I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. I 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. And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows—was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell. I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except about my weaknesses. Even 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, or because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But 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. 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. (2 Corinthians 12:1-10)
Once again, to understand what is going on in this passage, we must imagine the other side of the conversation. What were the Corinthians saying that moved Paul to boast about his visions and revelations from the Lord?
The best guess is that the Corinthians themselves, or the false teachers who had come in among them, were boasting about visions and revelations. The Corinthians were focused on the extraordinary, but Paul knew they needed practical help to live in the ordinary world in which we all must live.
So, what does Paul do? He starts with the extraordinary to lead the Corinthians to Christ in the ordinary. Paul starts with his vision, and then talks about his thorn.
Paul’s Vision
We know from the book of Acts, and from Paul’s correspondence (see also Ephesians 3:1-6), that Paul had numerous visions. According to Acts 9:3, Paul’s visions began on the road to Damascus. Paul was a zealous Jew known by his Hebrew name Saul; Paul was his Roman name. Saul/Paul was on his way to persecute Christians for what he perceived to be blasphemy when Jesus stops him in his tracks and asks, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
Saul asks, “Who are you, Lord?”
And Jesus responds, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”
From that moment on, the trajectory of Saul’s life was changed; he began serving Jesus and pointing others to Jesus as Savior and Lord.
Along with this vision of Jesus, Saul/Paul was given a vision of a man named Ananias coming to minister to him. And that was exactly what happened. Paul, who had been struck blind by the vision, went into Damascus, and there he was met by Ananias who healed him of his blindness by the power of the Holy Spirit and baptized him.
Acts 22 tells us that sometime later, while Paul was worshipping in the Temple in Jerusalem, he had another vision. And in this vision, the Lord commissioned him to preach the good news about Jesus to the Gentiles.
Still later, when Paul was on one of his missionary journeys in Asia (modern day Turkey) and he didn’t know what direction to go next, he had a vision of a man of Macedonia saying, “Come over and help us.”
So, Paul got on a boat and went to Macedonia, and the good news of Jesus Christ went to Europe, perhaps for the first time.
After Macedonia, Paul continued to the southern part of Greece. As we know, he ended up in Corinth. But he had a difficult time there. And amidst the difficulty, he had another vision. The Lord said to Paul in that vision,
Do not be afraid; keep on speaking, do not be silent. For I am with you, and no one is going to attack and harm you, because I have many people in this city.”(Acts 18:9-10)
Years later, Paul ends up in Jerusalem once again. He is there to deliver an offering he has collected for the poor. Instead of being rewarded for his good deed, his fellow Jews try to kill him, and Paul ends up in a Roman prison.
One night, while Paul is in prison, the Lord stands near him and says, “Take courage! As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.” (Acts 23:11)
So, depending on how you count them, that’s six visions right there. And then there was this seventh vision that Paul talks about in this passage. But unlike the false teachers in Corinth, Paul seems reluctant to even claim this vision as his own. In his humility, he speaks of himself in the third person… “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven.”
If Paul wrote 2 Corinthians in AD 57, as scholars think that he did, that puts this vision in the year AD 43. In terms of the timeline of Paul’s life, it puts this vision between the time of his conversion in Acts 9 and his ministry in Antioch in Acts 11.
Paul was not sure whether this vision was a physical experience or an out-of-body experience. He is not sure whether he was physically caught up to heaven, or whether he simply went there in a vision. Be that as it may, Paul talks about being caught up to the third heaven. What is the third heaven?
The ancient Jews talked about three heavens. Or you could say that they used the word “heaven” in three senses.
I have been to the first heaven, and I imagine many of you have too. The first heaven, for the first century Jew, was the sky.
Today, it seems like anyone can go to the second heaven if they have enough money. The second heaven for the ancient Jew was outer space.
The third heaven for the ancient Jews was the abode of God. The only way to get to the third heaven is with God’s help.
Paul also uses a Persian word-picture to describe the third heaven. He calls it “paradise”. This Persian word-picture is that of a walled garden.
Barclay explains…
When a Persian king wished to confer a very special honour on someone specially dear to him, he made him a companion of the garden and gave him the right to walk in the royal gardens with him in intimate companionship.
Paul, through this vision of heaven, experienced what Abraham had experienced long before. Paul experienced friendship with God. The good news of the Gospel is that all of us can actually experience friendship with God right now, and all of us can one day go to the third heaven, just as Paul did.
Jesus said to the thief on the cross, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43) And in John 14 Jesus says,
“My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Jesus is the way to the Father, the way to the third heaven, the way to paradise.
Paul says that he “was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell.”
Wouldn’t we all like to know what Paul heard?
Well, we may not know what Paul heard during his visit to the third heaven, to paradise, but he does tell us one important thing that the Lord told him here on earth. I have a sneaking suspicion that this one thing that was told to Paul is of more practical value to us here and now on earth than any vision of heaven would be.
Paul’s Thorn
To understand this special word that Paul received from the Lord we must talk first about Paul’s thorn. Paul says, “Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.”
In other words, to keep Paul humble after he had this vision of the third heaven, he was given a thorn in his flesh. The word for “thorn” can mean a “splinter” or a “stake”. Paul says it is a thorn in his flesh. Paul usually uses the word “flesh” to refer to the sin nature. But sometimes Paul uses this word to refer to the human body. Which is it in this case? That is hard to say.
