Imagine that God gave you a vision of heaven. One moment you sit praying, the next God’s Spirit has lifted you into the heavenlies. You gaze around at the heavenly reality. You see the glories of the Father and the wonders of the seraphim and angels.
Perhaps you catch a taste of what it means to be without sin, to live unencumbered by the desires of the flesh. In ways that you will never find words to express you feel something of the glory of life in the presence of the living God. And then, just as quickly as it began, it’s over.
I wonder, if you had such a vision, who would you tell about it? I wonder, how quickly would you tell them? Would you post it online, phone a friend, talk to your pastor?
I ask the question because something like this happened to one of the most famous Christians in all of history, the apostle Paul. And after it happened, as far as we can tell from the pages of the New Testament, it took him 14 years to share the story.
What’s even more remarkable is that when he finally did share it, it wasn’t so others would know the wonder of his vision, but to remind them of the goodness of knowing Christ in suffering. So just for a few moments, come and reflect on what Paul had to say, and be encouraged by God’s grace to those who suffer in a fallen world.
An unusual boast
Paul shares this experience because of an argument with the Christians in Corinth. Paul spent 18 months in Corinth preaching the gospel and many turned to Christ. He was the founder of the church and their first teacher of gospel truth. But after Paul moved on, other teachers came in. And they started to ask about the legitimacy of Paul’s ministry. They ask the Corinthians why Paul never asked to be paid – was his ministry not worth it, or was he trying to trick them? And they questioned Paul’s truthfulness. After all, he promised to visit them but never turned up.
Paul writes the letter of 2 Corinthians to answer their accusations and to plead with the Corinthians to stop chasing the teaching of the super apostles and to stick with the gospel that he preached to them.
As part of that argument, Paul counters the boasting of the super-apostles by doing a little boasting of his own. But he boasts in the weirdest way possible. He boasts about his weakness (2 Cor 11:30). In God’s kindness, as Paul boasts about his weakness, he teaches us something deep and precious about what it means to belong to Christ.
To see the depths of what he has to say, it’s worth reading 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 for yourself (it’s okay, I’ll wait until you come back).
Just in case you’ve been lazy, the heart of this section is Paul recounting the fact that he was raised up by the Holy Spirit to the seventh heaven and given a vision that words cannot capture. When you first read it, you don’t realise that Paul is speaking about himself, because he talks about this vision as if it happened to someone else.
How do we know that it happened to him? Well, in verse 7 Paul says that God gave him a thorn to keep him being conceited because of the greatness of the vision!
But here is where we need to slow down and observe what Paul says. Before telling us about his vision, Paul says, “I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord” (2 Cor 12:1). That little phrase about visions and revelations is vital. Although Paul doesn’t say it explicitly, we can guess from the rest of what we know of the super-apostles’ boasting that they probably made grand claims about visions and revelations from the Lord leading to their powerful and prophetic ministry. Because they spoke about visions and revelations, Paul feels he needs to speak about them, too. But his point is the opposite of theirs.
Paul speaks about both a vision and a revelation in this passage – but they are entirely disconnected from each other. In fact, everything Paul says about his vision explicitly rejects the idea that he received revelation through it. He doesn’t know whether the experience happened in his body or out of his body. Only God knows that (2 Cor 12:2-3). And what he saw in the vision was something that cannot be told, that a man cannot utter (2 Cor 12:4). In every way possible, Paul’s vision was devoid of revelation.
Do you notice when the revelation did come? The vision was followed by an act of God. Paul went from the heights of heaven to being pierced in his flesh. Paul is “given” (a euphemism for God’s activity) a thorn in his body, which he describes as a messenger of Satan given by God for his good. We don’t know what it was. We do know that Paul cried out for it to be taken away. We also know that it was given to keep him from becoming conceited.
But here’s the main point. This is the moment where Paul receives a revelation. It is in response to the thorn that God speaks. In response to Paul’s cry about the thorn, Jesus says to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9).
God didn’t reveal himself in the heavenly vision; he revealed himself in response to the thorn. And it is the way that God made himself known in the face of the thorn that leads Paul to understand the Christian life more clearly.
“That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10).
What suffering teaches us
So, what are we to make of all of this? I want to suggest three brief lessons.
First, I suspect this passage explains why Paul took 14 years to speak about his heavenly vision, and why it didn’t form the basis of most of his ministry. What God taught Paul most significantly through the vision and the thorn was his need to become like Christ and to depend on Christ.
Paul didn’t learn about following his crucified saviour through experiences of power and triumph and visions. He learned what it was to follow Jesus in the agony of suffering. This is why Paul spends so much time in his letters reminding his readers about what God did through Christ on the cross. Because that is where we learn about following Jesus.
Second, it follows that it is worth reflecting on what we learn through suffering. It is when we suffer that we learn how weak and dependent we truly are. In a world where I can buy food from the shop and avert the impacts of disaster by buying enough insurance, the real truth of human experience is that nothing can ultimately ward off death. We cannot stay the passage of time and decay.
And in the moments when we experience our weakness and the pain of living in a fallen world, we are granted by God an insight into the truth behind the veil. We are weak. We cannot save ourselves. We do not own our present and we cannot control the future. Our only hope is to place ourselves in the loving hands of our gracious Lord, who gave himself to the suffering of death so that we might know the security of life and hope in him.
Third, we should expect that serving others, and sharing Christ with them is likely to be full of moments of giving ourselves with no immediate reward in this world. The experience of loving others and giving up our lives for them is likely to be fraught with the experience of weakness. Whether it is the often-thankless task of turning up at youth group on Friday night to wrestle with kids who listen one moment and lash out the next, or trying to share something of Jesus with our workmate who ends up gossiping about us behind our back, serving others will be about experiencing our own weakness and turning to Jesus for his grace.
If the Lord of all the universe learned obedience through what he suffered, and through that became the perfect source of salvation (Heb 5:8-9), should we expect that the Christian life will be anything less than being humbled by our weakness so that we might learn to depend on him?
In God’s economy, suffering always precedes glory. It is in weakness that we become strong. And so, it is right to be content with weakness. For when I am weak, then I am strong! Praise be to God.
If life is currently hurting, it’s okay. Cling to Jesus! He knows. And he will sustain you and bring you home!
The Rev Dr Paul Grimmond is Dean of Students at Moore College.
