paul.
C. The Response of an Apostle to Surpassingly Great Revelations (12:5–6a)
1. He still prefers to boast of his weakness (12:5–6a). The apostle now delicately reconciles the two Pauls, the man in Christ and Paul himself. He wants to emphasize the utterly exceptional nature of the revelations he has just mentioned, and therefore the amazing honor graciously afforded the person who received them; and so, maintaining the use of the third-person visionary a few words longer, he writes, “I will boast about a man like that” (2 Cor. 12:5a). Under no circumstance, however, does Paul want to gain credit or reputation from these revelations, if any of his readers are beginning to see through Paul’s literary device. To emphasize the magnitude of the honor given, he will boast about the “man in Christ”; but as far as his own fundamental commitments to proper boasting are concerned (presented in 10:12–18), he still must add, “but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses” (v. 5b).
At this point his readers must be a trifle uncertain. Now Paul removes any vestige of the guise. “Even if I should choose to boast [as if I really were the man in Christ]” he writes, “I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth” (12:6a), i.e., if he claimed these things for himself, he would not be exposed as a lying fool because in fact he would be shown to be speaking the truth when he made the claim. There! At last Paul has done it: he has confessed himself to be the person who was afforded these surpassingly great revelations. He had little choice. But he has taken this step with extraordinary subtlety. He has again called himself a fool for entering into this boasting game, insisted that he received these visions as a common “man in Christ,” distanced himself from this hypothetical “man in Christ,” made the connection in hypothetical language (“Even if I should choose to boast . . .”), and stressed again his profound commitment to boasting only of his weaknesses.
The depth of this commitment is remarkable. Paul was far from parading his deepest spiritual experiences; and the most profound of these he would have taken unmentioned to the grave had it not been for the peculiar circumstances that called forth this confession. He believed, not only in theory but in practice, the Scripture he preached to others: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord” (2 Cor. 10:17).
But why?
2. He fears that others will think too highly of him (12:6b). Most of us spend our lives in fear that others will not think highly enough of us; but Paul, offered the opportunity to boast straightforwardly about the most spectacular revelation ever afforded him, writes, “But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say.”
Three convictions clearly underlie this restraint. First, Paul refuses to let his reputation rest on inaccessible claims, appeals to ecstatic or supernatural visions. Even Paul’s Damascus road experience and his subsequent meeting with Ananias had some reluctant witnesses; and therefore it is set apart from the very private vision mentioned here.
The second conviction is the complement of the first. Paul will permit only his open conduct, what he does and says, to be used by his converts as the basis of their assessment of him. Behavior is of unsurpassed importance in the Christian way. No matter how spectacular the private claim, no matter how esoteric the putative vision, it cannot displace conduct and speech as more reliable indicators of how closely anyone follows Christ.
But the third and most remarkable underlying attitude is that Paul is genuinely concerned lest others think too highly of him. This might simply reflect a brutal honesty; he knows his own heart well enough to realize that, apart from grace, it is capable of the most appalling abominations in God’s eyes (cf. Rom. 3:10–20). But in fact it is more: it is the typical attitude displayed by this apostle, who is always concerned to insist that people should focus on the gospel and on the Savior, not the messenger. He will be a more effective witness to the message of Christ crucified if he draws little attention to himself and to his grace-empowered victories, being all the while unafraid to endure suffering, privation, and disgrace.
D. Surpassingly Great Revelations—and Satan’s Messenger (12:7–10)
Paul has been responding to the super-spiritual visionaries, who were relying on the stories of their spiritual prowess and ecstatic experiences to bolster their authority while deprecating Paul. By using the device of a third-person “man in Christ,” Paul relates his own most astonishing revelation, while nevertheless distancing himself from the bragging characteristic of his opponents. But there is another reason why Paul is prepared to relate the story: it is inextricably tied up with a further experience, the story of his thorn in the flesh. This second phase of Paul’s spectacular revelatory experience not only says exactly what the apostle wants to say, but makes it impossible to believe that Paul is actually surreptitiously building his own reputation; for he of all people understands best that in the Christian way of great grace and great privilege often go hand in hand with great suffering.
1. God and Satan—to keep Paul from conceit (12:7). A great deal of energy has been poured into identifying Paul’s thorn in the flesh. Explanations are legion, and include malaria, a serious eye condition, feelings of guilt and depression owing to Paul’s failure to convert his fellow Jews, Jewish persecution, epilepsy, a marked speech defect, some sort of continued temptation (taking “flesh” to refer to unregenerate nature), and many more. Several of the suggestions are plausible, none capable of proof. What seems clear, however, is that Paul’s thorn in the flesh, whatever it was, came to him after his “surpassingly great revelations,” and in consequence of them. In other words, it was not a birth defect or an impediment of character that had afflicted him long before the time he enjoyed being caught up to the third heaven.
