I have always been interested in the things George Gallup, the founder and director of the Gallup Poll organization, has to say about the religious life of Americans. Recently I came across some remarks he made about prayer. He observed, no doubt rightly, that a great many Americans do pray, and even believe in the power of prayer, but that there is also evidence that our prayers are extremely superficial.
Yesterday we looked at two lessons concerning our burdens arising from Paul’s thorn. We will look at the last three today.
Because Paul's thorn was simultaneously from God as well as from Satan, it had a divine purpose, and that purpose was ultimately good. As far as he himself was concerned, the apostle tells us what this good purpose was. It was “to keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations” (v. 1). And it worked, didn't it? The way he has handled the matter of visions and revelations and boastings in this important section of the letter reveals how genuinely humble this great pioneer missionary and apostle had become.
Not only did Paul have a thorn, but it was so debilitating that this very godly man, a man who had suffered so much without complaining, asked the Lord on three separate occasions to remove it, and the Lord did not. Instead, he replied in what is surely one of the greatest and most encouraging verses in the Bible, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). That is a text for you if you are suffering from some inescapable affliction.
At this point Paul must have been embarrassed that he had been forced to mention even this one vision, because it is against this background—all I have been describing—that he talks about his thorn in the flesh (v. 7).
What was it? No one knows exactly what it was, though there has been a great deal of speculation, as you might imagine. Since he mentions “flesh,” there are people who have supposed this to be a weakness in his moral nature. John Calvin took this view. William Ramsay, the great investigator of Paul's travels, suggested that the thorn was malaria that Paul had picked up in the mosquito-infested swamps of lower, coastal Asia Minor on his first or second missionary journey. Some have suggested epilepsy, which is certainly a physical infirmity. Some have suggested a speech defect, because of his admitting to the Corinthians that he did not speak with eloquence when he was among them (1 Cor. 2:1).
How does Paul deal with this problem of the attacks from the “super-apostles”? The way he does it is marvelous and a great example for those who are trying to deal with difficult people as they themselves pursue Christian work.
First, Paul points to what the detractors must have been pointing to as his failures: the beatings he had received, the stoning at Lystra (Acts 14:19), the shipwrecks, the lack of food, clothing and shelter. “Do you want me to boast like these false apostles?” he seems to be saying. “All right, then, I will boast. But not about my special revelations or God's miraculous interventions in my life. I will boast about my sufferings for his sake. My sufferings are my credentials.”
