2 Corinthians 12

Today’s Passage: 2 Corinthians 12

This is the summit of the letter, and it is reached by a strange road. Paul has been forced into boasting by men who dazzled the Corinthians with their credentials, and he has already turned the whole business upside down by boasting about beatings, shipwrecks, hunger, and a humiliating escape over a city wall in a basket. Now he goes one step further. He mentions, at last, the thing that would have silenced any rival in the ancient world: fourteen years ago he was caught up into the third heaven and heard words that no human being is permitted to repeat. And then, having said it, he refuses to make anything of it. He tells the story in the third person, as though it happened to somebody else, and he will not boast about that man except in his weaknesses. From there the chapter descends into the valley where most of us actually live. There was a thorn given him in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment him. He begged the Lord three times to take it away. The Lord did not take it away. What the Lord gave instead is the sentence that has held up more suffering saints than perhaps any other line in Scripture. The rest of the chapter comes back down to earth: Paul’s aching love for a church that loves him less in return, his refusal to be a financial burden, and his fear of what he will find when he arrives for the third time.

As you read, hold this: God’s answer to three unanswered prayers was not the removal of the thorn but a promise, that His grace is enough right now and His power is brought to its full strength in weakness.

2 Corinthians 12:1–4 (BSB)

¹ I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to gain, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. ² 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 it I do not know, but God knows. ³ And I know that this man—whether in the body or out of it I do not know, but God knows— ⁴ was caught up to Paradise. The things he heard were inexpressible, things that man is not permitted to tell.

Notice first how reluctantly he comes to it. “I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to gain,” which is a man doing something he finds distasteful because his people have left him no other way to be heard. Then the story, and it is told at arm’s length. “I know a man in Christ.” He does not say “I was caught up,” though everything in the passage makes plain that he is speaking of himself. He holds the experience away from his own name like something too holy to be used as an argument. Fourteen years before this letter, so somewhere in the quiet years between his conversion and the great missionary journeys, he was caught up to the third heaven, to Paradise, into the very presence of God. And then look at what he actually reports about it. Almost nothing. Twice he says he does not know whether he was in the body or out of it, and both times he adds the same four words: but God knows. Whatever happened, Paul could not explain the mechanics of it, and he was content to leave the explanation with the One who did. As for the content, he tells us only that the things he heard were inexpressible, and that a man is not permitted to tell them. Two reasons, and they stand side by side. Human words could not carry it, and God had not licensed its telling.

Sit with how much this passage declines to satisfy us. Every instinct we have wants the description: what did the third heaven look like, what did he hear, what did he see. The apostle who is in a position to tell us says he will not, and he moves on within two verses to talk about a chronic affliction instead. That reticence is not shyness; it is obedience, and it is a rebuke to our appetite for the spectacular. Where God has drawn a curtain, the godly response is not to peer around it. Understand, then, what this text will not do. It will not serve as a warrant for the accounts of heavenly tours that circulate in every generation, because the one man in Scripture who was actually taken there refused to describe it and told us plainly that the telling was not permitted. Moses said something long ago that has settled this question for God’s people ever since.

"The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, so that we may follow all the words of this law." Deuteronomy 29:29 (BSB)

There is a mercy in that. God has told us what we need, fully and sufficiently, in His written Word, and He has kept the rest for Himself. We are not left guessing about anything that bears on our salvation or our obedience. And the curiosity that gnaws at us about the things He has withheld is quieted best not by speculation but by trust in the character of the One who withheld them.

2 Corinthians 12:5–7 (BSB)

⁵ I will boast about such a man, but I will not boast about myself, except in my weaknesses. ⁶ Even if I wanted to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will credit me with more than he sees in me or hears from me, ⁷ or because of these surpassingly great revelations. So to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.

