"The Survivor's Testimony: There is Grace for Your Handicap"
Propositional Statement
Introduction
Background
The exact nature of this “thorn in the flesh” has prompted much speculation. Paul does not go into any detail in describing it because the Corinthians apparently were well familiar with what he meant. Some of their number or his competitors may have made it the object of their derision. The word translated “thorn” (skolops) occurs only here in the New Testament. It refers to something pointed such as a stake for impaling, a medical instrument, or a thorn. “Stake” would be a better translation, though “thorn” has dominated English renderings of the word. The metaphor carries “the notion of something sharp and painful which sticks deeply in the flesh and in the will of God defies extracting.” In rabbinic literature the image is used to refer to something that causes pain, annoyance—something vexing—and does not especially refer to sickness or affliction. In the Septuagint the noun is used to refer to some kind of opposition (Num 33:55; Hos 2:6; Ezek 28:24). The phrase “in the flesh” seems to imply, however, that this thorn afflicts his physical body (a local dative, see 4:11; 10:2). It may be the problem behind the criticism of his physical presence.
Most interpreters through the years have assumed that Paul alludes to some bodily ailment. This view is reinforced by Paul’s mention of a physical illness that detained him in Galatia and led to his preaching the gospel to them. He writes that his physical condition was a trial to them (Gal 4:13–14). Assuming that this affliction was something that persisted, the suggestions range from a pain in the ear or head, to malarial fever, epilepsy, and solar retinitus.417 To do and suffer all that Paul lists in 11:24–27, however, would rule out some chronic debilitating disease. Martin states it well:
One wonders if a person who was so often on the “battlefield” could have been so physically weak and still have withstood the rigors of Paul’s life.… Paul is one who must be seen as in robust health and with a strong constitution.
Others have claimed that Paul suffered from some psychological ailment or distress, some personal anxiety or torment. Less incapacitating problems have been suggested such as depression over his earlier persecution of the church, a tendency to despair and doubt (so Luther, Table Talk, 24.7), or even sexual temptation. Still others interpret the stake to refer to persecution or adversaries—the rise of the Judaizers, for example—who have dogged him throughout his ministry and now supposedly plague him at Corinth.421
Since Paul prays so fervently to have the stake removed, it was probably something that he felt interfered with his ministry. Marshall identifies it as a “socially debilitating disease or disfigurement which was made the subject of ridicule and invidious comparison.” Paul’s speech has been the subject of the Corinthians’ criticism (10:10), and the stake could have been something that led to some kind of a speech handicap. The “angel of Satan” could allude to the story of Balaam (Num 22:22–34) where the angel of the Lord gets in his way three times to prevent him from speaking and cursing the nation of Israel, against God’s will. In the end we must accept the fact that we will never know for certain what Paul’s stake in the flesh was. We can only be certain that initially it caused him considerable annoyance.
The ambiguity about what Paul’s stake in the flesh might be allows others to identify their own personal “thorns” with Paul’s and to appropriate the theological lesson. Stakes in the flesh are not good, but they also are not bad because they may convey a word from God if we are attuned to hear it. What is important to Paul is the theological word-to-the-wise that his stake in the flesh provided him. It was a constant reminder of God’s grace and God’s power working through him.
The phrase “angel of Satan” is in apposition to the stake. Satan comes to bedevil him as an agent of testing. The verb “to torment” (kolaphizein, “abuse,” “batter”) implies humiliating violence—being slapped around; and the present tense suggests that it was persistent—something that happens over and over again. The same word is used for the abuse of Jesus in his passion (Mark 14:65; Matt 26:67), and by choosing this word Paul might connect his sufferings as an apostle with those of Christ.
Satan comes as God’s adversary to lure people away from God’s rule, or he comes as God’s proxy to implement trials God authorizes. The story of Job provides the foremost example of the latter. Does this Satanic angel try to hinder the advance of the gospel in some way (see 1 Thess 2:18)? If so, Satan’s purposes are thwarted (see 2:11). What is sent to torment Paul is transformed by God into a means of proclaiming Christ’s power and grace. This surprising twist reflects the paradoxical way God defeats Satan. God permits Satan to strike the apostle, but God turns the stricken Paul into an even greater instrument of his power. A proud, arrogant Paul would have only hindered the gospel’s advance. A humiliated, frail Paul, lead as a captive in God’s triumph, has accelerated the gospel’s progress so that the fragrance of knowing God spreads everywhere (see 2:14).
