Times of weakness--a blessing?

To 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. 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 12:7-10).

Saint Paul wrote 13 of the 27 books of the New Testament, and nearly half of the Book of Acts is about him as well. In fully half of the New Testament, God uses Paul to speak to His Church about our salvation in Christ. Many congregations around the world have named themselves after Paul, including the prestigious St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. St. Paul even has a city named after him in Minnesota.

Paul was well educated. He had been trained as a Pharisee, a man who spent most of his time studying the Old Testament and trying to live a God-pleasing life according to its teachings. And Paul was also a citizen of the Roman Empire; while a Jew, he also was interested in the goings-on of the wider world around him. Paul’s education and interests show him to be a very learned man.

Paul had the background, the education, and the way with words to be a great asset to the ministry of Jesus’ Church, but Paul had a problem: he had quite an ego. Paul knew that he was special, and he took pride in it. Late in life he wrote, I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers (Galatians 1:14). When many people began converting to Christianity, Paul not only saw danger in his fellow Jews defecting to this new religion, he assumed a leadership role in ferreting out these traitors and bringing them to trial. Speaking of his past life Paul said, I persecuted the followers of [Jesus] to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison, as also the high priest and all the Council can testify (Acts 22:4-5). Paul had wanted a role of leadership among the Jews because he felt he had the best of qualifications. If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless (Philippians 3:4-6). Looking back on his younger life, Paul could see how the sin of pride had taken control of him.

But everything changed for Paul on a trip to Damascus, where he was planning to arrest even more Christians and put them on trial for teaching a ‘false’ religion. Jesus Himself appeared to Paul in a blinding light and showed Paul that it was not the Christians who were in error, it was the Jews who rejected Jesus as God’s Savior to them. From that moment on, Paul threw himself into the service of Christ with every bit as much fervor as he had previously given to the work of the Pharisees. He did this new work out of gratitude to Jesus, for showing him the error of his ways and for giving him the opportunity to help the Church he had previously been attacking.

Sometime later, Paul received another visitation from God—this time, Paul was permitted to take a glimpse of heaven itself. This was such a wonderful and undeserved experience that Paul said nothing of it to anyone for 14 years. It was not until he wrote 2nd Corinthians that Paul spoke of this remarkable vision; in the verses immediately before today’s Epistle reading he writes, 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. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not 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.

After 14 years of silence, why does Paul speak of his heavenly vision now? Because of what followed soon after: To 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. Paul tells the Corinthians that 14 years earlier he had been permitted a look at heaven, but this wonderful experience was followed by his receiving something that he calls a ‘thorn in the flesh.’ This thorn, whatever it was, was given to Paul by God to prevent him from becoming conceited following his singular look into heaven.

God knew Paul very well. Paul had a life-long struggle with pride, and it would be all too easy for him to start thinking that, because Jesus had spoken to him personally on the road to Damascus and later given him a look into heaven, he was a man superior to any other in God’s eyes. Pride was a major weakness in Paul’s character. But God had work to do for a man with Paul’s talents, and so God took steps to keep him from becoming prideful again. God permitted Satan to put a ‘thorn’ in Paul’s flesh to keep him humble.

This sounds odd to us. Were God and Satan working together? Not at all. For a parallel situation, consider Job chapter 2: On another day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them to present himself before him. And…the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason." "Skin for skin!" Satan replied. "A man will give all he has for his own life. But stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face." The LORD said to Satan, "Very well, then, he is in your hands; but you must spare his life." So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Then Job’s…wife said to him, "Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!" He replied, "You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?" In all this, Job did not sin in what he said. You will recall that the Book of Job teaches us that God and Satan both compete for a man’s soul—our Lord to save it by building faith in God, Satan to destroy it by tearing down faith in God. In these verses, we see God and Satan using the same event for different purposes. Satan thinks that by getting permission to make Job sick, he can tempt Job to conclude that God doesn’t care about him—but God uses the same event to test Job’s confidence in our Lord’s commitment to his future, and Job comes out of this time of trial with a stronger faith.