It is equally clear that this thorn was something substantial, not some minor irritation. An apostle who could willingly put up with the sufferings and deprivations listed in 2 Corinthians 11 would not beseech the Lord so strenuously and repeatedly for the removal of some minor problem that could easily be borne. Paul’s thorn was something very painful or extraordinarily embarrassing, and perhaps both.
More important yet, Paul sees this thorn as simultaneously the work of Satan and the work of God. The thorn is “an angel (i.e., messenger) of Satan,” something sent by the archfiend to wound, limit, and defeat the apostle. Certainly Satan is capable of inflicting grievous physical damage (Job 2:1–10; 1 Cor. 5:5; 1 Tim. 1:20), in addition to his work of moral seduction, and sometimes the former is the complement or instrument of the latter. Since the thorn is Satan’s messenger, we are not surprised to find Paul turning to God for its removal. Should not Christians expect God to remove Satan’s obstacles? There may be special circumstances, like those of Job; but is not God normally interested in defeating Satan?
But the problem is more complex than that, for Paul also believes that this thorn came to him from God. He writes in the passive “there was given me”—almost certainly an instance of the so-called divine passive, i.e., “there was given me by God.” Lest there be any doubt, the purpose of this “gift” is to keep Paul from becoming conceited. Satan would certainly not be interested in that goal. His interests would be much better served if Paul were to become insufferably arrogant. The stated purpose of this gift must therefore be God’s: although the thorn is a messenger from Satan, it was nonetheless simultaneously given to Paul by God himself, whose purpose in giving it was beneficent: to keep Paul from becoming conceited.
There is a general lesson of considerable importance here. Many people go through life trying to isolate this incident or that event as the exclusive work of Satan or the exclusive work of God. This almost always leads to doubtful interpretations of events, and may end up in the cultic view of guidance. Certainly this approach does not listen very carefully to what the Scriptures say on these matters.
Consider the death of Jesus Christ. Luke recognizes that the sequence of betrayal, arrest, torture, rigged courts, and crucifixion is the hour “when darkness reigns” (Luke 22:53); he explicitly states that all this came about “with the help of wicked men” (Acts 2:23) and as the result of an ugly conspiracy (4:27). Yet at the same time, all these events came about as a result of what God’s “power and will had decided beforehand should happen” (v. 28). Thus there is a sense in which the death of Jesus was a work of great evil, and all responsible for it are culpable; but there is also a sense in which it was a work of God acting in love, the result of his redemptive purpose to establish a new humanity under a new covenant sealed with the blood of his Son. It is not that God came into the plan after the fact and turned it around for good. Far from it: the Bible insists it was God’s plan from the beginning, the very reason why he sent his Son in the first place. Yet God’s sovereignty in the matter does not in any way diminish the responsibility of all those connected with Jesus’s death.
I have dealt with this theme at length elsewhere, and do not wish to take it up again here. Nevertheless its implications are substantial for the way Christians regard the tragedies of life. Some believers, very concerned to be spiritual, try to treat death, e.g., only as victory. It is a “homegoing,” a “call to higher service,” an “elevation to our higher calling.” Does not Paul himself tell us that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord? If there are tears, surely they are tears of self-pity and shock among those left behind; but death itself is not ugly, and certainly it is nothing a mature Christian should fear or despise.
This approach to death is too one-sided. The Bible still treats death as an enemy, the “last enemy” that only the return of Christ will conquer (1 Cor. 15:25–26). Death remains the stark proof of sin, the result of the curse, the evidence of the divine indictment under which the race stands; and it will not be finally defeated until the dawning of the new heaven and the new earth. Meanwhile, there is a sense in which we ought to “rage, rage against the dying of the light” (though not in the sense Dylan Thomas gave those words): death is the result of sin, and everything to do with the domain of sin we should detest.
What we must therefore do is preserve the balance of Scripture. Death is an enemy; but it is an enemy principally defeated by Christ’s cross-work and slated for final destruction when he returns. Death is the unflagging seal of the curse, of our racial and personal condemnation; but it is also the means God used in Christ to purchase our redemption: the Son died, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God. Death is not intrinsically good, for it speaks eloquently of sin, curse, corruption, mortality; but God’s grace already abounds so mightily that believers know death is not the ultimate reality. We may grieve, but not as those with no hope; departure to be with Christ is far better.
This same balance ought to inform our perspectives on many areas of life still stamped by the curse. Disease, accidents, oppression, opposition to the gospel: none of these is a good thing, and all of them can be traced in one way or another to Satan himself. None of these will find any place in the consummated kingdom. Yet at the same time, none of these ugly things escapes the outermost bounds of God’s sovereignty. “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28, emphasis added).
