The theme of II Corinthians 12:1-10 is visions and revelations. However, it is part of a larger passage, 11:21b to 12:10, with the theme of the speech of a fool. Although Paul will describe a vision, he does not want to draw attention to it. He does not see in it any basis for teaching. As much as people seem to assign such mystical experiences immense importance, Paul views it as secondary. From the beginning of his ministry in Corinth, Paul had chosen to focus his preaching to the Corinthians not on the glories of the Son of God but upon “Christ crucified” (I Corinthians 2:1-5; cf. 1:18, 22-25).
Even today, spiritual experiences impress us. A genuinely spiritual experience is difficult to describe to others. People may have visions, while having difficulty describing what they see. Yet, such experiences can give one the impression that thinks of them special. Such people can view themselves as particularly close to God, closer than others are. After all, they have had an experience others do not have. They must be special, even though they have simply received a gift. When shared with others, such experiences can give the one that has them many admirers. Instead of humbly receiving the gift, one can take considerable pride in such experiences.
Yet, what happens when spiritual leaders go through trauma? Some people may think God is punishing them. Others may think that they are weak. After all, if they were truly close to God, why would God not protect them from hardship? We do not normally take pride in experiences of suffering. They often embarrass us.
Of course, the supreme example of the falseness of such thinking is the cross itself. God did not deliver Jesus from the experience of the cross. Rather, through the cross, God brought life. The cross can help us view all pain and suffering in this life from a different perspective. The cross does not explain why suffering is present. The cross can help us see weakness, pain, and suffering in a unique way. The life of the apostle Paul is another example. God did not spare Paul from suffering. Further, Paul wanted a “thorn in the flesh,” a “messenger of Satan” removed from his life. Instead, God helped Paul to see that it would be the occasion of helping him move toward further reliance upon God. God may deliver us from the source of pain. However, God may also give us strength amid our pain. God may also grant us new life, new perspective, and new direction in our lives, as we move through painful experiences with reliance upon the grace of God.
2 I know a person in Christ. He uses the third person to distance himself from experience. Paul seems so embarrassed about having allowed himself to allow the Corinthians to drag him into a boasting match that he adopts the rhetorical device of speaking about himself in the third person. Paul is avoiding self-praise as a tool of rhetoric, avoiding the praise of oneself directly. This would be in line with the advice of Plutarch in On Praising Oneself Inoffensively. However, the context suggests that he will boast only in weakness, so now, when he wants to speak of vision, he distances himself. Even though Paul is trying to be ironically boastful, he cannot fully abandon his genuine humility. Paul intends to fool no one with the thin grammatical veil covering the identity of this "person in Christ."[1] Not to doubt Paul’s experience, but there is more than a hint of parody in his construction — one can almost hear individuals in Corinth saying, “I know so-and-so, who did such-and-such.” This is, after all, the community that was quick to gather around famous personalities (Apollos, Cephas and Paul [I Corinthians 1:12]). Therefore, there is a mocking — as much as a descriptive — thrust to Paul’s opening. However, it allows Paul to speak, obliquely at least, about an experience that is too astounding and personally moving for him to blurt out directly. This person had an experience fourteen years ago in which God caught him up to the third heaven. Paul cannot help falling back into Israel's prophetic tradition, which tended to detail dates carefully when miraculous visions took place (see Amos 1:1; Haggai 1:1; 2:1, 10, 20). Clearly, the experience was intensely personal. This was most likely an once-in-a-lifetime event. We should not identify the experience with his conversion (Galatians 1:11, Acts chapters 9, 22, 26). It would have occurred around 40-42 AD, well after his conversion, and after his visit with Peter, James, and John as recorded in Galatians. In the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 10:14, I Kings 8:27, Nehemiah 9:8, and II Chronicles, 2:6, 6:18, make formal distinction between heaven and the heaven of heavens. It could refer to the firmament, the heavenly ocean, and then heaven proper. Paul has something like this in mind. This idea differs from the traditional rabbinic view of Paul's day that envisioned the existence of seven heavenly levels. Paul may derive his numerology from two sources. As early as the time of John Calvin, biblical scholars have linked Paul's three-tiered heaven with the number of the Trinity. Paul's Trinitarian mind-set naturally associated three with that which is the highest, the most complete, and the perfect. The concept of heaven conjured a different meaning from the one of modern times. Sometimes, authors will describe God as living there, but in Hebrews 4:14 Jesus passes through the heavens to get to God. Even evil powers are also part of the heavenly realm (Ephesians 6:12). Throughout his ministry, Paul was concerned about preaching Christ crucified and building up the church, and he only spoke of his own personal spiritual journey insofar as it advanced his mission. Obviously, it was painful for Paul to speak of these personal/spiritual things. Further, whether the experience was in the body or out of the body, I do not know; God knows. The experience is remarkable in that it brought him into the direct heavenly presence of God. The fact that it was so real and tangible made Paul unable to distinguish between whether it was a spiritual vision or an actual transport of this body into another realm, another sign of how remarkable this experience was. The experience may have been more like rapture than a vision. Paul is passive in this event, precluding speculation that he was purposely trying to achieve an experience through prayer or some ascetic practice. 3 I know that such a person—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. He cannot describe how it happened or even in what form. Paul 4 was caught up into Paradise (the highest heaven), again stressing the remarkable elevation into the presence of God, and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat. Paul is referring to one experience, of course. Referring to third heaven and Paradise are the same place. He was in the place of the righteous dead to the Jewish mystic. We should note that Paul has similar view of Paradise as we find in Luke 23:43, where Jesus offers words of comfort to the thief on the cross next to him with the promise that, "today you will be with me in Paradise." Yet, Paul is not so concerned about what he sees there, but about what hears there. Yet, he cannot repeat it. He does not record the experience to claim it as part of his apostolic credentials. In contrast to contemporary accounts, Paul does not divulge what he saw in the vision. Paul has surprisingly little to say about the vision itself. He has not mentioned the vision before because is not to repeat what he heard.
