Issue 1.3 | January 2019
In this Article: how suffering becomes the place in which God subverts evil, even before he ends it.
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. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:7-9)
In the mighty, rugged mountains of New Guinea where I spent most of my youth, a woman crippled from childhood lived a life of considerable achievement — and she did so in the face of challenges at which many strong men would have blanched.
Elinor Young was struck with polio in her youth. By the time she reached her adult years, she was unable to walk without difficulty, and sometimes needed assistance. Nevertheless, Elinor heeded the call she knew God had given to her: to bear the Good News of Jesus to people who knew nothing of him. She found her way to the central cordillera of the second largest island in the world, and to one of the most remote and inhospitable valleys of that vast island, where she served as a missionary among the Kimyal people. Among this nearly-pygmy population, her diminutive stature did not stand out. Her feisty spirit matched theirs. They admired and loved her, and when she needed to travel through their valleys and villages to administer medicines, hair-raising mountain trails stopped neither her nor her Kimyal friends: they gladly put her in a rough-hewn sedan chair and carried her along village to village. In time, and with others helping, Elinor skilfully translated parts of the New Testament of the Bible into Kimyal. In the face of considerable physical weakness, Elinor was, by God’s grace, an unstoppable force of good.
Perhaps, when we read Paul’s intriguing autobiographical reference to the thorn in his flesh in 2 Corinthians, we think of someone like Elinor. When scholars ponder what Paul was referring to, they frequently take their cue from a brief reference in another of his letters, to the Galatians (4:13-15). Here he mentions an illness that severely impeded his work, and which made him a burden to that community. He implies that the illness affected his eyes and perhaps his sight. Other scholars refer to the opening chapters of 2 Corinthians, where Paul speaks of being near death and near despair. Some think this may indicate a period of deep trauma and depression, perhaps a breakdown. Thus Paul’s thorn may have been a debilitating physical ailment, or it may have been a debilitating psychological ailment.
It is an immense encouragement to know that, in the deep suffering that sometimes accompanies bodily weakness and limitation, God’s grace is sufficient and works powerfully in spite of it — that in some way he takes that which sets us back and transforms it into a place in which tremendous good takes place.
However, this may not be the only way to understand Paul’s thorn. Paul is quite intentionally not specific about what exactly his thorn was. His silence on this actually draws us into his experience. Had he been specific, the vast majority hearing his words would not relate to them, thinking only, perhaps, “I’m grateful I’ve never experienced that.” Instead, Paul’s story speaks to a broader range of human experience than whatever he himself suffered. His thorn speaks to us all, in all our variety of weaknesses.
At the same time, while Paul is not specific about what his thorn was, he is quite specific about its nature, and the forces involved with it. In this article we will look at the three clear dimensions of his thorn that he describes. Paying attention to what he is explicit about, we find Paul has much to teach us about the struggles we each face. His story takes us into dimensions of the human condition and human experience that are perhaps more troubling and more crippling than bodily debilitation alone: and to this, Paul speaks a word of grace and hope to the very worst that a person can face.
The Animal in You and Me
Paul is specific, firstly, about the fact that this “thorn” is in his “flesh” (sarx). Sarx has a range of meanings with Paul and other New Testament (NT) writers. Occasionally Paul uses flesh metaphorically; for example, as a synonym for kin. More frequently, sarx refers simply to bodily flesh, neutrally; without negative overtones. Most interpreters understand Paul’s thorn in this physical sense, that by the phrase a “thorn in my flesh”, he refers to a physical ailment.
However, in the vast majority of cases, Paul uses sarx as an antonym to the Spirit (as do other NT writers, e.g. in some of the letters of Peter and John). The flesh itself is still neutral, but to live “in the flesh” is not. To live “in the flesh” is to live human life apart from the enlivening of the Spirit. My sense in reading Paul’s most frequent use of sarx is that he means something like human life lived primarily from within our animal/bodily nature.
A “fleshly” (or “animal”) way of living is thus routinely associated by several NT writers with being driven by our appetites and desires, the fruit of which is destructive behaviour, most predominantly sexual immorality, greed and interpersonal conflict (e.g. 1 Corinthians 3:3, Galatians 5:17-19, 2 Peter 2:10, 1 John 2:16, see also James 4:1-3) : in other words, self-serving behaviours that flow out of our need to gratify base, self-interested desires.
Ultimately, as Paul wrote elsewhere, these instincts enslave us. They corrupt our human nature and, in the end, bring about the total breakdown of human existence in death (Titus 3:3, Galatians 6:8, Romans 8:6 & 13). It is from this that God has rescued us by means of the death and resurrection of Christ.