Paul knows these truths well, and he reflects them in this most difficult test in his life. “To keep me from being conceited because of the surpassingly great revelations,” he writes, “there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me” (2 Cor. 12:7—this is the translation of the most likely textual variant). The thorn was a messenger of Satan—there was nothing intrinsically good about it, and no amount of pious talk could ever cover up the fact. Nevertheless, it was “given” him (by God) for beneficent purposes.
Perhaps Paul remembered a similar situation in the Old Testament. The eleven brothers sold Joseph into slavery, a base, evil action; but reflecting on it years later, Joseph himself could say to his brothers, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Gen. 50:20). So in Paul’s case: the immediate reason for the thorn, from God’s point of view, was the surpassingly great revelations; and its immediate purpose was to keep Paul from becoming conceited.
It is no small credit to the apostle that he recognized this purpose. Just as others might be encouraged to think too highly of Paul if they found out about these great revelations, so Paul might find himself in the same danger. “How dangerous must self-exaltation be, when even the apostle required so much restraint” (Fausset). Paul understands this so well that in 2 Corinthians 12:7–10, where he discusses his experience with the thorn in the flesh, there is no longer even a hint of his earlier man-in-Christ circumlocution. About his greatest revelations, he speaks only with circumspection, if at all; about his weaknesses, he speaks directly and without bashfulness. In short, even by retelling this painful experience, he is exemplifying the lessons he learned by it, and which he articulates in the remaining verses (8–10).
2. Paul’s plea and God’s grace (12:8–9a). Nothing that I have said suggests Paul enjoyed the thorn. Whether it was perceived as a messenger from Satan or a burden pressed on him by the Father, Paul felt it was too much to be borne. “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me,” Paul writes.
Clearly these were not casual prayers, carelessly offered at the spur of the moment, but three separate and sustained periods of intercession directed to Jesus himself.
God’s answer was not, at first, what Paul wanted to hear. Nevertheless it was God’s standing answer (the Greek should be rendered, “But he has said to me . . .” ). The answer itself is often repeated in hymn and song, but must not have been easy to accept when first given: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9a).
In one sense, of course, God did indeed answer Paul’s prayer, but not as the apostle wished. Calvin rightly distinguishes between means and ends in prayer. The end that Paul wanted was relief from the thorn, and he simply assumed that the means would be the thorn’s removal. But God granted the ends by another means: he gave relief from the thorn, not by removing it, but by adding more grace, sufficient grace. The Lord promised Paul that in the distress caused by this messenger from Satan, he would always find that divine grace afforded him a sufficient supply to enable him to bear up as a Christian.
Moreover, this divine grace bestowed on Paul was sufficient precisely because Paul was so weak. God’s strength is made perfect in weakness: it reaches its fullest measure and most powerful forms when issued in response to weakness. The greater the Christian’s weakness, the greater the grace poured out.
If this is true, then the self-proclaimed strengths of the false apostles mean they are devoid of grace! All the impressive credentials of these ecclesiastics turn out to signify bankruptcy in grace. Grace responds to need, acknowledged weakness, spiritual destitution. The kingdom of heaven goes to the poor in spirit (Matt. 5:3).
It is important to recognize what this wonderful text does not promise. Some read it as if the believer may go through a period of weakness followed by a period of divine grace and strength, where the Christian becomes a kind of conqueror. The weakness becomes a condition of this strength, a payment of dues if you like. But such an interpretation twists the text. Paul’s thorn is not followed by grace; rather, grace is given him to enable him to cope with the weakness that is not removed. Very often in the Scriptures, weakness is not the condition of grace in the sense that it serves as the necessary precursor of grace, but in the sense that it serves as a continuing vehicle of grace. “It is when he is weak, really weak—poor, sick, humiliated, despised, unloved by his own spiritual children as well as scorned by the world—that God’s power comes into view. For ‘God’s foolishness is wiser than men, and God’s weakness is stronger than men’ (1 Cor.i25)” (Barrett).
Nowhere is this clearer than in Romans 8, the famous more-than-conquerors passage. Paul is not interested in establishing a breed of super-triumphalists for whom every enterprise is successful, every mission fruitful, every endeavor prosperous. Far from it. He demonstrates that Christians are more than conquerors in the context of trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, and sword, and in the sense that despite all these things, God’s love will sustain us, maintain us, and buoy us up in faithfulness so that we shall never be separated from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (vv. 31–39).
