Christ's Power In My Weakness

I am meditating upon the Biblical revelation about Satan and the demonic forces under his control. Today I invite you to consider what the Apostle Paul calls his thorn in the flesh. Here's what he writes:

To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 2 Corinthians 12:7-9

These Bible verses continue to be much discussed. Here are some of the questions that arise:

• Who gave Paul his thorn in his flesh? 
• What was the nature of this thorn? 
• Why does he call it a messenger of Satan? Did Satan give it to him? And was it a live messenger or merely a message? 
• He pleads for the Lord Jesus to take it away and receives an answer. But how did the answer come? 
• What is grace promised? Is it the same as Christ's power?

In this chapter Paul refers to great revelations that occurred fourteen years earlier when he was caught up to the third heaven. He doesn't know whether it was a bodily catching up or something that he experienced in his spirit, without his body. That raises a whole host of questions about out of body experiences (OBE). There are even people who claim they can teach you certain techniques for triggering an OBE and, as you may have guessed, there are many books about near-death and out-of-body experiences. The whole thing is also called "astral projection." I hesitate to give you links to this information, lest you think that the Scripture and God's revelation speak of the same thing and approve of it, for it is but another of the many ways by which the demonic powers confuse and seduce people. For Paul this was an experience "in Christ," one reborn and renewed by Christ's saving grace (2 Cor. 5:17-21). It was not an experience he gained by his own magical or scientific technique.

Paul's experience was not something he sought. He writes about it in a passive tense. He hesitates even to name himself as the one who was caught up, although it is obvious he speaks about himself as the one who received these revelations. Where is this "third heaven" to which Paul journeyed? I have written some detailed Blogs about these questions. See Heaven and Parallel Universes and What And Where Is Heaven? Essentially Paul is saying that the third heaven is outside our atmosphere and beyond the heavens or universe out there among the stars. He was taken beyond the second and into a third heaven, into the very presence of God. There certain things were revealed to him that no mere mortal may discuss. Beyond that, we have no information about how it happened or where the third heaven is.

When did this happen? Paul says it took place "fourteen years ago". Some suggest that this occurred fourteen years prior to writing this letter when Paul was stoned and left for dead in Lystra (Acts 14:19-20). Near death, he traveled to the third heaven, but returned to his body and continued his mission work. Others suggest this was part of Paul's Damascus trance (Acts 22:17-21). We cannot speak about the incident Paul describes here with certainty, however, since there are no other references to it in the New Testament. It may indeed have been a unique experience and not refer to anything mentioned in the book of Acts.

All this is background to our questions about Paul's thorn and Satan's messenger.

The word for messenger in Greek is our word 'angel'. Some speculate that Satan sent a particular demon, a fallen angel, to attack the Apostle. We know that demonic influence upon unbelievers and believers alike can be great. They who give themselves to this influence can also eventually become completely possessed by one or many demons (Mark 5:7-15). In Paul's case, the demons operated through men and the attacks were relentless.

What was the nature of those attacks? He defines them in v. 10 when he writes "For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities." In the previous chapter we read of the Judaizers who sought to discredit his apostleship and thus undermine the work of the Gospel among the Gentiles (2 Cor. 11:13-15). They said, "His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account." Again and again Paul was mocked, reproached, persecuted, stoned, shipwrecked, etc. He details these experiences in the previous chapter (2 Corinthians 11:23-33).

In addition to the organized opposition he encountered Paul had some kind of physical weakness (Galatians 4:13-14). Was it poor eyesight (Galatians 6:11)? Did he have a high pitched voice? Did he lack in oratory skills (1 Corinthians 2:1-4)? Did he have malaria? We don't know. The point, however, is that Paul's demon attacked him both physically and spiritually until he was beaten down to the point of exhaustion.

The lesson for us today? Satan and  his minions want to devour you like a ravenous lion devours its prey (1 Peter 5:8). He wants nothing less than to overwhelm your heart and soul with disappointment, despair and hopelessness. He wants to weigh you down until you can no longer arise. He wants to convince you that life is meaningless and that there is nothing for which to hope. He wants you to curse God and die (Job 2:9). Once that happens he has you for all eternity and can forever feed upon your wretched and  helpless soul.