Here is the hinge of the whole chapter. Paul says he could boast about the man who went to Paradise without telling a single lie, because it happened, and yet he refuses. His reason is worth weighing carefully: “so no one will credit me with more than he sees in me or hears from me.” He wants to be measured by the plain evidence of his life and his preaching, and by nothing else. A private experience that no one can check is exactly the sort of thing a man can hide behind, and Paul will not hide. If you want to assess him, look at how he lives and listen to what he preaches. That is a standard the false apostles could not survive, and it is one every teacher of God’s Word should still be willing to be held to. And then, having set aside the one boast that would have won the argument, he tells them what he will boast about instead: his weaknesses (ἀσθένεια) astheneia, pronounced as-THEN-ay-ah. Strong's G769, weakness, frailty, lack of strength. Astheneia is simply a lack of strength. In the Gospels it is the ordinary word for sickness and infirmity, the condition of the people who were carried to Jesus on mats, and it covers bodily frailty, exhaustion, and the whole range of human incapacity. It carries no dignity in it at all. In a culture built on displays of power, astheneia was what you concealed. Paul uses this word and its family more than a dozen times in this letter, and by the end he has made it the very badge of authentic ministry. Understand what he is not saying. He is not romanticizing failure, and he is not suggesting that frailty is somehow good in itself. Sickness is still sickness and limitation is still limitation. What he has discovered is that God has chosen to pour His power through cracked vessels on purpose, so that no one watching could ever mistake the source. Earlier in this same letter he put it plainly: we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surpassingly great power is from God and not from us. So the thing you would most like to hide may be the very place He has chosen to display Himself. That is not a consolation prize. That is the design. . That is the word the rest of the chapter turns on, and it is the last word any first-century orator would have wanted attached to his name.

Then comes the thorn, and notice the careful way the sentence is built. It was given, which is the language of a gift and points past every second cause to the hand of God. It was in the flesh. It was a messenger of Satan, sent to torment him, and the verb is a rough one, meaning to beat with the fist. And it had a stated purpose, repeated at both ends of the sentence: to keep him from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations. Two hands are on this affliction at once, and Scripture is not embarrassed by that. Satan intends to batter a servant of God into uselessness. God intends to keep that servant humble and usable, and He is the one who governs the whole affair, exactly as He did in the opening chapters of Job, where the adversary could go no further than the leash allowed. So what was the thorn (σκόλοψ) skolops, pronounced SKOH-lops. Strong's G4647, thorn, stake, splinter. Skolops did not mean the small prickle of a rose bush. In older Greek it meant a stake, the kind driven into the ground to impale, and in common usage it came to mean a splinter or a sharp fragment lodged in the body. Whatever this was, it was not a minor irritation. It was something driven in, and it stayed. As for its identity, believers have offered good suggestions for centuries without settling it. Many have thought of a recurring physical illness, perhaps a fever picked up in his travels, or something disfiguring enough to be a trial to those who heard him preach. Others point to his eyes, since he told the Galatians that it was an illness that first brought him to preach among them, that his condition was a trial to them, and that they would have torn out their own eyes and given them to him if they could. Others take the phrase “messenger of Satan” at face value and understand a person, an opponent who dogged his steps and battered his reputation wherever he went. Each reading has something to commend it, and none of them can be proved. And here is the thing worth seeing: Scripture withholds it deliberately. Had the thorn been named, only the people with that particular affliction would have felt this passage was written for them. Because it is unnamed, the widow, the man in chronic pain, the parent of a suffering child, and the believer worn down by a relentless critic have all found their own trouble in this word, and have all been met by the same sufficient grace. ? We are not told, and we should be honest about that rather than clever.

2 Corinthians 12:8–9 (BSB)

⁸ Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. ⁹ But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest on me.

Slow down here. This is the mountaintop of the letter, and you should not walk over it quickly. First, Paul prayed. He did not grit his teeth and call it maturity. He pleaded, and the word carries urgency, and he did it three times, which in the language of Scripture means he prayed until he had prayed it through. Do not miss that the apostle who wrote most of our New Testament asked God to remove a hardship, and asked again, and asked a third time. Praying for relief is not a failure of faith. Our Lord Himself, in the garden, went away three times and asked that the cup might pass.

