2 Corinthians 12:1-10 page 1
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2 Corinthians 12:1-10 page 1 |
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'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.' But it's not about physical illness, in my opinion. Many people have assumed that Paul's thorn in the flesh was an illness or an injury. Even the Good News Bible paraphrases it as a 'painful physical ailment'. But I believe they are wrong. There is nothing in the context of the passage about illness. In the previous chapter Paul has written at length about the things he has suffered for the Gospel, whether in terms of persecution for his beliefs or the incredible endurance he had had to show in order to share his message with others. And that is what comes out in this passage, too, at the end: ''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.' But if it's not about Paul failing to receive healing from God for a physical condition, why have I chosen this passage for a sermon about why people are not always healed? I have chosen because even if it is not specific to the subject of healing, we still learn here about God's perspective for our lives when we have to struggle with anything that we would rather not have to deal with. Indeed, I therefore want to take this sermon beyond 'Why people are not always healed'. Even if we do know why we have not been healed, we still have to cope with living an unhealed life. And so in the first part of the sermon I am going to look at some of the reasons that have been given as to why people may not always be healed when we pray for them. But whether we know a reason or not, we still have to live sometimes without healing. If we don't know why we haven't been healed, we still have to get on with life whilst not knowing. And if we do know why healing has not come, that may give us peace about certain issues, but we still have to cope with the pain.
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Copyright © David D Faulkner, 2006 except where other sources are attributed or noted as inspiration. |
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