Paul calls this thorn in his flesh a messenger from Satan. If Paul was being buffeted by demons, he does not tell us anything more about it. And because Paul is relatively vague in describing this “thorn” there have been many speculations as to what, precisely, this thorn was.
John Calvin thought Paul was referring to some type of spiritual temptation.
Martin Luther thought Paul’s thorn was persecution. The Roman Catholic Church has suggested that Paul’s thorn was some sort of carnal or sexual temptation. Still others have thought that Paul’s thorn was some sort of physical suffering—blindness, epilepsy, chronic migraines, malaria. The list of guesses is probably endless.
Personally, I think it is probably a good thing that we don’t know what Paul’s thorn was. Why do I say that? Well, since Paul does not tell us, we all can identify with him even though we all have various “thorns in the flesh” that plague us.
In Paul’s case, whatever the thorn was, it was such a horrible experience that he prayed for it to be taken away. He prayed repeatedly. Three times! But apparently the Lord did not take the thorn away.
Have you ever prayed for something repeatedly only to receive, seemingly, no answer, or not the answer you would have liked? C. S. Lewis, in his book A Grief Observed, which he wrote after losing his wife to cancer, says this…
Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be—or so it feels—welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?[1]
Whenever we seemingly get no answer to our prayers, we must remember that Jesus, like Paul, prayed for something three times and was denied. Jesus prayed, in the Garden of Gethsemane, to be spared the cross. He prayed three times. But he also prayed, “Not my will but yours be done.” That is the ultimate prayer of spiritual maturity.
Many years ago, Robert Schuller talked about the four ways God answers prayer…
When the idea is not right, God says, “No.”
When the time is not right, God says, “Slow.”
When you are not right, God says, “Grow.”
When everything is all right, God says, “Go.”[2]
Well, that is, perhaps, a good summary of the general ways that God answers prayer. But sometimes it does feel as if God is giving us no answer, silence, the cold shoulder. Other times, God speaks a specific word or words to us, and when we are quiet and open to his guidance, we hear him, as Paul did.
In Paul’s case, God spoke these specific words: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
God’s grace, God’s unmerited favor, God’s Riches at Christ’s Expense, was sufficient for Paul and it will be sufficient for us to see us through our thorny times. William Barclay points out that God’s grace was sufficient in Paul’s case to help him overcome many things…
- God’s grace was sufficient to help Paul overcome physical weariness. Think of the hundreds of miles Paul travelled, mostly on foot, across the Roman Empire!
- God’s grace was sufficient to help Paul overcome physical and emotional pain. Whatever Paul’s thorn was, God’s grace was sufficient to help Paul persevere in spite of it.
- God’s grace was sufficient to help Paul overcome opposition. All one must do is read Paul’s letters, or the book of Acts, to see that he was constantly opposed in his ministry, most often by his fellow Jews. But in spite of what would seem to be overwhelming opposition, he kept going. No amount of opposition could break him or make him turn back. That was due not to any human fortitude on Paul’s part, but due to the all-sufficient grace of God.
- God’s grace was sufficient to help Paul face slander. One of the most difficult things to handle in life is misunderstanding and misjudgment. Barclay says, “Once a man flung a pail of water over Archelaus the Macedonian. He said nothing at all. And when a friend asked him how he could bear it so serenely, he said, ‘He threw the water not on me, but on the man he thought I was.’” God’s all-sufficient grace enabled Paul to bear up under the heavy load of human judgment because Paul had his eyes firmly set on the judgment seat of God.
Paul’s experience teaches us repeatedly that our extremity is God’s opportunity. John Bainbridge once said, “A man with fifty problems is twice as alive as a man with twenty-five. If you haven’t got problems, you should get down on your knees and ask, ‘Lord, don’t you trust me anymore.’”
Through Christ, Paul found the ability to rejoice in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and difficulties. Since we all must face these things anyway, would we not all like to find a way to rejoice in the midst of pain? As my friend Tim Hansel used to say, “The choice is not if we will accept life, but how.”
Tim lived in chronic pain for over thirty years due to a mountain climbing accident. And yet he was able to say, “Pain is inevitable. Misery is optional.” Tim, like Paul, found the ability to “count it all joy”. I believe God can give us that ability too if we ask him.
Most of us have probably never had a vision, and we may never have one. But I would be willing to bet we can all identify with Paul’s thorn in the flesh.
During a particularly thorny time in my life, I had 2 Corinthians 12:9 taped to my bathroom mirror so I would see it at the beginning and end of every day. It kept me focused on the strength of God at a time when I felt very weak.
Do our thorns come from God? Perhaps not always, or at least not directly. Paul does not specifically say that his thorn came from God.
But the important thing is that Paul’s thorn was used by God, to keep Paul humble, and to keep him trusting in the Lord’s strength and not his own. Satan tried to use Paul’s thorn, I am sure, to get Paul to turn away from God and turn away from his mission in life. The Lord used Paul’s thorn for good. Satan uses the thorns of life to tempt us. God uses the thorns of life to test us.
Malachi 3:3 says that God “will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.” When does a silversmith know that all the impurities have been boiled out of the silver? When he sees his image reflected in the silver. Just so, God refines us and purifies us through the hardships of this life, until he sees his image in us.
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