Bible Commentaries
2 Corinthians 12

Verses 1-10

Paul’s Right to Boast: His Sufferings in the Cause (11:1-12:10)

Paul now proceeds at some length, however, to exhibit more testimonials, and again of a kind that his critics could not dupli­cate.

First, he pays his disrespects to these men. The picture may come clearer if we think of them not as Corinthians, but as travel­ing preachers, self-styled apostles (remember the word "apostle" at that time was not confined to eleven men only). Paul’s words are directed against them and also against such Corinthian Chris­tians as were being taken in by these self-advertising gospel sales­men. (The situation is quite different from that pictured in chap­ters 1-9, where the whole letter is brightened by the news Paul has been told by Titus, that Paul’s authority in Corinth was fully accepted and that the church had repented.)

These men are like the serpent when he seduced Eve (11:2-3). Following an Old Testament thought often occurring, but especially in Hosea, Paul thinks of religious faith as a kind of marriage. But whereas the Old Testament prophets thought of the husband as God, Paul speaks of betrothal to Christ. "I betrothed you to Christ" (11:2) may have reference to the Jewish custom of go-betweens or marriage brokers. Marriages were seldom decided on by the couple in question, but were arranged by the parents through professional marriage brokers.

The men who were undermining Paul’s work at Corinth no doubt claimed to be Christian preachers, and no doubt preached "Christ." But Paul implies that the Christ they preached was not the real one, not the one he preached. Loyalty to Christ is a good phrase and a good thing—if the Christ to whom we are loyal is the real Christ. There were people at Corinth, and around us to­day, who although strongly loyal, cannot be called good Chris­tians because their notions of Christ are so twisted. The false leaders at Corinth were seducing the Corinthians into loyalty to a "Christ" made in their own image.

Paul pours some sarcasm into the argument at this point. He comments on the ease with which the Corinthians fall for false­hood and distorted truths—for a different Jesus, for a different spirit (perhaps meaning a different Holy Spirit), for a different gospel. "I am not in the least inferior to these superlative apostles," Paul says. (It used to be thought that he meant the original Eleven, but now it is recognized that he uses the word "apostle" in the general sense of a traveling missionary, as was then com­mon, and that he specifically means these impostors at Corinth. What he thought of real Apostles can be seen in 1 Corinthians 3.) He admits that he may not be the pulpit orator some of them are, but he has one advantage they do not have: he knows what he is talking about!

(It would be interesting if we had some copies of sermons preached by those visiting quacks. Maybe they never bothered to write anything; possibly they couldn’t. But in any case the Corinthian church could stand them only about so long, and swept them out so completely that we don’t even have their names, much less anything they said or wrote.)

Continuing in his ironic or sarcastic vein, Paul inquires what it was he had done that was so bad. Was it a sin that he preached without charging them any fees? (Apparently his rivals were in the ministry for revenue only.) Paul fairly shouts this "boast"; he will not be silent. "When I ... was in want, I did not burden any one." He had taken from other churches but not from them.

Paul speaks in plain language about his competitors and would-be underminers; he undermines them in turn (vss. 12-15). They are false apostles, workmen who do not give an honest day’s work, sheer hypocrites, clever as Satan at working up brilliant disguises. Paul turns again on the Corinthians with more sarcasm. They can’t stand him, or some of them can’t; but this is odd, for they seem to be able to stand a lot. These false apostles make slaves of them (they want to be dictators in ways that Paul would scorn to use); they prey on them (always after money); they put on airs; they actually use their fists on their church mem­bers. Alas, believe it or not, such "preachers" have existed in every Christian century. Paul speaks with still more sarcasm: "I am ashamed to say these are stronger men than I. I was too weak to play the part of wolf in the sheepfold!"

One of the most famous passages in this letter is 11:21-12: 10. Actually, Paul is neither bragging nor complaining. He is sim­ply reporting some facts in his life, and doing this as a kind of challenge to those fake "apostles." The whole passage is part of his argument: I have the true marks of an Apostle: unselfish service, loyalty to the true Jesus, suffering in the service of Christ. What have these fly-by-night fakers to show, to match my record?