Grace is sufficient for perfection of his power
Paul’s initial prayer entreating the Lord to remove the stake (or perhaps the messenger of Satan, since the verb aphistēmi is always used of persons in the NT) indicates that he did not initially appreciate the significance of this affliction nor was it something easily borne. Few are able to value the onset of anything unpleasant or difficult, and they usually grasp its value only in retrospect. Paul may have thought at first that this stake would stymie the effectiveness of his ministry, so he desperately wanted it removed. The three times may signify “earnest and repeated prayer,” time and time again. Or Paul may be drawing a deliberate parallel to the threefold prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane. As Jesus accepted the cross through fervent prayer, so Paul has resigned himself to submit to God’s will about his weakness and no longer makes this request. Times come in our lives when we must learn to accept what is inescapable and then listen for what God is saying to us through it. We might find that we are mistaken about what we think is best for us and for God’s work.
The audition in paradise resulted in the stake that led to his pleading petition. We might expect, then, that a miracle would occur for one so divinely connected. The stake miraculously would be taken away, and Paul could live triumphantly, free of any nagging afflictions. The answer he received, however, was quite different from what he expected. “Request denied,” the stake would remain. There would be no quick fix miracle, but the prayer does not go unanswered. The answer is simply different from what Paul wished. The Lord’s response was to give him “a richer endowment of strength to overcome his weakness.”430 This response was far greater and more profound than anything Paul knew to ask from the Lord. God gives his pride a knockout blow that makes him completely dependent on divine power, not his own. As Bruce puts it, “His prayer was indeed answered, not by his deliverance from the affliction, but by his receiving the necessary grace to bear it.”432 But he received more than grace to bear a vexing affliction; he received the power of Christ.
It is difficult to decide whether Paul refers to God or Christ as the one to whom Paul prayed and who answers Paul. Paul identifies Christians as those who call upon the name of Christ (1 Cor 1:2; see Acts 9:14), and it reflects his high christology that “the Lord” who answers his prayer could be either Christ or God. The answer he received was, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.” Paul does not give us the details about how he received this answer from the Lord. Did it come in another vision? “He said to me” is in the perfect tense (eirēken moi), which means that the answer he received still stands. The response follows a chiastic pattern:
A is sufficient
B for you
C my grace
C′ my power
B′ in weakness
A′ is perfected
Paul learns that the stake will not hamper his calling. He can make do with the grace he has already received, and the power of Christ will become more visible as it works through his weakness. We learn from the message given to Paul that God’s grace is not just the unmerited favor that saves us but a force that also sustains us throughout our lives. The modifier “my” in “my power,” is important. Paul is not speaking about power in general, but “the power of Christ” revealed in the crucifixion and resurrection: “For to be sure, he was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by God’s power. Likewise, we are weak in him, yet by God’s power we will live with him to serve you” (13:4). Paul has testified to this power in 1:8–10. In Asia he was utterly, unbearably crushed but he was rescued by God’s power which raises the dead. The cracked clay vessel, buffeted and battered, is held together by the extraordinary power of God (4:7; see 6:7). When this earthly tent is destroyed, Paul exudes confidence that the power of God will raise him up and give him a house, not made with hands, eternal in the heavens (5:1). The miracle is that this same divine power that accomplishes all that God wills dwells in a frail, persecuted, and abased apostle.
The verb “perfected” (teleitai) means “brought to completion” or “is made fully present.” The present tense indicates that it is not yet a finished product but that it is still in process of being made perfect. This answer from the Lord helps Paul to regard the stake no longer as the vexing mischief of Satan; instead, he recognizes that through it the grace of God operates more effectively. The stake makes him acutely aware of his own inadequacies and prevents him from thinking that he is equal to the task alone. It prevents a bloated ego from crowding out the power of God in his life. Paul now reveals why he is so willing to boast in his weakness rather than to pray for its removal. His weakness becomes the vehicle by which God’s grace and Christ’s power is most fully manifested to himself and to others. Furnish correctly points out that Paul is not saying that weakness is power. Instead, he is saying that “the weaknesses that characterize his life as an apostle—of which the Corinthians are very much aware and from which he neither seeks nor expects relief—represent the effective working of the power of the crucified Christ in his ministry.” What makes Paul seem so weak to some paradoxically allows the power of Christ to work through him all the more.
Grace rests on you in your weakness
The stake in the flesh, the angel from Satan, broadcasts his weakness both to himself and to others; but it does not mean that he is under Satan’s dominion and not a true apostle. On the contrary, it makes the power of Christ working in him more transparent. The verb “rest” (episkēnoun) recalls the Old Testament imagery of God dwelling with the people (Num 35:34; see John 1:14). Christ’s powerful presence has made Paul, fragile vessel of clay that he is, his home. “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:20), Paul says. Again he would emphasize to the Corinthians that it is his weakness, not his enchanting heavenly visions, that allows the power of Christ to be perfected and to be revealed more clearly to others. Paul’s weakness plus Christ’s power equals perfect power. He does not glory in his weakness or incapacity as such, except that it makes clear that the extraordinary power displayed in him, in spite of the absence of any apparent glory and success according to the world’s standards, does not come from him but from God. If Paul boasted in his own strength, thinking that by himself he was equal to any task or any calamity, he would then cancel out the power of God in his life. He is therefore most powerful when he is least reliant on his own resources.
