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My commentary explains that Paul was using a teaching
technique favored by Jewish rabbis, who often referred to their own experiences
in the third person. He was the man who was taken up to the
third heaven and then returned to earth.
Then he was given his thorn
in the flesh.
It said: “The Lord
knows how to balance our lives. If we have only blessings, we may become
proud; so He permits us to have
burdens as well. Paul’s great experience
in heaven could have ruined his ministry on earth; so God, in His goodness, permitted
Satan to buffet Paul in order to keep him from becoming proud.”
It also mentioned how in Christian life we get many of our
blessing through transformation of
our problems, not substitution. Praying for something to be removed is asking
God for a substitution (“Give me health instead of sickness.”). Sometimes, though, God 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. We do have to remember that “Satan cannot work against a believer
without the permission of God.”
One thing I read had special significance, and I think it is
only understood through Christ’s words that eternal life begins now, not at death: “We have a marvelous encouragement in the
fact that we are today seated with
Christ in the heavenly places (Eph 2:6).
Since God is outside of time itself, our future is His present. Therefore because Christ has saved us, we are
already sitting with Him. That means that this life on earth is at the
same time playing out as we watch
from heaven. Doesn’t that put a unique
slant on things!
Father, thank You for knowing that I need balance, whether I can acknowledge it or not. Thank You for keeping me humble through
thorns so that it is You who gets
the glory and not me. Help me to see that I am being blessed by transformation
as often as by substitution of the problems I encounter.
Your Brother In Christ,
Gary Ford
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