Outside the Camp

Even because of the extra­or­di­nary char­ac­ter of the rev­e­la­tions. There­fore, so that I would not become arro­gant, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a mes­sen­ger of Satan to trou­ble me – so that I would not become arro­gant. I asked the Lord three times about this, that it would depart from me. But the Lord said to me, “My grace is enough for you, for my power is made per­fect in weak­ness.” So then, I will boast most gladly about my weak­nesses, so that the power of Christ may reside in me. There­fore I am con­tent with weak­nesses, with insults, with trou­bles, with per­se­cu­tions and dif­fi­cul­ties for the sake of Christ, for when­ever I am weak, then I am strong. — 1 Corinthi­ans 12:7–10, NET

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A com­mon inter­pre­ta­tion about this pas­sage is that when Paul speaks of hav­ing a “thorn in the flesh” he is speak­ing of some kind of phys­i­cal sick­ness or infir­mity. Poor eye­sight is often sug­gested. How­ever, in the look­ing at this scrip­ture that appears to be a misconception.

It is help­ful first to look at the dif­fer­ent occa­sions in Scrip­ture where sim­i­lar terms to “thorn in the flesh” are used. In each of these cases the term very clearly relates to human adver­saries and not phys­i­cal illness.

“But if you do not drive out the inhab­i­tants of the land before you, then those whom you allow to remain will be irri­tants in your eyes and thorns in your side, and will cause you trou­ble in the land where you will be liv­ing.” — Num­bers 33:55

“know for cer­tain that the Lord our God will no longer drive out these nations from before you. They will trap and ensnare you; they will be a whip that tears your sides and thorns that blind your eyes until you dis­ap­pear from this good land the Lord your God gave you.” — Joshua 23:13

“There­fore I also said, ‘I will not drive them out before you; but they shall be thorns in your side, and their gods shall be a snare to you.’” — Judges 2:3

View­ing this “thorn in the flesh” as adver­saries also works more in har­mony with the verse itself. Paul also calls this “thorn in the flesh”, a “mes­sen­ger of Satan”. The Greek word here trans­lated as “mes­sen­ger” is ange­los. It is alter­na­tively ren­dered as “angel” by some trans­la­tors in cases where they believe the con­text indi­cates a spirit mes­sen­ger rather than a human. The word here translit­er­ated as “Satan” lit­er­ally means “adver­sary, accuser”.

Paul says that this “thorn in the flesh” and this “mes­sen­ger of the Adver­sary” caused him “weak­ness”. Some Bible trans­la­tors cause con­fu­sion by using the Eng­lish word “infir­mity” rather than “weak­ness”. This makes the impres­sion that Paul is refer­ring to phys­i­cal sick­ness. How­ever within the whole con­text of chap­ters eleven and twelve in 2 Corinthi­ans we can see that weak­ness is the proper word choice.

Paul uses the same ter­mi­nol­ogy in 2 Corinthi­ans 11:30 where he speaks about “boast­ing in his weak­nesses (infir­mi­ties)” In his list­ing of these “weak­nesses” in verse 24–27 never once does he men­tion phys­i­cal sick­ness. These “weak­nesses” are var­i­ous per­se­cu­tions and tribu­la­tions that came upon Paul through­out his min­istry. Going now just a few verses later to our sub­ject pas­sage 12:7–10, we can con­tinue the same line of thought as he speaks about “being con­tent with weak­nesses, with insults, with trou­bles, with per­se­cu­tions and dif­fi­cul­ties for the sake of Christ.” Phys­i­cal sick­ness is not implied here.