The focus of verses 5-10 moves to a discussion of Paul's weaknesses and God's use of them to divine advantage. Think of a time when you have experienced spiritual growth. You had a shift in priorities, an increase in personal strength, a renewed appreciation for life, or a deepening of personal relationships. Have these improvements been the result of smooth sailing and easy living? I suspect that, for most of us, this kind of growth comes from stress, struggle, and suffering. Such moments of personal difficulty often lead us to realize the importance of moving from isolation toward community, from self-reliance to reliance upon God, and from self-sufficiency to the sufficiency of the grace of God.
In verses 5-7a, more importantly, Paul shares the only grounds on which he would boast about himself. 5 On behalf of such a one, I will boast, but on my own behalf, I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. 6 However, if I wish to boast, I will not be a fool, for I will be speaking the truth. Nevertheless, I refrain from it, so that no one may think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me, 7 even considering the exceptional character of the revelations. The use of the word “revelation” here is in a middle position between the provisional disclosure of secrets that will not gain greater clarity until the end and experiences of revelation in the broader sense.[2] Extraordinary spiritual experiences cannot legitimate his apostleship. He could boast truly of other powerful experiences, but he chooses not to do so. As such, we learn that the Spirit was not regulative for Paul.[3] For Paul, there must be a consistency between himself and his message. In verses 7b-9, we learn another reason Paul will not boast in such spiritual experiences. Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. We can see some ambiguity in the description of the thorn. It teaches him a lesson on humility while also being a messenger of Satan to torment him. One might assume that the first readers of Paul’s description made more sense of it than the modern reader does. The greatest influence Paul's "thorn in the flesh" comment had on the church is that it "seems to have afforded an uncommonly favorable opportunity for everyone to become an interpreter of the Bible."[4] Of the many proposals that students of Paul have offered concerning the nature of this “thorn,”[5] those most in keeping with the context involve some type of physical infirmity. It is a continuous affliction and a messenger of Satan. The beatings and stoning he received (11:25) may have damaged his physical eyesight, which might explain his mention of the distinctiveness of his oversized handwriting (Galatians 6:11). I might note a form of poetic symmetry in this suggestion. The constant blurriness of his natural vision was a reminder not to overemphasize the importance of spiritual visions. In the end, however, we cannot know its exact nature. 8 Three times, I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me. Use of the title “Lord,” invoked in prayer, the term used in the Old Testament for God, is one we also find in the New Testament to refer to the exalted Christ. Such usage was one of the means through which the church would reflect upon and develop its notion of the Trinity.[6] 9 However, the Lord said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” Paul asked diligently that God remove this messenger of Satan. He describes an affliction from which he needed relief, though God gave it to him so that the heavenly journey would not overly exalt him. The prayer of Paul remains unanswered. Thus, the nature of the thorn is not important to us, other than the fact that Paul endured it for so long. The point Paul will make regards why he suffered rather than what he suffered. God is operative through the weakness of Paul. For Paul the more important event is not the experience of ecstasy but the reality of the humbling “thorn in the flesh” that Paul has inextricably tied to this spiritual event of vision or revelation. Paul has been through it all, and yet neither the personal highs nor the lows mean that much. He realizes that an authentic person of Christ is not one who boasts, but who trusts the sufficient grace of Christ in any circumstance. Consistent with what he wrote in Romans 8:28, God turned this torment toward a beneficial purpose. Regardless of its painful and debilitating elements, it was not life threatening or capable of curtailing his ministry. The grace of God was sufficient. In fact, Paul will get nothing more than grace and he needs nothing more than grace.[7]Newton wrote of this grace as well.
Through many dangers, toil, and fears
we have already come;
’Twas grace that brought us safe thus far,
and grace will lead us home.
