Thorns and Weakness, Part 1
What Was Paul‘s Thorn in the Flesh?
A thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of the Accuser, so that he might knock me about, that I might not be excessively exalted. Three times I begged the Lord that it might go away, and he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you; for power is perfected in weakness.” (2Co 12:7–9)
The mystery of Paul’s thorn in the flesh is something many run into when dealing with difficult situations. Typically it has been used to explain or justify certain negative experiences in a person’s life, particularly chronic ones.
Let me begin by saying that my heart goes out to anyone reading this who is suffering, whether physically, mentally or emotionally. Right now, may you experience relief and freedom in Christ, the same freedom that Jesus brought to thousands in his earthly ministry.
But what exactly is Paul talking about here? Two general ideas tend to appear in Christian pop culture:
- The thorn in the flesh was a physical infirmity that God permitted.
- The thorn in the flesh was a “besetting sin” that God permitted.
I think we can do better. Aside from what this implies about God’s character, these two theories fail to take into proper account the nature of Jesus’ ministry. For, in the gospels, not to mention the Psalms, God demonstrates a more-than-willing attitude to remove both sickness and sin.
The Yoke-Breaker
In the case of physical infirmities, we see in Matthew 8 Jesus’ response:
He exorcised the spirits by word, and healed all those who were suffering, thus fulfilling what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah, “He took away our infirmities and bore away our maladies.”
On the topic of sin, 1 John declares,
God is light and in him is no darkness whatsoever.
And, perhaps more telling,
Whoever commits sin is from the Slanderer, because the Slanderer has been sinning from the beginning. For this the Son of God appeared: that he might destroy (dissolve) the works of the Slanderer. (1Jo 3:8)
And, yes, character does count here. To think God capable of refusing healing or subjecting someone to a bad habit, even for the sake of pride, seems tantamount to lowering Him to the level of the capricious gods of ancient paganism. Neither need we heed any half-hearted, “His ways are higher than ours” platitudes to cloud the issue. Even James urges, let no one say, I am being tempted by God, for God tempts no one.
Bless YHWH, O my being, and forget not all His generosities. Who forgives all your wrongs, heals all your illnesses, redeems your life from the Pit, crowns you with kindness, compassion, sates you with good while you live — your youth is renewed like the eagle. (Psalm 103)
To say that at times it is not God’s will to heal is an untenable position, both morally and in the example of Jesus. Imagine going to a clinic and being assigned a doctor with this attitude. Would it not be a contravention of the Hippocratic Oath?
Nevertheless, this explanation for pain and suffering is still quite common, and, unfortunately, can cause more confusion, more eventual doubt and distrust than simply chalking it up to mystery.
Let’s be clear: To Jesus, Death is no friend — it is recorded as His last enemy — and illness is only its slightly less potent, slightly more anemic accomplice. As David Bentley Hart writes in his acclaimed Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?
“We are to be guided by the full character of what is revealed of God in Christ. For, after all, if it is from Christ that we are to learn how God relates himself to sin, suffering, evil, and death, it would seem that he provides us little evidence of anything other than a regal, relentless, and miraculous enmity:
Sin he forgives.
Suffering he heals.
Evil he casts out.
And death, Death he conquers.And absolutely nowhere does Christ act as if any of these things are a part of the eternal work or purposes of God, which it is well to remember.
Let it be anathema to us that we preach either sickness or death as a method by which God’s purpose is achieved or His glory increased.
No, the key to Paul’s thorn in the flesh has got to lie elsewhere.
The Old Key
Sometimes (though not all of the time) the Bible may be entrusted to interpret itself. Or, at least, provide clues to interpretation. And, indeed, scattered through the pages of the Old Testament hides a phrase that is synonymous to Paul’s thorn in the flesh: thorn in the side.
