2 Corinthians — Chapter 12

Authorship & Background

Deep Dive

Setting: Paul writes from Macedonia in about AD 55–56, ahead of a third visit to Corinth. Since chapter 10 the letter has turned sharp. Visiting teachers, whom Paul mockingly calls "super-apostles," have been winning the church with polished speech, impressive credentials and claims of spiritual experience, and some Corinthians now see Paul as weak and second-rate. In chapter 11 Paul reluctantly played "the fool" and boasted, but the list he boasted of was his sufferings, ending with the humiliating escape from Damascus in a basket (11:32–33). Here the "fool's speech" reaches its peak and its turning point. Paul finally mentions the kind of experience his rivals prized, a vision of heaven, and then immediately tells of the painful "thorn" that came with it. The second half of the chapter turns from defense to the coming visit and his fear of what he will find.

Paul's Visions and His Thorn (vv1–10)

• "I must go on boasting. Though there is nothing to be gained by it" (v1). Paul still thinks the whole exercise is foolish, but the Corinthians have been impressed by men who talk about their spiritual highs. "Visions and revelations of the Lord" may mean visions from the Lord, or visions of the Lord. Both are true of Paul, who saw the risen Christ (Acts 9:3–6; 1 Cor 15:8) and received later visions (Acts 16:9; 18:9; 22:17–21).
• "I know a man in Christ" (v2). Paul speaks of himself in the third person, as if the experience belonged to someone else. The switch to "me" in v7 shows he is the man. He does it out of modesty. A spiritual experience is God's gift, not a medal, and he refuses to make it part of his own résumé.
• "Fourteen years ago" (v2). Counting back from about AD 55–56 puts the vision around AD 41–43. That is too late for the Damascus road (about AD 33–34) and probably before the first missionary journey. It falls in the quiet years when Paul was back in Syria and Cilicia (Gal 1:21) before Barnabas brought him to Antioch (Acts 11:25–26). Some have linked it to his stoning at Lystra (Acts 14:19), but the dates fit poorly. The striking point is that Paul kept it to himself for fourteen years. The Corinthians had known him for years and never heard of it.
• "Caught up to the third heaven" (v2). "Caught up" is harpazō, to seize or snatch away, the same verb used of believers "caught up" to meet the Lord (1 Thess 4:17) and of Philip being carried off by the Spirit (Acts 8:39). Paul did not climb there by technique. He was taken. Jews of the time spoke of layers of heaven: the sky, the region of the stars, and beyond them God's own dwelling. Some later Jewish writings count seven heavens, but Paul's point is simple: he was brought into the very presence of God.
• "Whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows" (vv2–3). Paul says it twice. He is honest about the limits of his own understanding, and he does not fill in what he doesn't know. The Corinthians' rivals likely spoke with great confidence about their experiences. Paul is content with uncertainty.
• "Caught up into paradise" (vv3–4). "Paradise" (paradeisos) came into Greek from Persian, where it meant a walled royal park or garden. The Greek Old Testament uses it for the garden of Eden (Gen 2:8). By Jesus' day it named the place of the blessed dead with God. It appears only three times in the New Testament: Jesus' promise to the thief, "today you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43), here, and "the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God" (Rev 2:7). Most readers take the third heaven and paradise as the same place described twice, matching the repeated phrasing. Some see paradise as an inner part of the third heaven.
• "Things that cannot be told, which man may not utter" (v4). This is the anticlimax, and it is deliberate. After building up to the greatest experience of his life, Paul tells the Corinthians nothing about it. What he heard was either beyond words or not permitted to be shared, and he obeyed. Whatever believers need to know of heaven, God has given in Scripture, not in private reports.
• "On my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses" (v5). Paul sets "this man" who saw paradise to one side, and places himself with his weaknesses. "So that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me" (v6). He wants to be judged by his life and his message, the things the Corinthians could see and hear, not by claims no one could check.
• "Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations" (v7). The Greek of v7 is tangled, and translations divide the sentence differently, but the sense is clear. Great revelation carried a great danger: pride. "To keep me from becoming conceited" appears twice in the one verse, at its start and end. That repetition shows what Paul saw as the purpose of what came next.