"Going a little farther, He fell facedown and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me. Yet not as I will, but as You will.”" Matthew 26:39 (BSB)

Second, and this must be said plainly: the thorn was not removed. God said no to a man He loved, a man in the middle of the most fruitful ministry in church history, and He said it three times. Understand carefully what that does and does not mean. It does not mean the prayer failed, and it does not mean there was some defect in Paul that blocked the answer. The prayer was heard and answered, and the answer was not the one requested. God gave something instead of the removal, and what He gave was a word about Himself. Be very slow, when you look at your own unanswered prayer, to assume you know God’s reason. He told Paul His reason. He has not promised to tell you yours, and He has nowhere said that He always has the same reason with everyone. What He has said, and said to every one of His children, is what He said next.

“My grace is sufficient (ἀρκέω) arkeō, pronounced ar-KEH-oh. Strong's G714, to be sufficient, to be enough. Arkeō means to be enough, to suffice, to ward off want. It was an ordinary word about supply: enough bread for the crowd, enough oil for the lamps, enough resources to meet the need in front of you. Its adjective is the word behind Paul’s contentment in Philippians, where he says he has learned in whatever state he is to be self-sufficient, and behind the counsel elsewhere that godliness with contentment is great gain. Two things in the Lord’s sentence deserve your attention. The first is the tense: arkei, it is enough, right now, in the present. The grace is not being promised for later. It is being reported as a present fact about your current situation. The second is the pronoun. My grace. The sufficiency is not in Paul’s stamina or his spiritual technique; it is in something that belongs to Christ and is handed over freely. That is why this line has carried so many believers who had nothing left of their own. Enough is not the same as easy, and enough is not the same as pleasant. But enough is enough, and the One who measures out what is enough has never once misjudged it. for you.” Weigh the tense of it. Not it will be sufficient one day, when you are stronger or further along. It is sufficient. Present, continuous, already true this morning before you feel it. The grace is not a supply held in reserve for some future emergency; it is a supply that is meeting you now, in the exact circumstance you asked to be delivered from and were not.

“For My power is perfected (τετέλεσται) tetelestai, pronounced teh-TEH-leh-stai. Strong's G5055, to finish, complete, accomplish fully. Teleō does not mean “made flawless” in the way we use the word perfect. It means to bring a thing to its intended end, to complete it, to carry it all the way to the goal it was made for. It is the family of words behind telos, the aim or finish of a matter, and it is the word the Lord Jesus cried from the cross, tetelestai, it is finished, meaning brought to its appointed completion. So the sentence is not saying that God’s power has some defect that our weakness repairs. It is saying that God’s power reaches its designed goal, its full and visible expression, in a weak vessel. Think of how a lamp is completed by the dark. Nothing is added to the flame; the darkness simply lets it be seen for what it is. And notice where this points. The pattern is not first of all Paul’s; it is Christ’s. Paul says a chapter later that He was crucified in weakness, yet lives by God’s power. The cross looked like the collapse of everything, and it was the hour when the power and wisdom of God reached their appointed end. If that is how God saved the world, we should not be astonished that it is also how He runs the lives of the people He saved. in weakness.” This is the reason underneath the refusal, and it is glorious. God did not decline to remove the thorn because He was indifferent, or busy, or unable. He declined because there was something He intended to do that could only be done through a weak man. The strength of Christ does not merely tolerate our frailty; it comes to its full expression in it. And then watch what Paul does with this, because it is not what you would expect. He does not say, “Very well, I will endure it.” There is no sigh of resignation anywhere in the sentence. He says, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest on me.” Gladly. He now wants the very thing he begged three times to be rid of, because he has seen what it is for. The word rendered “rest on” is the word for a tent pitched over something, the same root behind the tabernacle where the glory of God came down and dwelt among His people. The weakness became the place where the presence settled. Blessed be God, who does not waste our afflictions but pitches His tent on them.