It is always used to describe one thing, a particular circumstance the Israelite tribes found themselves in:
And if you do not dispossess the inhabitants of the land from before you, it will come about that those of them you leave will become stings in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they will be foes to you on the land in which you dwell. (Num 33:55)
In Hebrew parallel style, stings in your eye and thorns in your side are explained in the next verse. Foes. They are Israel’s tribal enemies. In later books, like Joshua and Judges, the same phrase thorn in your side is used repeatedly. As expected, it again denotes oppression by enemy tribal peoples (Jos 23:13, Jdg 2:3).
In the Corinthian text in question, then, Paul uses the same metaphor to describe Jewish persecutors. They are those who dogged Paul and his ministry from town to town. Paul describes one, or all of them together, as a messenger of satan (the latter literally meaning the accuser).
Taken together, thorn in the flesh appears to be neither plague nor profanity—but people!
Will God Remove Everything That Besets Us?
Now for the hard part.
Again, God has and will remove many things from our lives. Sickness, sin, literally everything he paid for by his blood on the cross is fair game for removal. As far as the east is from the west, sings the psalmist.
However, God never included people in that equation.
Three times I begged the Lord that it might go away…
Paul discovered that, just as God did not remove difficult people from Jesus’ life, He chooses not to remove troublemakers from ours. People are, in a sense, our cross to bear too.
The simple reason for this is because we are them and they are us. Matthew 25’s, Amen, I tell you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me, means that no man can truly be a man who is an island unto himself. There is no healthy “just me and God” in life with God, much less in the Scriptures.
There are no holy hermits in this kingdom.
It seems fairly clear, then, that ad hoc explanations like disease and besetting sin are in fact projections put out by the reader onto the text. This is understandable, given our desire to console ourselves that biblical figures once suffered in the same way we do.
However, understandable is not always true, or even plausible, or helpful.
When Did Paul’s Thorns Appear?
Consider the historical goings-on:
Paul’s history with “thorns” (i.e. thorny people) is recorded in accounts like Acts 14, where the miracle-working apostle and friends “just barely restrained the crowds from sacrificing to them.” Then, Judaeans from Antioch and Iconium appeared and won over the crowds. They stoned Paul and dragged him outside the city, thinking he had died. But, when the disciples gathered around him, he arose and went into the city.
This is likely one of the incidents Paul is referring to when he writes to his friend Timothy, saying,
But you have closely followed my… persecutions, sufferings, such as befell me in Antioch, in Iconium, in Lystra… (2 Tim. 3:10–11)
And his being stoned half to death is also why, in Galatians 4, he writes:
You know that I proclaimed the good tidings to you the first time on account of an infirmity of the flesh, And the trial that was visited on you by my flesh you neither held in contempt nor spurned, but instead you welcomed me as God’s messenger, as the Anointed One Jesus. Where therefore is your blessing? For I attest to you that, if possible, you would have gouged your eyes out and given them to me.
Note that the word translated infirmity here is not necessarily a sickness or malady, much less a chronic one. No, one imagines Paul’s battered face, purple, bruised, eyes swollen half- or entirely shut, yet bravely continuing the work. He can hardly see the scroll he is preaching from, and so the hearers in Galatia wish to offer him their own eyes. It is a touching scene.
A Crown Full
There was once an occasion where an interesting connection was made with Christ’s passion narrative. I was explaining Paul’s thorn to my Brazilian friend, Juan. He responded that this may have been why Jesus was destined to wear a literal crown of thorns. Perhaps the painful headgear symbolized that his persecutors were uppermost in his mind, on whose behalf he cried, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.”
Conclusion
- In the scriptures, the phrases ”thorn in the side” and “messenger of satan” are never used to refer to sickness.
- the two phrases are each used more than once to refer to human oppression.
Thus, from a biblical scholarship standpoint, the conclusion is inescapable — if we allow the Bible to interpret itself, thorn in the side or flesh is figurative language for persecution.
Weakness Through Eastern Eyes
This link between thorns and oppressors is burnished further by taking on another idea found in Paul’s letter— weakness. What does weakness mean, and how could power, or strength, possibly be perfected in it? This is a discussion we will enter next.