• "A thorn was given me in the flesh" (v7). Skolops means anything pointed. In classical Greek it could mean a stake, but in the everyday Greek of Paul's day and in the Greek Old Testament it commonly meant a thorn or splinter. The Old Testament uses it for enemies who would be "thorns in your sides" (Num 33:55; also Ezek 28:24). "Was given" is a divine passive: God gave it, even though it was "a messenger of Satan." Like Job, Paul suffered something Satan meant for harm and God used for good.
• "To harass me" (v7). The verb (kolaphizō) means to strike with the fist or to beat. It is the word used when the soldiers beat Jesus with their fists at his trial (Matt 26:67; Mark 14:65). It is in the present tense, which suggests that the trouble was ongoing, not a single blow.
• What was the thorn? Paul doesn't say, and Christians have argued about it ever since. There are three main views. A physical illness is the most common view today. Galatians 4:13–15 says Paul first preached there because of "a bodily ailment," and that the Galatians would have torn out their eyes for him. Combined with his "large letters" (Gal 6:11), this has led many to think of an eye disease. Others have suggested malaria, chronic headaches or epilepsy. Opponents and persecution: Chrysostom and others pointed to the Old Testament use of "thorns" for human enemies (Num 33:55) and to "messenger," which usually means a person. On this view the thorn was the false teachers themselves, or the opposition that followed Paul everywhere. Spiritual temptation: much of the medieval church, following the Latin rendering "a goad of the flesh," took it as temptation, sometimes sexual temptation. Few hold this now, since Paul elsewhere does not describe temptation as something God sends to keep a person humble. The honest conclusion is that nobody knows. Many have noted that the silence has been a gift: believers with very different burdens have found themselves in Paul's words.
• "Three times I pleaded with the Lord" (v8). "The Lord" here is Christ, whose answer follows and whose power is named in v9. The threefold prayer recalls Jesus in Gethsemane, who prayed three times that the cup might pass and then accepted the Father's will (Mark 14:35–41). Like his Lord, Paul asked plainly for relief. There is nothing faithless in that.
• "My grace is sufficient for you" (v9). The Lord's answer is a "no" to the request and a "yes" to Paul. The verb "he said" is in the Greek perfect tense, which points to a word spoken once that still stands. The thorn stays, but grace (charis) is promised as enough, and "sufficient" means it fully meets the need.
• "My power is made perfect in weakness" (v9). "Made perfect" is teleō, to complete or bring to its goal. God's power reaches its full expression where human strength gives out. This is the theme of the whole letter: treasure in jars of clay, "to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us" (4:7).
• "So that the power of Christ may rest upon me" (v9). "Rest upon" (episkēnoō) is used only here in the New Testament, and the lexicon defines it as "to spread a tent over." Its root is the word for tent or tabernacle. It recalls the glory of God filling the tabernacle (Exod 40:34), and John's "the Word became flesh and dwelt [tented] among us" (John 1:14). Paul pictures Christ's power pitching its tent over his weakness.
• "For when I am weak, then I am strong" (v10). Paul lists "weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities," and says he is "content" with them "for the sake of Christ." This is not a love of pain. It is the discovery that his weakest moments are where Christ's strength shows most clearly. He does not say weakness is good in itself, but that it is the place where grace does its work.
• Commentators: All three agree the thorn cannot be identified. Guzik lists the main proposals without choosing one, and suggests God left it unnamed so every sufferer could relate. He claims skolops pictures a tent stake rather than a small thorn. The lexicon gives "stake" as a classical sense but "thorn" as the normal meaning in Paul's day and in the Greek Old Testament, so that claim should not be pressed. Henry mentions both "an acute bodily pain or sickness" and "the indignities done him by the false apostles." JFB follows Alford in linking it to the bodily trouble of Galatians 4:13–14, and notes that "buffet" in the present tense means it went on "even now continuously." On prayer, Henry is memorable: God "sometimes grants in wrath, so he sometimes denies in love." JFB adds that Christ's power covers Paul's weakness "all over as with a tabernacle," which the lexicon's "spread a tent over" supports. Henry calls v10 a "Christian paradox," and Guzik stresses that God's answer was strength under the load, not removal of it.