Paul does not appear to have arranged the items in his record for dramatic climax, he just pours them out as they occur to his mind. Whatever those others boast of, he can match, or go one better. He too is a Hebrew, an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham. To be sure, one can be no more an Israelite than another can. But as to being a servant of Christ, Paul can claim to be a better one. At this point he gives that amazing list of hardships, risks, and perilous adventures. He admits it sounds crazy to talk like this, but these are the facts. The reader may try, if he likes, to match verses 24-27 with the Book of Acts. Some of these incidents are recorded there, but most are not. These lines were written, of course, before Paul’s voyage to Rome and the shipwreck de­scribed in Acts 27. But here we learn to our surprise that Paul had already been shipwrecked three times. (Maybe he never mentioned it to Luke; perhaps he never would have mentioned it if these false apostles hadn’t pushed him into it.) No wonder he was a bit suspicious of setting out from Fair Havens so late in the fall! (Acts 27:9-10).

Since this letter was written well before the trip to Jerusalem recorded in Acts 20-21, it is clear that all the incidents men­tioned in II Corinthians 11 and 12 must have occurred before that point in Paul’s life. The fact that Acts mentions so few of them shows that the Book of Acts is not, and quite probably was not intended to be, a complete history of the period it covers.

In this impressive column of hardships and disasters, only two or three points need any word of comment. The "forty lashes less one" refers to an Old Testament law that no prisoner should be beaten with more than 40 strokes. As a safeguard, beatings were limited, in Paul’s time, to 39 strokes. Since by custom the beating-strap was split into three thongs, only thirteen strokes were actually given. But even so, men had been known to die under the lash. The number of items here referring to travel hazards may remind us that travel was a dangerous undertaking. Mountains, canyons, and "breath-taking scenery" are quite dif­ferent things when seen from the vista-dome of an air-conditioned fast train or a luxury jet-liner, and when seen by a traveler on foot, who has to ford or swim the rivers and who knows that every road of scenery may hide a gang of killers.

Again, in 12:1-10, Paul apologizes for the boasting he pro­ceeds to do; though in verse 6 he says that properly speaking it is not boasting, but telling the simple truth. In most churches today "visions and revelations" of a direct sort are seldom claimed. Could you imagine a pulpit committee, when looking for a min­ister, selecting a man on the basis of the number and vividness of the visions he says he has had? But Paul was not in the twentieth century, he was in the first. At that time visions and revelations were not regarded with suspicion, but were believed to be marks of special saintliness as well as of authority. So he brings these in as further, and convincing, items in his self-defense.

All commentators agree that the "man" whom Paul knows can be only Paul himself. The vision he speaks of, but refuses to de­scribe, is not mentioned in Acts, and we know nothing about it except from Paul’s mysterious hints at this point. Questions come up: Are there really three heavens, or maybe more? Can a soul be caught up into heaven while the body still exists, living, here on earth? (Paul confesses he does not know.) Is Paradise the name for the third heaven only, or is it a name for any heaven or all of them? Paul uses the language of his time, and very likely the Corinthians understood him better than we can on this mat­ter. The point is, he had had a vision, though he was not able to say what he had seen or heard. (He lays stress on what he heard, not on what he saw, which is typical of an intellectual man.) However, he is not going to claim special privileges on account of that experience. He does not wish to be pointed out as "the man who had the vision"! He wants to be taken for what he is, for what he now says and does. Again the practical side of Paul comes out.

In verse 7 he suggests that he had many such mystical experi­ences, and might have been conceited about them. We must re­member that Paul grew up in an atmosphere that was not Chris­tian, and that in those times it was a generally accepted belief that having many visions shows that a man is blessed of God, and many pains show that a man is under God’s displeasure. So Paul had to discover for himself that the truth was something different. To keep him from being all "blown up" about the visions, God sent him severe pain, a "thorn ... in the flesh."

Commentators ever since Paul’s time have argued over what this thorn might be. You, the reader, know just as much about this as anybody else does. Maybe the Corinthians knew what Paul meant, maybe they did not. There are two separate uncertainties here. (a) Does this "thorn," or "stake," as many have translated it, refer to a mental-spiritual affliction or to physical pain? (b) Does "flesh" mean what we would naturally take it to mean, the physical body, or does it mean man’s nature as man, his humanity; or does it mean man’s sinful nature? On question (a), we have no clue except that we usually interpret anyone literally if there is no reason to interpret otherwise. On question (b), we have to admit that Paul uses the word "flesh" in all three senses here mentioned (see, for example, Romans 2:28 where the Greek has "flesh"; 2 Corinthians 4:11; Galatians 5:16). Paul does not try to explain himself; but scholars have tried to do it for him. This expression has been understood to mean: physical pain, illness or deficiency of some kind (malaria? epilepsy? tuberculosis? weak eyes? glau­coma?) ; or something mental-spiritual (temptation in general? or temptation to some particular sin, perhaps pride or unchastity? or exposure to constant nagging, heckling, slander, and persecu­tion?). Most Roman Catholic commentators incline to think this was temptation to impurity; most Protestant commentators are disposed to believe it was a physical ailment of a painful sort.