This was also the pattern supremely manifest by Christ Jesus our Lord. The cross itself, that fearful, Roman sign of ignominy, defeat, judgment, and death was precisely the means by which Jesus triumphed over all his foes. God’s strength was supremely manifest in Jesus’s weakness. Why then should Jesus’s disciples choose to disparage his example by siding with triumphalists? Kierkegaard was not wrong to pray:
O Lord Jesus Christ, many and various are the things to which a man may feel himself drawn, but one thing there is to which no man ever felt himself drawn in any way, that is, to suffering and humiliation. This we men think we ought to shun as far as possible, and in any case that we must be compelled to it. But Thou, our Saviour and Redeemer, Thou who was humbled yet without compulsion, and least of all compelled to that humiliation in the imitation of which man discovers his highest honor; ah, that the picture of Thee in Thy humiliation might be so vivid to us that we might feel ourselves drawn unto Thee in lowliness, unto Thee who from on high wilt draw all unto Thyself.
3. Paul’s response and articulated principle (12:9b–10). Paul learns the lesson. After three serious sessions of prayer, he comes to grips with the wisdom of the Lord’s response; and so far from begrudgingly acceding to what he cannot change, he writes: “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” Paul could well have written the lines:
The glorious revelations you’ve bestowed,
Ineffable displays of holy light,
Call forth my joyful praise in sheer delight,
A foretaste of my heavenly abode.
Then why this ceaseless thorn, this painful goad
Of Satan? Why not spare me from the blight
Of persecution, malice, danger’s fright?
From what strange steams of love have nettles flowed?
Sufficient is my grace for you; indeed,
My power is perfect when you’re weak.
Will you for your own feeble prowess plead,
When bankrupt weakness brings the strength you seek?
Now insults, hardships, weakness are my song,
My joy; for when I’m weak, then I am strong.
In short, Paul is not some foolhardy masochist who likes to get hurt, who loves to be abused. Instead, we find him a rational and devout Christian whose experience with the thorn in the flesh brought him to a carefully weighed perspective about boasting, a perspective that has sustained all he has written in these chapters. He will gladly boast about his weaknesses if it means Christ’s power will rest on him. “To be made thus the dwelling-place of the power of Christ, when he reveals his glory, was a rational ground of rejoicing in those infirmities which were the condition of his presence and the occasion of the manifestation of his power” (Hodge).
Lest the Corinthians, largely seduced by the triumphalists, have still missed Paul’s point, he repeats his decision (12:9b) as an articulated personal principle (12:10). Paul is prepared to stop praying for the removal of the thorn, not because he enjoys this or any other messenger of Satan, but because he knows that the “power of Christ manifests to the full its irresistible energy and attains its highest results by performing works of power with powerless instruments” (Wilson). That is why Paul is prepared to extend the lesson learned from one particular thorn in the flesh to include weaknesses, hardships, persecutions, and difficulties. Whenever he is weak, there also does God’s power enjoy the greatest opportunity to manifest itself with full vigor.
Everything depends on the phrase “for Christ’s sake”; for as Tasker comments, “Only a morbid fanatic can take pleasure in the sufferings he inflicts upon himself; only an insensitive fool can take pleasure in the sufferings that are consequences of his own folly; and only a convinced Christian can take pleasure in sufferings endured for Christ’s sake, for he alone has been initiated into the divine secret, that it is only when he is weak . . . that he is strong.” The super-spiritual visionaries who have afflicted the church know nothing of such Christianity. Paul’s response, his boasting in weakness, would be nearly meaningless to them. But men and women who know and love Jesus will readily discern why Paul reaches these revolutionizing conclusions, for they have begun to grasp what it means to serve and suffer “for Christ’s sake” (12:10). And as they serve, they can trust his perfect combination of sovereignty and grace, enabling them to sing:
Unseen, yet forever at hand,
Unchangeably faithful to save,
Almighty to rule and command.
He smiles, and my comforts abound;
His grace as the dew shall descend,
And walls of salvation surround
The soul He delights to defend.
Inspirer and hearer of prayer,
Thou shepherd and guardian of Thine,
My all to Thy covenant care
I sleeping and waking resign.
If Thou art my shield and my sun,
The night is no darkness to me;
And, fast as my moments roll on,
They bring me but nearer to Thee.
August Montague Toplady (1740–79)
E.g., see 1 Corinthians 11:29. For an excellent discussion, cf. Wayne Grudem, The Gift of Prophecy in 1 Corinthians (Washington, DC: University of America Press, 1982). He convincingly argues that in terms of authority status the New Testament analogy of the Old Testament prophet is an apostle (in the narrow sense).
D. A. Carson, Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility (Atlanta: John Knox, 1981).
Normally in Paul the articular ho Kyriosi refers to the Lord Jesus, whereas the anarthrous form Kyrios refers to Yahweh. It is more usual to pray to the Father, or (to use the entire formula) to pray to the Father through Christ and in the Holy Spirit; but there are several prayers in the New Testament addressed directly to Christ (e.g., here; Acts 7:59).
Søren Kierkegaard, Training in Christianity.
D. A. Carson, Holy Sonnets of the Twentieth Century.