2 Corinthians 12:10 (BSB)

¹⁰ That is why, for the sake of Christ, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

He widens it now from the one thorn to the whole catalogue, and the list is not a pleasant one. Weaknesses, which is bodily and personal frailty. Insults, which is the sting of being publicly belittled, and Corinth had supplied him plenty of that. Hardships, persecutions, difficulties, which is the word for being hemmed in with no room to move. And the verb he sets over all of it is delight, the word for taking pleasure in a thing, being well pleased with it. That is a startling word, and it would be an offensive one if it stood alone. It does not stand alone. Four words hold it up: “for the sake of Christ.” Paul does not delight in pain as pain, and nothing here asks you to pretend that suffering is not suffering or that grief is not grief. He delights in these things because of what they are for and Whose they are, because every one of them empties him further of himself and leaves more room for the power of Christ. And so the paradox that closes the argument: “For when I am weak, then I am strong.” Not when I feel strong. Not when the trouble lifts. The strength arrives precisely at the end of his own resources, because it was never his strength to begin with. He had learned this early and said it in the first chapter of this letter, that he felt he was under the sentence of death so that he would not trust in himself but in God who raises the dead. The lesson is the same. God empties us so that He may fill us with something better than ourselves.

2 Corinthians 12:11–13 (BSB)

¹¹ I have become a fool, but you drove me to it. In fact, you should have commended me, since I am in no way inferior to those “super-apostles,” even though I am nothing. ¹² The marks of a true apostle—signs, wonders, and miracles—were performed among you with great perseverance. ¹³ In what way were you inferior to the other churches, except that I was not a burden to you? Forgive me this wrong!

The mountaintop behind him, Paul turns and looks at the church that made this whole speech necessary, and you can hear the weariness. “I have become a fool, but you drove me to it.” He should never have had to say any of it. They knew him. They were his own converts, and they sat there while visiting men ran him down and said nothing in his defense. “In fact, you should have commended me.” And then, in one breath, both halves of the truth about himself: he is in no way inferior to the celebrated super-apostles, and he is nothing. Both are true, and a man who can hold them together at the same time has learned something very deep about grace.

Then verse twelve, which is the plainest statement in Scripture about what the miraculous signs were for. Notice that Paul does not appeal to signs and wonders as evidence of spiritual maturity, or of a deeper Christian life, or of anything that could be sought after for its own sake. He appeals to them as credentials, as the marks that identified a true apostle over against a counterfeit one. God authenticated His messengers by doing through them what only He could do. This is the settled conviction of this house, and it is right to say it here once and plainly: those miraculous sign gifts were given for the founding of the church and the laying of the apostolic foundation, and they ceased with the completion of the New Testament Scriptures, so that we look for no new revelation binding on anyone’s conscience. The writer to the Hebrews says the same thing about the same signs and in the same past tense.

"how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? This salvation was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard Him, and was affirmed by God through signs, wonders, various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to His will." Hebrews 2:3–4 (BSB)

The household is built, Paul says elsewhere, on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone, and a foundation is laid once. Say this with charity. There are dear brothers and sisters who love the same Lord and read these verses differently, and they are not to be mocked. And do not let the argument crowd out the chapter, because it is not what this chapter is about. Paul mentions the signs in one sentence and spends ten on a thorn that God would not remove. Even here his emphasis falls elsewhere, on the phrase most people skip: the signs were done “with great perseverance,” which is to say that the miracles were performed by a man being beaten and stoned and driven from city to city, and the perseverance was as much a mark of the true apostle as the miracles were. Then a flash of the old irony in verse thirteen. The one thing the Corinthians got less of than other churches was a bill, and Paul asks their pardon for it with a straight face.

2 Corinthians 12:14–15 (BSB)

¹⁴ See, I am ready to come to you a third time, and I will not be a burden, because I am not seeking your possessions, but you. For children should not have to save up for their parents, but parents for their children. ¹⁵ And for the sake of your souls, I will most gladly spend my money and myself. If I love you more, will you love me less?

The irony drops away and the father comes out. “I am not seeking your possessions, but you.” There is the difference between a hireling and a shepherd, stated in seven words, and it is the test that exposed the super-apostles for what they were. They wanted what the Corinthians had. Paul wanted the Corinthians. And the image he reaches for is the family: children should not have to save up for their parents, but parents for their children. He had told them before that though they might have ten thousand guardians, they did not have many fathers, and that in Christ Jesus he had become their father through the gospel. A father does not present his children with an invoice. He saves for them, and spends on them, and thinks nothing of it.

