2 Corinthians 12:7

2 Corinthians 12:7

The Gospel of the Body.

A good life of St. Paul would be the best possible exponent of Christian experience. I do not mean an external biography for that we have but a full transcript of his thoughts and feelings. But we have this in a greater degree than we suppose. These epistles of his are not theological treatises, but genuine letters from one man to other men, full of personal feeling and experience, 2nd not impersonal generalisations of truth; they show how the man Paul took in the Gospel, and how it worked in and through him.

I. This experience of the thorn in the flesh is both interesting and valuable, or would be, if we could come at it. But it has been buried under such a mass of comment and conjecture that the simple lessons it contains are hard to reach. The main object seems to have been to discover what the secret nature of the thorn was. The strife is typical of much study of the Bible infinite scrutiny of the form without much thought of the end. Now it matters little what the thorn in the flesh was; but how it pierced the Apostle, how he bore it, and how it affected him are the real questions. If the real significance of the thorn in the flesh were put in a general way, it would be physical evil a condition of spiritual strength.

II. Consider the moral effect of bodily infirmity. It cuts up our conceit and pride. It wrought in this way in St. Paul. Nothing strikes such a blow at self as an experience of physical infirmity or suffering. Pain is a great humbler, weakness a still greater. Bodily infirmity teaches a man to go carefully in this world of mischance, this world from which chaos is not yet wholly expunged; it co-ordinates him to an uncertain world. Physical infirmity reveals to a man the fact that he is not himself a source of power and the more general truth that the power of the world is outside of him; in other words, it teaches him that he is a dependent being.

III. An experience of physical infirmity gives one a certain wholesome contempt of material things. We have hardly any more imperative command than to secure for the body its highest possible vigour and health; the gospel of the body is yet to be heard and heeded, but this gospel will go no further than to require such care and treatment of the body that it shall best serve the uses of the mind. It is worthy of the greatest care, but only that it may be the most supple and ready servant of our real self. I will think well of the body, but not too well. Hence this experience of physical weakness and infirmity is left in order to help us keep a due balance between flesh and spirit. There are great advantages in not being allowed to feel at home in the body. An animal life antagonises a moral life. When we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord. Man does not live by bread alone. Hunger may feed him; blindness may give him light; pain may bring peace; the weakness of the body may be the strength of the spirit. For all this finite order and encasement is a minister to the life which is eternal.

T. T. Munger, The Life,p. 87.

References: 2 Corinthians 12:7. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iii., p. 213; G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount,p. 60.