In the same way, God uses Satan to keep Paul humble. Satan thinks that the ‘thorn’ that he afflicts Paul with will cause Paul to give up on God as uncaring, but God, in His infinite wisdom, knows how much Paul can take and just what is needed to keep Paul from becoming useless to the Church due to conceit. Thus Satan willingly, if ignorantly, serves God’s will in this matter.

No one knows what the ‘thorn in the flesh’ was. All we do know is this: a thorn, stuck in the skin where it cannot be removed, is not crippling but it is aggravating and distracting. Whatever Satan afflicted Paul with, it was something that was a constant source of frustration, and by the time that Paul wrote 2nd Corinthians he had suffered with it for 14 years! It was troubling enough that Paul pleaded with the Lord three times for relief—and given that Paul was never a whiner, the suffering must have been considerable.

The heart of today’s Epistle lesson is the reply that Paul received from God: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." This is deep. Through Paul, God is telling us that it is to our advantage to be weak, because that is when God’s power is most evident in our lives. And Paul serves as the perfect example of how this works:

Paul’s weakness is a tendency to pride, but we all have this tendency as well. When we finish a project, we all want to brag about what a good job we did (at least a little). But when we brag, who gets the credit for a job well done? God, or us? Even though we think that we did the work, who provided the metal from the earth, the wood from the tree, the plastic from the petroleum deep underground? Who gave us the intelligence to do the work, and the dexterity and the strength to carry it out? Who truly deserves the credit for what we accomplish—us, or God?

When we are strong, we like to take credit for the good ideas that we come up with and for the good things that we do. Our pride leaves God ignored and uncredited. But when we are weak, when our bodies are limited by diabetes, heart disease, or cerebral palsy; when our senses are dulled by cataracts, hearing loss, or carpal tunnel syndrome; when our minds are limited by senility, mental retardation or mental illness—when we are weak and seemingly powerless to accomplish anything worthwhile, that is when God’s power shows itself most fully in our lives. When we are weak, every good idea, every good work that comes out of us is clearly a miracle, clearly evidence of God’s power in our lives. When we are weak, we cannot take the credit for what God is doing through we His instruments. When we are weak, it is easy to remember that we are merely gloves on God’s powerful hand, gloves that have no ability to do anything if we are not used by our Creator in doing His work.

The ultimate expression of God’s power being made perfect in weakness is when our Savior died on the cross to pay for our crimes of sin against God. Never did Jesus look so helpless. Never did God’s plans look so close to ruin. Satan must have been jumping up and down with glee as the Son of God, sent to save us from the control of sin and death, hung dying on the cross, rejected by God as the worst sinner of all. But as usual, Satan didn’t have a clue. That moment of weakness was actually a moment of triumph. By suffering in our stead, Jesus made it possible for every believer to avoid eternal punishment with Satan in hell. By dying for us, the all-powerful Son of God tricked death into accepting in our place the only person that death could not contain, because the Son of God is too powerful to remain dead. At the moment when God’s plan of salvation appeared doomed, victory was actually at hand. When Jesus said It is finished, He did not mean that Satan had thwarted God, He meant that God had defeated Satan, because Jesus fought the Foe in our place, and where we would have failed, His perfect, radiant love triumphed over Satan’s coal-black hate.

Paul 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. Through faith, the apostle was able to see that every hardship in his life was an opportunity for Jesus to show His love and His power without Paul’s human pride trying to take any of the credit. Because Paul wanted Christ’s glory to be evident in his life, he came to see the ‘thorn in his flesh’ as an opportunity for great things to happen, not as an impediment. May our Lord Jesus enable you to look at the challenges in your life in the same way, focussing on the good things Christ is doing in you and through you, instead of dwelling on whatever you believe is limiting you. Jesus’ grace is sufficient for you, because His power is seen perfectly through your weakness. May you always say with St. Paul: I can do everything through him who gives me strength.