Whatever it was, Paul did not think it a good thing. He calls it a Devil’s messenger. It must have been something that hampered him in his work as a missionary. Since everybody is entitled to one guess, your present commentator will venture one which at least is no worse than some others. What if this thorn in the flesh was not any one particular ailment or trouble of body or of mind? What if it was just that very common over-all ailment, an unat­tractive personality? Some personality defects are curable; some are not. When Paul compared himself with the steadiness of Peter, the smooth magnetic eloquence of Apollos; when he heard himself described as a man whose physical presence was weak, and whose sermon delivery was contemptible—might he not have wished to be made over into somebody with a more impressive front?

Well, whatever it was, this messenger of Satan also carried a message from God: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Paul would never have known this had he been the strong, self-sufficient person he longed and prayed to be. He learned through this hard experi­ence, which may still have been going on at the time he wrote, that God sometimes refuses to give us what we want in order to give us what we need. He withholds gifts so we may desire him, without whom, as Augustine said, no gift can satisfy the soul.

This harsh experience of the Apostle has been a blessing to the Church, too. Otherwise it could have been said: How could Christianity have missed? It was upheld and spread by a man of commanding powers, without a visible weakness, a man with no inner handicaps whatever. On the contrary, the most effective spokesman for Christ in the early years was this man Paul, a man who could be and was criticized and even despised by some, a man with real personal handicaps; yet a man filled with the Spirit. Paul spoke out of personal agony, personal discovery, when he wrote: "We have this treasure in earthen vessels" (2 Corinthians 4:7).

Verses 11-18

Paul Has Been More Than Fair (12:11-18)

Had Paul been writing an essay, 12:1-10 would have been a good climax. Nothing more needed to be said; nothing more profound could be said. Yet because this is a letter, not an essay, he goes on with a collection of anticlimaxes, as we all do in most of our letters. Once more, he says, he has been talking like a fool. He blames the Corinthians for it, because they have been swept off their feet by these "superlative apostles," the eccelesi­astical impostors who have been blackening his name and motives. If they had eyes and memories, they should remem­ber that "the signs of a true apostle" had been performed among them by Paul. What Paul means by this we do not know, unless it was the "signs and wonders and mighty works" (a stereotyped phrase for all kinds of miracles) of verse 12. The point is, what Paul had accomplished in Corinth marked him as a true Apostle, and they should have seen this. He points out, in sarcasm once more, that the poor Corinthians were mistreated in that Paul did not take any salary from them; he begs forgiveness for this mis­treatment!

There is one more charge which Paul’s enemies apparently brought against him: that his friends and representatives were crooked. This must have stung Paul sorely. He speaks sharply to defend Titus and "the brother" (unnamed here as in 8:18); they acted in the same generous and honest spirit shown by Paul.

Mend Your Ways, or Else—! (12:19-13:10)

After all, Paul says, it is not himself he has been defending; it is Christ, and it is for their sake rather than his own. Paul can see through the slanders of his critics; but some in Corinth can­not, and if they are misled their fate will not be good. Further, Paul feels that if the Corinthians follow these false apostles, they will drop right back into the quarreling, disorderly church they used to be; and the harmony not only among themselves but between themselves and Paul, themselves and God, will be broken.

Paul hangs his third visit over the Corinthians as a kind of threat. When the second visit was, no one knows; but 12:14 probably, and 13:1-2 certainly, show that there was a second visit not mentioned in Acts. It may have been very short.

Paul promises, in effect, not only to have the authority of an apostle, but to use it. He is not going to rush in blindly. Any charges (this is all vague as to details, but they no doubt knew what he meant) must be formally made and sustained by two or three witnesses. Nobody is going to be dealt with on mere suspicion.

But then Paul reminds these people, as he has before, that they themselves have all the right and power to deal with their local problems and problem-members. Examine yourselves, he says. Test yourselves. Even if they are spiritually stronger than he, and consequently better able than he to deal with their prob­lems (a pretty wild supposition, to be sure), Paul will be glad of that. What I want and pray for, he says, "is your improvement."

Paul, by the way, is far from thinking that "what is to be is bound to be." He talks as a man can honestly talk only when he feels that men affect their "fate" by their own decisions. His language here (as well as elsewhere)—"I hope," "we pray," "un­less indeed you fail to meet the test," "in order that when I come I may not have to be severe"—is not the language of a man who believes the future is already packaged and will finally be handed across time’s counter just as it is wrapped up at this moment.