There are some counselors and pastors today who would say, “Paul you’re in denial. Stop putting on that fake Christian face and get real. Get angry at God. He’s hurting you. Learn from the Old Testament what a godly complaint looks like!” If there is anything you have learned, Bethlehem College & Seminary, I hope it includes this: We hate fake, because Jesus hates hypocrisy.
But we love something more than we hate fake. We love the miracle of the sovereign grace of God called serious joy — through tears of suffering. Paul responds to his God-given thorn in verse 9 and 10 with two of the strongest Christian Hedonistic words in the Bible.
“I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses” — hēdista — the superlative of hēdeōs, from which we get “hedonism.”
“I am content with weaknesses” — eudokeō — the same word God used when he said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17)
So, Paul is saying, “Father, if I may have greater revelations of your glory, and be protected from conceit, through the pain of this thorn, for the shaming of Satan’s weakness and the glory of Christ’s power, I will be most glad and well pleased.
Thorns Will Come
If the Lord Jesus delays his coming, some of you are going to live another sixty years inside the tent you call your body. If you have any bent towards pride and conceit, and if you have any true desire for greater revelations of God through his word, you may be virtually certain that God will give you those greater revelations and a thorn to go with them.
The greatest issue that you are going to face will be this: when God makes your body and your soul a theater of revelation and pain, for the sake of your humility, and Satan’s shaming, and Christ’s shining, how will you respond? Will you be like the world, in murmuring, and complaining, and questioning, and accusing? Or will you be like Paul?
“When Satan entered into Judas, he signed his own death warrant with the blood of Jesus.”
I will boast most gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, I am well pleased with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities (2 Corinthians 12:9–10).
And if in a few years you conclude that God has not given you one thorn, but is weaving for you a whole crown of thorns, will you not pray: “Father, if I might get a glimpse of heaven, and be saved from pride, and expose the ugliness of Satan, and magnify the beauty of Christ, then to that end, O God, would you grant the miracle that I be most glad and well-pleased?”
And I ask you, as thoughtful, serious Christian Hedonists, would that not make the power in the grace of the Lord Jesus look magnificent in your life?
God brought you to Bethlehem College & Seminary so that you would learn how to see these things in the Bible, and live them in your body. And as you go, we will pray that your time here will bear such fruit.