Whatever Paul perceived as a torment, it certainly gave him a depth of wisdom in his experience and helped him focus on the reality of the Lord’s sufficient grace. Thus, the Lord did speak to him, but not in the ecstasy of his vision or rapture, but in his unanswered prayer. The following verses are so memorable because of their upside-down, backward logic. So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses. Most people would gladly boast about their strengths, their assets, the things that make them beautiful, attractive, a highly valued employee and a skilled worker. In another letter, the apostle calls all this stuff so much rubbish (see Philippians 3:8). Here, he twice proclaims his weaknesses as qualities about which he boasts and with which he is utterly content. How many of us are content with our weaknesses? Should we be? How many of us like to "boast" about our shortcomings? How many psychological or self-help "weakness" tests are floating around out there in cyberspace? Not hard to find strength-assessment tools. But what if you said: "Hey, I'd love to get my hands on a weakness-assessment tool, you know, so I could have something to shout about and boast"? What does the apostle Paul mean by "weakness"? Why does he say something which is apparently so ridiculous? However, Paul boasts in his weakness so that the power of Christ may dwell (ἐπισκηνόω)[8] in me. The result was that whatever power people saw in Paul was a result of divine origin. This basic principle holds true for any “weakness.” The power of Christ has entered or taken up residence in Paul. The power of Christ dwells in Paul at his points of greatest weakness, and we can have the same assurance.[9] In a sense, Paul does not want to frighten away this thorn. God receives glory through the weakness and the gospel advances through the weakness.[10] We can see this in Philippians 4:11-14 as well. We see his love and exasperation, his frustration and his determination. 10 Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong. Facing the weakness allows him to rely fully upon God, rather than being self-sufficient. The weakness that characterizes his apostleship represents the effective working of the power of the crucified Christ in his ministry. In a sense, his ministry shared the weakness of Jesus of Nazareth. We can see this as the passion piety of Paul, referring to the way in which the sufferings of Paul are an expression of his identification with Christ.[11] Such a fellowship of suffering is not simply an historical relationship of follower and master, but a bond that takes place in faith. We should not think of this fellowship as one artificially induced imitation of Christ. In fact, this passage means that all suffering has such a connection to the sufferings of Jesus. We learn the nature of suffering beneath the cross, learning that suffering becomes things of which we can boast.[12] The proof of God’s activity in Paul’s life, and in the lives of the Corinthian and all Christians, is ultimately not magnificent spiritual visions or miraculous physical healings. The proof of God’s activity is the grace that sustains us even in our weakness, for it is in those moments that we recognize the power is not our own but must come from God. Boasting in our own power is foolishness and accomplishes nothing; boasting in our weakness may just remind us that “the power of Christ” also resides within us.
The kind of power necessary for each of us is a consideration we best leave in the hands of God. When people stand in the service of God, they must be able to be still, wait, keep silence, suffer, and therefore to be without other types of power. It seems like impotence, but in reality, it may demonstrate the real quality of the power one has. Such power exhibits itself in the Lion and Lamb, in cross and resurrection, in a capacity for being high or low, rich or poor, wise or foolish. Such power is a capacity for success or failure, for moving with the current or against it, for standing in the ranks or for being alone. In each case, we can think of a true capacity, the good gift of God, ascribed to each as needed in order to render service to God.[13] The Christian community will need to speak openly of it weakness. The strength of Jesus Christ is so in supreme weakness. The place of the church in the world is difficult to discern for this reason. The political state, work, family, and so on, seem to have a rather obvious and secure place. The place of the church is not self-evident. The Christian community is a purely contingent phenomenon arising at its own point in the economy of human affairs, but not really belonging to these for all its humanity. The Christian community is an alien colony, for the nature and existence of which there are no analogies in the world, and therefore no categories in which to understand it. The holy family found no room in the inn. The church can expect that the world will find no room for it. In this sense, the church must share Christ in His weakness. Christ had no abiding place, and so, neither does the church. The church is at home nowhere in the world. It can only camp here and there as the pilgrim people of God. It does receive any rights of settled citizenship. The institutions of the world recognize at some level the alien character of the church. The world is aware of what might be involved by incorporating this stranger into itself. The world knows that it cannot really trust it. At best, it offers respectful but cautious toleration, taking good care not to become too deeply implicated. In practice, it recognizes that the church does not really belong. Yet, in this weakness stirs its strength or ability.[14]
[1] Betz
[2] Pannenberg (Systematic Theology, Vol. 1, 209)
[3] W. D. Davies (Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 1948, p 198).
[4] Eighteenth-century philosopher/theologian Soren Kierkegaard.
[5] (bad eyesight, bad hearing, malaria, sexual impurity, epilepsy, depression, homosexuality, a person or group who hounded Paul wherever he went)
[6] Pannenberg (Systematic Theology, Volume 1, 265)
[7] Conzelmann (TDNT, Volume IX, 395)
[8] Michaelis (TDNT, Volume VII, 387) points out that this is the only use of in the New Testament. It means to enter or take up residence in a tent or dwelling.
[9] Rudolph Bultmann (Theology of the New Testament, Volume I, 1951, p 351)
[10] Karl Barth (Church Dogmatics, I.2 [17], 332)
[11] Bertram (TDNT, Volume VII, 608)
[12] Bultmann (Theology of the New Testament, Volume I, 1951, 351) Bultmann thinks it mistaken to speak of passion mysticism here. The fellowship or sharing does not take place in absorbed meditation on the passion or in the soulful appropriation of the suffering of Christ in mystical experience.
[13] Karl Barth (Church Dogmatics, III.4 [55.2], 396-7)
[14] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (IV.3 [72.1], 742)
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