To accomplish this the demons attack us when we are physically and spiritually weak. They taunt and tempt us to abandon our faith in God and His undeserved mercy in Christ. In these times we do well to learn with Paul to rejoice in our weaknesses and throw ourselves completely upon Christ's mercy. Then we will learn of Christ's power at work in us and not our own. Then will we learn of the strength and power that does not reside in us, but comes from beyond us. Then will we learn to say with Paul, "I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me" (2 Corinthians 12:9). 

More on Spiritual Warfare

In recent posts I invited you to join me in researching the spiritual warfare that went on in the 20th century and continues to the present. All this is in preparation for a paper I have agreed to present to a group of pastors the first part of next year. 

Before going further, I want to take another look at what the Apostle Paul says about spiritual warfare, especially in Ephesians 6:10-20. 

Let's look at the question of wrestling in v. 12, a Greco-Roman sport that continues to the present. Learning to wrestle in that violent manner was part of every soldier's training in those ancient days. Wrestling, like much of ancient warfare, was a one on one affair, a contest between two in which each tries to throw the other. The contest was decided when the victor was able to throw his antagonist to the floor and hold him flat down. The particular Greek word the Apostle uses (palay) is found only here in the New Testament. It seems to come from a verb that means to scatter, throw or pour. In the ancient Olympics wrestling was a no-holds barred event known as the pankration ("all-powerful"). Things such as kicking, joint dislocation, bone breaking, hair pulling, strangling, and other brutalities were allowed. Biting and eye gouging were not allowed in national competitions. The sole object was to force an opponent into defeat, to make him give up. The loser often ended up maimed or even dead. 

The only place in the Bible where you can read about any kind of wrestling match is in Genesis 32:24-32, where Jacob wrestles all night with a mysterious man who puts his hip out of joint. The Hebrew word for wrestling in that place is abaq. The word has the same sense of struggling, pounding and rolling around on the ground in a wrestling match like the Apostle describes in Ephesians 6. The Greek O.T. uses a verb form of Paul's wrestle noun to translate the Hebrew. 

So what was this wrestling match "with God" (Gen.32:28) all about? It was about an earlier conflict between Jacob and his brother Esau. By trickery Jacob, whose very name meant 'deceiver', was able to obtain to steal his brother's birthright as the first born and his father Isaac's blessing as well (Genesis 27:1-20). In fear of death, Jacob fled to his uncle Laban where he ended up marrying both of Laban's daughters and working for him for many years. Now he is returning home, blessed with many children and wealthy, but humbled and and renewed in faith. Upon hearing that his brother Esau was coming out to meet him with 400 armed men, he sends his family and servants on ahead, praying that Esau will not kill them all and remains behind on the bank of the Jordan River to struggle with God. 

Something very profound and meaningful happened that night as Jacob, the deceiver and sinner, struggled with his God. Instead of being destroyed by this face to face encounter with God, Jacob was blessed again. He said, "I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered" (Gen.32:30). The encounter was so profound that Jacob receives a new identity and a new name. Henceforth his name is Israel, he who wrestles with God. 

Paul says we all wrestle, but not only with God. He says our face to face mortal battle is particularly also against the devil and his minions (Ephesians 6:11-12). Does that imply that we do not wrestle with God? Indeed not. It rather means that we who claim the new name 'Christian' (one of Christ's) have been wrestled to the ground and defeated by the Lord Jesus, the same Lord that met Jacob on the shores of the Jordan river. It means that we have given up on any hope of rescuing and redeeming ourselves from the folly of our sinful ways. Our only hope for this life and that to come is the grace of God revealed in Jesus Christ. Christ has killed the old man in us and in this spiritual death we receive the blessing of new life, a new identity in Christ and the strength needed for that one on one wrestling match we each have with the demons sent against us by the devil. Strangely, the old sinful man arises again each day to align himself with the devil and the wrestling starts all over (Romans 6:1-12), both with God and particularly with the demon or demons assigned to us individually. 

Here then is also where we must start as we discuss those one on one attacks that come at believers, spiritual attacks that have their origins in the past century or earlier and that continue into the present. No one can merely be objective or 'scientific' as he looks at this struggle, for each one of us is existentially involved.