What was Paul’s thorn in the flesh?

Question 6076.

Paul’s thorn in the flesh is one of the great unanswered questions of the New Testament, and I have come to think the silence is deliberate.

We are told what it did, why it was given and what God said about it. We are never told what it was. That combination is unusual enough to be worth noticing, because Paul’s thorn has comforted more suffering believers as a mystery than it ever could have as a diagnosis.

What the text actually says

So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited (2 Corinthians 12:7). Paul repeats the purpose clause twice in one sentence, which tells you where his emphasis lies.

The Greek word is skolops, which can mean a stake or a splinter. The imagery ranges from something small and persistent to something impaling. Either way it is sharp, embedded and not going anywhere on its own.

Notice the double agency in the description of Paul’s thorn. It was given, which is a passive that implies God, and it was a messenger of Satan. Both statements stand in the same sentence without embarrassment, exactly as in the book of Job.

The leading candidates for Paul’s thorn

The oldest suggestion is a physical ailment, and eye trouble is the most commonly proposed. Paul tells the Galatians they would have torn out their own eyes and given them to him, and mentions writing in large letters with his own hand (Galatians 6:11). Some have suggested malaria, epilepsy or chronic pain.

A second suggestion is persecution and opposition. The word for harass has the sense of striking with the fist, and Paul had suffered a great deal of that quite literally. On this reading Paul’s thorn was the relentless human hostility that followed him from city to city.

There is a fifth possibility that deserves mention, drawn from the Old Testament use of the image. Thorns in the side is how God described the Canaanites who would remain in the land (Numbers 33:55), and Paul knew his Scriptures. On that reading the phrase points to persistent adversaries rather than to illness at all, and I have set out how opposition shapes a servant of God in why the faithful often suffer.

A third suggestion is a specific individual or group, since the messenger language is personal. The false apostles of the Corinthian correspondence would fit. A fourth is a besetting temptation, though this is the weakest option and owes more to later devotional writing than to the text.

Why we are not told

I think the anonymity is the point. If Paul’s thorn had been named, only those with the same affliction could fully identify with him. Because it is unnamed, every believer with a chronic, unremovable trouble can read the passage as though it were written for them, and it was.

There is also something in the fact that a man who wrote at length about his sufferings elsewhere chose not to itemise this one. He lists beatings, shipwrecks and hunger without hesitation in the previous chapter. The reticence here is a deliberate choice by a writer who was not usually reticent.

So I would resist confident identification. Every generation has proposed a candidate that reflects its own preoccupations, which should make us cautious. The honest position on Paul’s thorn is that we do not know.

What it was for

Paul tells us plainly. It was to keep him from becoming conceited after extraordinary revelations. He had been caught up into the third heaven and heard things he was not permitted to repeat. The thorn was the ballast for that experience.

That is worth sitting with. The apostle who wrote most of the New Testament needed protecting from his own pride, and God considered a permanent affliction a reasonable price for it. If Paul needed that, the rest of us should be slower to assume we do not.

There is a wider principle here about the danger of spiritual privilege. The higher the revelation, the greater the risk of self importance, and God evidently thinks pride a more serious threat to a servant than pain is. Most of us would have chosen differently, which tells you something about our judgement rather than about His.

It also reframes what we call an obstacle to ministry. Paul’s thorn was not an interruption to his usefulness; it was part of the equipment. The weakness was doing work that the strength could not have done.

What Paul did about it

Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me (2 Corinthians 12:8). Paul prayed, and prayed specifically for removal, and there is no suggestion that this was faithless. Anyone who tells you that asking God to take away an affliction shows a lack of faith is contradicting the apostle.

Three times also echoes Gethsemane, where the Lord Himself asked three times for a cup to pass. In both cases the answer was no, and in both cases the no served a purpose greater than the request.

There comes a point where continued asking gives way to receiving the answer. Paul stopped after three and moved from petition to acceptance, not because he gave up but because God had spoken clearly about Paul’s thorn.

The answer he received

My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). The tense is a settled present. Grace is not going to be sufficient at some future point; it is sufficient now, and the sufficiency is not conditional on the thorn leaving.

This is one of the great sentences of Scripture, and it was given to a man whose prayer had just been declined. God did not remove the trouble and did not explain it. He gave Himself instead, which is a better answer than the one requested even when it does not feel like it at the time.

Paul’s response is startling. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. He does not resign himself to Paul’s thorn; he comes to prefer it, because of what it makes room for.

Why God did not remove it

Because the thorn was doing something removal would have undone. God is not obliged to choose our comfort over our character, and He frequently does not. That is one of the harder truths of the Christian life and one of the most freeing once accepted.

It also displayed the pattern of the cross. Power perfected in weakness is not a consolation prize; it is the shape of the gospel itself. The one who saved the world did so by being crucified in weakness, and His servants should not expect a different pattern.

This is why I am cautious about teaching that promises the removal of every affliction to those with sufficient faith. Paul had more faith than anyone reading this article, and he kept his thorn until the end. Any theology that cannot accommodate Paul’s thorn is not accommodating the New Testament.

What this means for chronic trouble

If you are living with something that will not lift, you are in apostolic company. Pray for its removal, honestly and repeatedly, because Paul did. If the answer is no, ask what grace is being offered in its place rather than assuming the prayer failed.

Do not conclude that the affliction is punishment. I have written elsewhere about the connection between sin and suffering in the relationship between suffering and sin, and the short version is that the two are not simply linked. Paul’s thorn was given to a faithful man in the middle of faithful service.

Look for the company of others in the same position too. There is a particular kindness that comes from believers who have lived with something unfixable for years, and they are usually easy to spot in a congregation once you start looking.

And watch what it produces. Chronic trouble tends to make people either bitter or tender, and the direction is not decided by the trouble. It is decided by what you do with it, and by whether you keep coming to the God who said His grace was enough.

So, now what?

Stop demanding an explanation as the price of your trust. Paul never received one, and he wrote the most joyful letters in the New Testament from prison. Explanation is not what God promised; presence is.

Ask the Lord honestly for what you want. Three times, or three hundred, and then listen for the answer rather than only repeating the request. Sometimes the answer is a changed circumstance, and sometimes it is a changed man.

And if you have a thorn, ask what it is keeping you from. In Paul’s case it was conceit. In yours it may be self reliance, or hurry, or the illusion that you can manage without God. What might your weakness be making room for?

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 of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

2 Corinthians 12:9, ESV