Then the sentence that shows what this cost him. “For the sake of your souls, I will most gladly spend my money and myself.” He will spend, and he will be spent. He is willing to be poured out until there is nothing left of him, and to do it gladly, for a congregation that had listened to men who called him unimpressive. And the question that follows is one of the most quietly wounded lines in all his letters: “If I love you more, will you love me less?” He does not answer it. He does not need to; they knew the answer, and so does anyone who has ever loved someone who did not love them back in kind. Yet notice that the question does not slow him down. The love is not offered on condition of return. That is how our Lord loved, and it is how those who belong to Him learn, slowly and painfully, to love as well.

2 Corinthians 12:16–18 (BSB)

¹⁶ Be that as it may, I was not a burden to you; but crafty as I am, I caught you by trickery. ¹⁷ Did I exploit you by anyone I sent you? ¹⁸ I urged Titus to visit you, and I sent our brother with him. Did Titus exploit you in any way? Did we not walk in the same Spirit and follow in the same footsteps?

Here Paul quotes the whisper that had been going around, and he quotes it in the voice of his accusers so that they can hear how it sounds out loud. The charge was ingenious and utterly cynical: since Paul refused their support, he must be running some deeper scheme, pretending to be free of charge while secretly siphoning off the collection he was gathering for Jerusalem. A crafty man, they said, catching them by trickery. That is what a suspicious heart does with an act of pure generosity. It cannot believe the gift is a gift, so it hunts for the angle.

His answer is not indignation but evidence, and he puts it in the form of questions they can check for themselves. Did anyone he sent them take advantage of them? Titus had been among them, and the brother with him, and the Corinthians knew exactly how those men had behaved. Everything about that mission had been arranged in the open, with more than one man handling the money, precisely so that no accusation of this kind could ever stick. There is a lesson in it for anyone entrusted with what belongs to God’s people: honesty is not enough by itself, and a servant of Christ should arrange his affairs so that his integrity can be seen and verified by others. And then the quiet dignity of the closing question, “Did we not walk in the same Spirit and follow in the same footsteps?” Paul and Titus had the same manner because they had the same Master. That, in the end, is the only defense any minister has, a life the church has watched for years.

2 Corinthians 12:19–21 (BSB)

¹⁹ Have you been thinking all along that we were making a defense to you? We speak before God in Christ, and all of this, beloved, is to build you up. ²⁰ For I am afraid that when I come, I may not find you as I wish, and you may not find me as you wish. I fear that there may be quarreling, jealousy, rage, rivalry, slander, gossip, arrogance, and disorder. ²¹ I am afraid that when I come again, my God will humble me before you, and I will be grieved over many who have sinned earlier and have not repented of their acts of impurity, sexual immorality, and debauchery.

Before the chapter closes he corrects their whole reading of the last three chapters. They had been sitting as a jury, listening to a defendant plead his case. He tells them the courtroom was never theirs. “We speak before God in Christ,” which means he has been answering to a higher bench the entire time and they were never the judges they imagined themselves to be. And then the word that softens everything: “beloved.” All of it, the irony and the boasting and the fool’s speech, was not self-defense at all. It was construction work. It was for them.

His fear is not for his reputation but for what he will find. Read the list in verse twenty and notice that every item is a sin of the tongue and the temper, the sins that quietly dismantle a congregation from the inside: quarreling, jealousy, rage, rivalry, slander, gossip, arrogance, disorder. Not one of them would have looked scandalous from the street, and together they are enough to ruin a church. Then verse twenty-one goes deeper still, and here Paul’s heart is fully exposed. He does not say he fears being embarrassed. He says he fears that God will humble him before them and that he will be grieved over many who sinned before and have not repented of impurity, sexual immorality, and debauchery. Understand what grieves him. Not that unbelievers in Corinth lived that way, but that people in the church had, and had never turned from it. Sin unrepented of is not a small matter, and a faithful shepherd cannot shrug at it. Yet see how he frames even this: he is not sharpening a rod, he is grieving in advance and giving them time to repent before he arrives. That is love, not laxity, and the two have never been the same thing.