Illusions of our own strength cause us to overlook divine power and results in our rebelliousness against God. For this reason God brings low the proud who lift themselves up and believe their own hype that they are special in and of themselves. God requires total, unconditional surrender of our pride. In Paul’s situation God’s grace did not come to him as “a prop for his failing strength, but as the decisive question: Will you surrender, utterly surrender, to God’s dealing—will you know yourself to be a sinner before God?” When we accept our own weakness, we then also learn that we must totally rely upon God. This is why the stake was not some temporary lesson that God would allow quickly to pass. Tannehill comments, “The continuing weakness is necessary so that man might not confuse the power of God with his own power and lose God’s power by attempting to rely on himself.”
We should not neglect that Paul is defending himself and his weakness to the Corinthians, but what he says about himself and his apostolic ministry does not apply only to himself. The principle that the power of God rests on the humble can be found throughout the Old Testament (Isa 57:15). Abraham confesses that he is “nothing but dust and ashes” (Gen 18:27). Moses asks God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Exod 3:11). Gideon asks, “How can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family” (Judg 6:15). David says, “Do you think it is a small matter to become the king’s son-in-law? I’m only a poor man and little known” (1 Sam 18:23). In all these cases we see God’s basic way of operating in the world:
But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him (1 Cor 1:27–29).
This basic principle undermines the whole infrastructure of Corinthian wisdom and boasting and causes the strongholds and high battlements of his competitors’ boasting to collapse (10:5).
The divine answer Paul received to his entreaty means that he now gladly boasts in his weaknesses because they show both God’s grace and power most clearly. Fascination with visions and heavenly journeys are unimportant: it is how God works through his human weakness that is more significant and confirms his legitimacy as an apostle. Paul’s whole apostolic ministry may be summed up in weakness. It does not denote God’s disfavor, but quite the reverse. Lincoln drives home the point:
The existence of the Corinthian church is evidence enough that Paul’s weakness has not stood in the way of the working of God’s power but rather has provided the very conditions in which it can be displayed.… Where the gospel is believed and a church has been founded, there God is at work, and thus in Paul’s apostleship the principle is upheld that ‘it is not the man who commends himself is dokimos [approved], but the man whom the Lord commends (10:18).
Grace brings peace in pain
Paul scores his point with a memorable aphorism, “when I am weak, then I am powerful,” which is the key for interpreting all that he says in this section. The point is the same as in 4:7. The power working in Paul is most clearly seen as coming from God when he appears to be weak.
“I delight in” means that he accepts the way Christ’s power works in his life through his weaknesses. That does not mean that he does not groan under the load of suffering (5:2, 4) and long for the mortal to be swallowed up by life (5:4). But he knows that his suffering follows the precedent of Christ’s suffering. It was something that God enables him to endure, not escape. What he endures, he endures for the sake of Christ, and the paradox of the power of God hidden in his apparent weakness parallels Christ’s weakness and power demonstrated in the crucifixion. Leivestad rightly sees, “As the power of God was revealed through the weaknesses of the crucified Lord for the salvation of the world, so the life and power of the risen Christ are being revealed through his weak apostles in the midst of humiliations and afflictions.” The false apostles keep the Corinthians from seeing how Christ’s power is at work in him and lead them away from the cross of Christ. Paul’s goal is not simply to defend himself, but to help them “see things correctly” through the proper spiritual lens.442
Paul concludes with a brief summary of the hardship lists in the letter. He “delights in” (the word eudokeō can also mean “is pleased”) with his “weaknesses, insults, catastrophes, persecutions, and pressures.” If en hybresin is to be interpreted as “with insults” rather than “with mistreatments” (see 1 Thess 2:2), Paul may have added it because of the rivals’ insolent slander against him as one who was weak, debased, and amateurish. “Catastrophes” refer to the “hardships” he has listed in 4:8–9; 6:4–5; 11:27–28. The “persecutions” are listed in 11:24–25a, and the “pressures” or difficulties (tight situations) are listed in 11:25b–26. The phrase hyper Christou (“for the sake of Christ”) is interpreted by the NIV (RSV, REB) as connected to the phrase, “I delight in.” Paul placed it at the end of the lists of hardships, however; so it is better to connect it to the weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ (NRSV). This means that he is not pleased with them for Christ’s sake but endures them for Christ’s sake.