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.        That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor.12:7-10)

For those who believe that God sometimes visits sickness on an individual to purify or strengthen him or her through suffering, this passage from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians is often pointed to as proof for that position. After all, we have all known individuals who suffered through injuries, illnesses or disabilities who grew closer to God and who gave great testimonies of how God had strengthened them in their suffering so that they might endure their trial of sickness and give glory to God. Paul, then, is seen as one of those individuals who struggled with some kind of physical or mental condition but found God unwilling to take it from him so that he might develop absolute dependence on the Lord. That theology  promotes the view that God is not nearly as interested in our physical well-being as in our spiritual condition. Because of that, he visits sickness on some or chooses not to heal others for their spiritual benefit. And for those who hold that view, Paul is their poster child.

Let’s examine what Paul said and this particular theological view one more time. First of all we need to be aware of biblical or cultural idioms or figurative expressions. Many of us have used the expression “a thorn in my flesh” ourselves. But think of how we commonly use it. We tend to speak of irritating people who seem to always pick at us or who try to undermine us as “thorns in our flesh.” We might say, “Man, this guy at work is a thorn in my flesh. I just wish he would get transferred to another department or quit all together!” We use that expression because the thorn, the irritant, or the aggravation is external to us just as a thorn is external. Every spring when I am pruning rose bushes I always get pricked or a scraped by thorns. They are not within my flesh but external to it. They don;t “take me out”, they simply aggravate me with a bit of pain and a few drops of blood.

Secondly, the expression is used in a couple of other places in the Bible. These would be expressions very familiar to Paul, the Torah (Old Testament) scholar. But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land, those you allow to remain will become barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will give you trouble in the land where you will live. (Num. 33:55). Then you may be sure that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations before you. Instead, they will become snares and traps for you, whips on your backs and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land, which the Lord your God has given you. (Josh. 23:13)  These, as well as Paul’s expression are equivalent. They both speak of people who constantly harass and trouble them like thorns that tear at your flesh  as you walk through a field.

Paul had such a group that followed him constantly from place to place. As soon as he would preach the gospel of grace, these Jews would come right behind him preaching that salvation came through not only Jesus but the keeping of the Law of Moses. The first chapter of Galatians reveals the level of frustration and anger that Paul felt towards these men. They were constantly his thorn in the flesh – not some besetting illness that God had given him. Notice how he finishes the paragraph thanking God for weaknesses, insults, persecutions, etc. All these fit the use of the idiom culturally and biblically. He does not list diseases as something for which he gives thanks.

Jesus himself often warned us of persecutions to come but not disease. When it came to persecution he called us to endure. When it came to sickness he healed it, gave gifts to the church for healing others, and instructed believers to call the elders of the church for healing as soon as they got sick. We have zero examples of Jesus counseling people to desire sickness so that they could grow spiritually or in order to bring glory to God. We have zero examples of Jesus laying hands on someone to make them sick so that they might prosper spiritually. If that were the case, he would have given gets of illness tho the church rather than gifts of healing. God can work in the midst of a catastrophe or a plague or a debilitating disease to bring good out of it – even spiritual growth, but that is a very different thing from causing the illness. God is “the God who heals.”  To give sickness is contrary to his nature.  Even in an evil world, any father who intentionally administered some horrible virus or disease to a son or daughter to “make them better children” would new locked up, yet we often cause God of doing they same.

There is much more we could say about Paul’s “thorn in the flesh,” but perhaps this gives you some initial help if your faith for healing has been troubled by that section of scripture and the way in which some have understood it. Be blessed today!