Which brings us back to Paul’s experience of a thorn in his flesh. It would appear to be quite possible, if not likely, given his typical use of the word sarx, that Paul does not necessarily refer to a physical ailment (or not only to a physical ailment), but to an intolerable, seemingly insurmountable “torment” (12:7) in the areas of his animal instincts, his sin instinct, with its self-serving desires, appetites and inclinations.
This is not a matter of God accommodating sin. Every person’s journey with sin is life-long. Paul’s struggle brings us face-to-face with how God triumphs over sin. If Paul is speaking of a thorn in his “animal nature”, then this story is about how God turns one’s as-yet-unresolved sin issues into redemptive use. If it is not the case that Christ makes his power perfect in our sin-weakness, where does that leave us, who still wrestle with sin? I have not met a single Christian without ingrained patterns or habits of sin that at a particular point in time seem impossible to shake.
I think here of a friend with whom I have walked for some years now, a Christian man who loves God and his wife, who serves with maturity and wisdom in leadership, but whose struggle with a particular addiction is not yet behind him (like Paul, I will not name it, so as to not miss the point — most of us face addiction of one kind or another). We know now that addiction is not only an expression of sinful appetite, but that, like a drug, it becomes established via biological processes within the body such that no amount of good intentions can break it: the flesh reaps corruption. We know that addiction has roots which, at their deepest point, have little to do with the object of addiction, and much more to do with broken or absent human connection. Yet the starting point of addiction is the flesh. Addiction indicates disobedience and disability together.
It may be that Scripture’s word to my friend, and to the seven billion others on this planet who struggle routinely with their own spiritual disability, is a profound word of redemption: that into those areas which reflect the deep brokenness of our human nature, even into our struggle with sin, comes the power and grace of God. Most significantly, his power is not necessarily made perfect by instantly eliminating the struggle or the sin. Rather, because his Spirit who is present in us as we struggle is never passive, Christ’s great power will eventually be revealed as having been deeply at work all along, making wholly good that which was intended for evil. How this happens will be explored below.
Another individual’s decade-long struggle with addiction was, during those shadow-years, used by God to cultivate her deep dependency on the Lord. A liberating resolution did eventually come, but it came only when she was mature enough to cope with the spiritual surgery God would use to address the actual roots of her addiction (for the addiction was the result of her futile attempts to manage the deep wounds of past traumas from her animal-place, from the flesh).
Again, this is not an accommodation of sin by God: it is the upending of sin. It situates the presence and activity of sin in our lives within the total authority of Christ, which was revealed in his triumph on the cross over all evil powers and all sin. It is not that Jesus is comfortable with our sin, but that it remains subject to his authority while he works towards a larger redemptive purpose.
Messengers of Evil
Secondly, Paul is specific about the fact that the thorn in the flesh has come to him by way of the demonic, a “messenger of Satan”. In Greek, angelos means messenger, but it is regularly used in the NT to refer to an angel, who is a messenger of the divine or the supernatural.
Paul’s suffering is not solely a manifestation of his own weakness or of his failings or flesh. Whether his debilitation is in his body or mind, or in his fleshly instincts and desires, it is abetted by Satan. Paul suffers not at the hands of sin or sickness alone (or a combination of the two), but at the malicious hand of Satan, who intends to use it to harm him: literally, to torment him (12:7), which is perhaps how most of us experience such persistent debilitations.
This broadens our horizons when we consider our sufferings. It helps us to understand that what we’re up against is not only within us. The spiritual Wild West of a world at odds with God includes supernatural powers bent on a total degradation of our lives, of our very persons. To draw humans back into an animal-place is to set them up for this degradation. To degrade humans is to degrade the Image of God (ultimately, to degrade humans is to set devastation upon God’s creation [Genesis 3-9]).
Today, much Western culture celebrates innate inclination and instinct. It vaunts appetites and desires, rather than scrutinizing them with an eye for their distortions, or managing them wisely towards healthier outcomes. The great danger to Christians in any society is to go along with their society in assuming that what society believes about reality is true — which is to fail to recognize the flesh/animal drives inevitably at work within any given cultural mindset, and the way these are being actively energized by dark powers intent on the devastation of all creation, starting with humans. To fail to recognize these flesh/animal dynamics is to continue to be subject to them.