Concern for the Corinthian Church (vv11–21)

• "I have been a fool! You forced me to it" (v11). The fool's speech is over. Paul blames the Corinthians for it. They should have been defending him, since they owed their faith to him. "Not at all inferior to these super-apostles, even though I am nothing." Both halves are true. Paul refuses to rank below his rivals, and he insists he is nothing in himself (1 Cor 15:9–10).
• "The signs of a true apostle" (v12). "True" is supplied by the ESV for clarity. The Greek simply says "the signs of the apostle." First on the list is "utmost patience" (hypomonē, steady endurance), and only then "signs and wonders and mighty works." Acts 18 records no miracles at Corinth, but Paul assumes the Corinthians saw them and cannot deny it (Rom 15:19 says the same of his wider work). These three words are the same set used of Jesus' miracles (Acts 2:22). Christians differ over whether such signs continue in the church today. Here Paul treats them as marks that authenticated his apostleship, joined to a life of endurance.
• "Except that I myself did not burden you? Forgive me this wrong!" (v13). Biting irony. The only way Corinth came out "less favored" than other churches was that Paul refused to take their money (11:7–11). The visiting teachers did accept support, and some Corinthians seem to have read Paul's refusal as a sign he was not a real apostle.
• "Here for the third time I am ready to come to you" (v14). Paul's first visit founded the church (Acts 18:1–18). The second was the "painful visit" (2:1; 13:2), which Acts does not record. This would be the third. Acts 20:2–3 says Paul did spend three months in Greece, and most scholars think he wrote Romans from Corinth during that stay (Rom 16:1, 23), which suggests the visit went better than he feared here.
• "I seek not what is yours but you" (v14). This sums up Paul's whole ministry to them. "Children are not obligated to save up for their parents, but parents for their children." It was a common saying about inheritance. Paul is their spiritual father (1 Cor 4:15), and fathers provide for children, not the other way round. There is a gentle sting too: they are acting like children.
• "I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls" (v15). The second verb, ekdapanaō, is a strengthened form meaning "to spend wholly," to be used up. Paul will give his money and then himself. "If I love you more, am I to be loved less?" The question shows his hurt. The more he gives, the less they seem to love him.
• "I was crafty, you say, and got the better of you by deceit" (v16). Paul quotes the charge against him. The accusation seems to be that he refused support openly while taking money quietly through his helpers, perhaps through the Jerusalem collection (chs 8–9). Paul does not admit to craftiness. He is repeating what his opponents say.
• "Did Titus take advantage of you?" (vv17–18). Paul answers with questions the Corinthians can check for themselves. They knew Titus and "the brother" who came with him, and they knew no one had cheated them. "The same spirit… the same steps" means Paul and his helpers shared the same inner motive and the same outward conduct. This is probably an earlier trip by Titus, before the one described in 8:16–24, though some think it is the same.
• "Have you been thinking all along that we have been defending ourselves to you?" (v19). Paul says the purpose of all this is not his own reputation. He speaks "in the sight of God… in Christ," and "all for your upbuilding, beloved." His goal is to build them up, not to win an argument.
• "I fear that perhaps when I come I may find you not as I wish" (v20). And they may find him "not as you wish," meaning ready to discipline (13:2). The list of eight sins is all about community breakdown: "quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder." These are the same divisions Paul confronted in 1 Corinthians 1–3, and the rivals had stirred them up again.
• "My God may humble me before you" (v21). Paul fears another visit like the painful one, in which he would grieve over unrepentant people. "Impurity, sexual immorality, and sensuality" were old Corinthian problems (1 Cor 5–6). Paul is not asking for perfection. He mourns those who "have not repented." Faithful leaders grieve over their people's sin rather than simply condemning it. This sets up the warnings of chapter 13.
• Commentators: Henry sums up v14 with a proverb of his own: hirelings aim at the fleece, not the flock, and Paul sought "not yours but you." He pictures v15 as a candle that spends itself to give light. Guzik and JFB both take "crafty" (v16) as the opponents' charge, which Paul quotes in order to refute, not his own admission. Guzik is firm that the verse gives no license for deception in ministry. Guzik reads the parent-and-child saying as a mild rebuke of spiritual immaturity. JFB says the miracle signs of v12 were not handed down and "the apostles have no literal successors," a view many but not all traditions share. On v21, Henry and Guzik both point out that a minister's grief over his people's sin is itself humbling, and that Paul asks for repentance, not perfection.

Pointing to Christ

Paul's greatest experience was being caught up into paradise, yet the word he lived on came in his lowest moment: "My grace is sufficient for you." He prayed three times for relief, as Jesus did in the garden, and like Jesus he was given strength to carry what was not removed. The pattern is the cross itself. Christ "was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God" (13:4). God's power comes most fully where human strength runs out, and the same Lord who tented among us (John 1:14) spreads his power like a tent over weak servants.

Commentary

• Enduring Word (David Guzik): enduringword.com Guzik examines the paradise vision, the thorn's identity and purpose, God's sufficient grace, and strength through weakness.
• Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (1871): blueletterbible.org A critical and explanatory commentary on the whole Bible, more concise than Matthew Henry and closer to the Hebrew and Greek, with attention to historical and geographical detail. Public domain.
• Matthew Henry's Exposition (1710): blueletterbible.org A devotional verse-by-verse commentary in the Puritan tradition, still among the most widely read three centuries on. Public domain.

Videos

Articles

• GotQuestions.org: gotquestions.org On the whole book: an overview of the book of 2 Corinthians -- who wrote it, when, why, and how it fits the rest of Scripture.

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Reflection

• Caught Up to Paradise, Still Human (vv.2-4) — Paul recounts an extraordinary vision of paradise but speaks of it almost reluctantly, in the third person. How do you hold together genuine spiritual highs with the ordinary, sometimes difficult, reality of daily life?
• A Thorn to Guard Against Pride (v.7) — Paul says his thorn in the flesh was given specifically to keep him from becoming conceited over his revelations. Could a hardship you're carrying actually be God's protection against pride rather than pure punishment?
• When God's Answer Is No (v.8) — Paul asked three times for the thorn to be removed, and God did not grant that specific request. Is there a persistent prayer of yours that God has answered with no, and can you trust that answer as much as a yes?
• Grace That Is Actually Sufficient (v.9) — Instead of removing the thorn, God tells Paul His grace is enough and His power is perfected in weakness. In your current struggle, are you resting in God's sufficiency, or still demanding that He remove the problem?
• Strong Precisely Where You're Weak (v.10) — Paul says he can even take pleasure in weaknesses and hardships because that is exactly where Christ's power rests on him. Where are you weakest right now, and can you let that be the place God's strength shows up instead of hiding it?