With this in mind let us look again at this “mes­sen­ger of Satan” that Paul writes about. In under­stand­ing this there are a cou­ple of options. If this is an angelic mes­sen­ger from Satan then we might under­stand this as being a spirit of the Adver­sary that stirred up per­se­cu­tion and oppo­si­tion to Paul’s min­istry. It is my opin­ion though that the con­text of 2 Corinthi­ans chap­ter 12 lends this more to being human agents of Satan stand­ing in oppo­si­tion and slan­der­ing Paul. The rea­son is if we con­tinue on to the very next verse, eleven, we see that Paul is speak­ing about “super-apostles” who caused severe prob­lems for him and the Good News. If we jump back to Chap­ter 11 we can get even more clar­ity on these. Paul writes of such ones saying:

For such peo­ple are false apos­tles, deceit­ful work­ers, dis­guis­ing them­selves as apos­tles of Christ. And no won­der, for even Satan dis­guises him­self as an angel of light. There­fore it is not sur­pris­ing his ser­vants also dis­guise them­selves as ser­vants of right­eous­ness, whose end will cor­re­spond to their actions. — 2 Cor 11:13–15

In these verses Paul likens these “super-apostles” as being ser­vants (or min­is­ters) of Satan. Because in scrip­ture angels are also described as ser­vants (see Hebrews 1:7) I think that this gives much sup­port to Paul’s “angel of Satan” being one (or all) of these “ser­vants of Satan”. This works in the larger con­text of Chap­ter 11 and Chap­ter 12, which is a direct defense of Paul’s min­istry against the charges of these false apostles.

This also clears up why God allowed this “thorn in the flesh” to remain and did not remove it at Paul’s request. Unlike sick­ness Chris­tians are not redeemed from per­se­cu­tion. Paul later writes to Tim­o­thy say­ing, “all who want to live godly lives in Christ Jesus will be per­se­cuted.” (2 Tim­o­thy 3:12) This ful­fills Jesus’ words when he said, “If they per­se­cuted me, they will also per­se­cute you.” (John 15:8)

In look­ing at this, it is inter­est­ing to note that Paul prayed three times that this per­se­cu­tion might be lifted. It struck me that this is the same num­ber of times Jesus in prayer requested that the cup of per­se­cu­tion be removed from him. When it comes to our prayers John writes, “And this is the con­fi­dence that we have before him: that when­ever we ask any­thing accord­ing to his will, he hears us.” (1 John 5:14) It was not God’s will to remove the per­se­cu­tion from Jesus and the Lord sub­mit­ted to that. Like­wise, as a fol­lower of Jesus, it was not accord­ing to the will of God to remove Paul’s per­se­cu­tion. Instead the Lord offered his grace to help Paul endure and over­come these per­se­cu­tions — not that Paul would be glo­ri­fied but that the Lord would be.

When we fol­low after Jesus we can equally expect dis­tress­ing tri­als and even human adver­saries. We may have to con­tend with our own “thorn in the flesh” or “mes­sen­ger of Satan” while we declare the Good News. Almighty God allows such things to hap­pen for a rea­son. Paul under­stood that these weak­nesses helped to make him “per­fect” or “com­plete”. Along these lines James writes, “My broth­ers and sisters,consider it noth­ing but joy when you fall into all sorts of tri­als, because you know that the test­ing of your faith pro­duces endurance. And let endurance have its per­fect effect, so that you will be per­fect and com­plete, not defi­cient in any­thing. (James 1:2–4)

While these tri­als serve to refine us they also bring glory to the Lord. Peter writes, “Such tri­als show the proven char­ac­ter of your faith, which is much more valu­able than gold – gold that is tested by fire, even though it is pass­ing away – and will bring praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” (1 Peter 1:7) When it speaks of Jesus Christ being “revealed” the apos­tle points to the com­ing day of the Lord. How­ever, even today when Jesus grants us the power to over­come adver­saries and obsta­cles his glory is revealed in us. As Paul writes, “But we have this trea­sure in earthen ves­sels, so that the sur­pass­ing great­ness of the power will be of God and not from our­selves. … For we who are alive are con­stantly being handed over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may also be made vis­i­ble in our mor­tal body” (2 Corinthi­ans 4:7,11) No won­der James encour­ages us to con­sider such “thorns” as “noth­ing but joy”!