There is another danger that is equally of the flesh, but is cloaked in the language and actions of our faith in Christ: and that is when we seek to manage our disability or discomfort through our own invocation of Christ’s authority over sin, illness and the demonic. In this case, we use our rightful authority in Christ merely as a tool to alleviate our own discomfort or pain, rather than seeking first the glory of Christ in that situation. We wrest his Lordship back to ourselves for the sake of ourselves, which shows up most often in a glib exercise of a ministry of healing, not realizing that instantaneous healing is only one of several diverse tools in Christ’s tool-set, and that he may have another tool in mind than the one we, in our sense of pain-fuelled urgency, have in ours.
The Spirit of Christ will tell us when something is to be acted upon or spoken against in the authority of Christ, and when it is to be endured: for even that which we endure remains under the authority of Christ. Paul was given only one answer to his repeated pleas to God to remove this debilitating thorn: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (12:9). This is rarely the word you or I (in our animal nature) want to hear. But the place of endurance in the face of spiritual or bodily or mental pain is the place in which we will discover how profoundly God’s victory empties such things of their power, even before they are resolved. Paul says in Romans (5:3) that endurance produces character, and character produces hope … which bring us to our last point.
The Gift of Thorns
Paul is specific, thirdly, about the fact that the thorn in his flesh is a gift. Even though his problem in the flesh is debilitating and discouraging, and even though it is influenced or leveraged by the demonic with evil intent … “it was given to me” (12:7), a phrase which clearly has God as the main subject. In God’s faithful and sovereign hands, through his Spirit’s grace present in Paul’s life, this matter of sin/sickness and of evil presence becomes a place of redemption, a work of grace: a rich treasure of a gift.
Specifically, this gift goes beyond what an instant resolution or healing of the presenting problem could achieve. Paul says the thorn in his flesh is to keep him from descending into arrogance (12:7). In God’s economy, there is an exponentially greater risk to Paul from ego-inflating experiences (12:2-4) than from whatever it is that he is suffering. In fact, the very reason that the thorn is such a gift to Paul is precisely the fact that it is in his flesh. Where else would a Christian want God to target if they are looking to become more whole (and more holy)? That which threatens to destroy Paul — the enlivening of his animal instinct, his flesh — now has a debilitating thorn in it, an irritant, a torment. This means Paul’s flesh will now struggle to get the vitality it so desperately wants. The thorn opposes the very force that drives personal corruption and destruction. Jesus is actively subverting that which has been subverting us.
This may bring us closer to understanding what Paul means when he talks elsewhere about Christians having “crucified the flesh” (Galatians 5:24). It would not be possible for Paul to do this to himself. It is beyond his capabilities. He needs a Saviour, and his saviour has taken the efforts of Satan and sin and turned them into a gift, a thorn, that will help put to death what needs to die, so that true, abundant life will come.
Here is where the cross of Jesus meets us directly in our daily, often painful lives. What had its conception in brokenness and evil, and was intended for evil, becomes upended by the powerful grace of God in Christ. It becomes a means by which our flesh (including our ego) is given the brutal treatment it needs if we are to possess, at the roots of our being, the purity, love, humility — and the irrepressible power of life — that is in Christ.
The Undoing of Adam
Christ’s power in weakness is not just for the Elinors of this world, those whose bodies are disadvantaged and could do with some extra help. By separating out the essential components of Paul’s “thorn” from the specifics of what he himself may have suffered, we find solace — for you and I may or may not suffer disability, or depression, or a mental breakdown, or addiction, but we each have our own sin, brokenness, and fleshly inclinations which function as a debilitating thorn in our sides.
But no, the thorn is not in our sides, it is in our flesh. Now that Christ is present in our sin and suffering, it is only in a temporary and surface sense that our lives are being debilitated by these things. At the deepest level, it is our flesh that is taking the real hammering: to its destruction. What is in fact unfolding is our our redemption and, eventually, total and eternal transformation. I noted earlier that the thorn has to be endured. We endure precisely because the thing will pass. Christ endured the cross, not for the sake of simply enduring pain itself, but because of “the joy set before him” (Hebrews 12:3). We follow in his steps “keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus” (12:2), and we too endure, not out of grim stoicism, but out of hope:
Endure your suffering as discipline; God is treating you as sons and daughters …Now all discipline seems painful at the time, not joyful. But later it produces the fruit of peace and righteousness for those trained by it. (Hebrews 12:7, 11)
Instead of degrading or destroying you and me, the evil from within us and the evil sent against us by Satan, will, in God’s once-crucified hands, enhance us. It will transform, in God’s wise use of time, exactly that which is ugly. The animal is being undone, the Image of God is emerging. One day you and I will be complete (Philippians 1:6). Hallelujah!
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