Two messages were involved in this painful experience. The thorn in the flesh was Satan’s message to Paul, but God had another message for him, a message of grace. The tense of the verb in 2 Corinthians 12: is important: “And He [God] has once-for-all said to me.” God gave Paul a message that stayed with him. The words Paul heard while in heaven, he was not permitted to share with us; but he did share the words God gave him on earth—and what an encouragement they are.
It was a message of grace. What is grace? It is God’s provision for our every need when we need it. It has well been said that God in His grace gives us what we do not deserve, and in His mercy He does not give us what we do deserve. Someone has made an acrostic of the word grace: God’s Riches Available at Christ’s Expense. “And of his [Christ’s] fullness have all we received, and grace for grace” (John 1:16).
It was a message of sufficient grace. There is never a shortage of grace. God is sufficient for our spiritual ministries (2 Cor. 3:4–6) and our material needs (2 Cor. 9:8) as well as our physical needs (2 Cor. 12:9). If God’s grace is sufficient to save us, surely it is sufficient to keep us and strengthen us in our times of suffering.
It was a message of strengthening grace. God permits us to become weak so that we might receive His strength. This is a continuous process: “My power is [being] made perfect in [your] weakness” (2 Cor. 12: niv). Strength that knows itself to be strength is actually weakness, but weakness that knows itself to be weakness is actually strength.
In the Christian life, we get many of our blessings through transformation, not substitution. When Paul prayed three times for the removal of his pain, he was asking God for a substitution: “Give me health instead of sickness, deliverance instead of pain and weakness.” Sometimes God does meet the need by substitution; but other times He meets the need by transformation. He does not remove the affliction, but He gives us His grace so that the affliction works for us and not against us.
As Paul prayed about his problem, God gave him a deeper insight into what He was doing. Paul learned that his thorn in the flesh was a gift from God. What a strange gift! There was only one thing for Paul to do: accept the gift from God and allow God to accomplish His purposes. God wanted to keep Paul from being “exalted above measure,” and this was His way of accomplishing it.
When Paul accepted his affliction as the gift of God, this made it possible for God’s grace to go to work in his life. It was then that God spoke to Paul and gave him the assurance of His grace. Whenever you are going through suffering, spend extra time in the Word of God; and you can be sure God will speak to you. He always has a special message for His children when they are afflicted.
God did not give Paul any explanations; instead, He gave him a promise: “My grace is sufficient for thee.” We do not live on explanations; we live on promises. Our feelings change, but God’s promises never change. Promises generate faith, and faith strengthens hope.
Paul claimed God’s promise and drew on the grace that was offered to him; this turned seeming tragedy into triumph. God did not change the situation by removing the affliction; He changed it by adding a new ingredient: grace. Our God is “the God of all grace” (1 Peter 5:10), and His throne is a “throne of grace” (Heb. 4:16). The Word of God is “the word of his grace” (Acts 20:32), and the promise is that “he giveth more grace” (James 4:6). No matter how we look at it, God is adequate for every need that we have.
But God does not give us His grace simply that we might “endure” our sufferings. Even unconverted people can manifest great endurance. God’s grace should enable us to rise above our circumstances and feelings and cause our afflictions to work for us in accomplishing positive good. God wants to build our character so that we are more like our Savior. God’s grace enabled Paul not only to accept his afflictions, but to glory in them. His suffering was not a tyrant that controlled him, but a servant that worked for him.
What benefits did Paul receive because of his suffering? For one thing, he experienced the power of Christ in his life. God transformed Paul’s weakness into strength. The word translated “rest” means “to spread a tent over.” Paul saw his body as a frail tent (2 Cor. 5:1ff.), but the glory of God had come into that tent and transformed it into a holy tabernacle.
Something else happened to Paul: he was able to glory in his infirmities. This does not mean that he preferred pain to health, but rather that he knew how to turn his infirmities into assets. What made the difference? The grace of God and the glory of God. He “took pleasure” in these trials and problems, not because he was psychologically unbalanced and enjoyed pain, but because he was suffering for the sake of Jesus Christ. He was glorifying God by the way he accepted and handled the difficult experiences of life.
“It is a greater thing to pray for pain’s conversion than its removal,” wrote P. T. Forsyth, and this is true. Paul won the victory, not by substitution, but by transformation. He discovered the sufficiency of the grace of God.
From Paul’s experience, we may learn several practical lessons.
1. The spiritual is far more important to the dedicated believer than the physical. This is not to suggest that we ignore the physical, because our bodies are the temples of the Spirit of God. But it does mean that we try not to make our bodies an end in themselves. They are God’s tools for accomplishing His work in this world. What God does in developing our Christian character is far more valuable than physical healing without character.
2. God knows how to balance burdens and blessings, suffering and glory. Life is something like a prescription: the individual ingredients might hurt us, but when properly blended, they help us.
3. Not all sickness is caused by sin. The argument of Job’s comforters was that Job had sinned, and that was why he was suffering. But their argument was wrong in Job’s case, as well as in Paul’s case. There are times when God permits Satan to afflict us so that God might accomplish a great purpose in our lives.
4. There is something worse than sickness, and that is sin; and the worst sin of all is pride. The healthy person who is rebelling against God is in worse shape than the suffering person who is submitting to God and enjoying God’s grace. It is a paradox—and an evidence of the sovereignty of God—that God used Satan, the proudest of all beings, to help keep Paul humble.
5. Physical affliction need not be a barrier to effective Christian service. Today’s saints are too prone to pamper themselves and use every little ache or pain as an excuse to stay home from church or refuse to accept opportunities for service. Paul did not permit his thorn in the flesh to become a stumbling block. In fact, he let God turn that thorn into a stepping-stone.
6. We can always rest in God’s Word. He always has a message of encouragement for us in times of trial and suffering.
The great French mystic, Madame Guyon, once wrote to a suffering friend, “Ah, if you knew what power there is in an accepted sorrow!”
Paul knew about that power, because he trusted the will of God and depended on the grace of God. That same power can be yours today.