Karen Beilharz: Welcome to Moore in the Word, a podcast of Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia that seeks
to glorify God through biblically sound, thought-provoking and challenging talks and interviews. In this episode,
from a chapel service held on Friday the 14th of March 2025, Archie Poulos, Director for the Centre for Ministry Development and lecturer in the Ministry
Department at Moore Theological College, speaks on 2 Corinthians chapter 12 and the undermining of Paul's ministry by the so-called “super apostles”.
He reminds us that even though a Christian life and ministry can be full of pain and suffering,
God is in control and he will use such things for his glory and for the blessing of his people.
We hope you find the episode helpful.
Archie Poulos: Lord God, again, we thank you for these words, these precious words that you have caused to be written and that we have heard.
We ask you that you might extend your mercy so that we might believe, understand, and put into practice what you've written.
Amen.
Imagine if you were with the Apostle Paul, one of those people who at the end of two Corinthians send their greetings.
What advice would you give to the apostle about how to relate to these Corinthians?
Because Paul is their appointed powerful, great apostles.
He was commissioned by God.
He'd experienced things in the presence of God that can't even be spoken of.
We just heard in verse two 14 years ago, he was caught up into the third heaven and so great,
and mind spinning was that experience that God forbade him to tell anybody about what he'd seen.
He was accredited to the Corinthians by signs and wonders and miracles in their midst.
And after Jesus, he is the most pivotal human being used by God to spread the gospel.
And yet as this letter is being penned, he is being undermined.
His actions, while they are pure, are spun by the opponents, by the super apostles to be.
Or at least appear to be evil or driven by false motives.
In an attempt to destroy Paul and the super apostles sowed their wicked seed, they claim that Paul was inferior to them and to the other apostles,
and it was having an impact because rather than commending their apostle, the Corinthians are in danger of believing that lie and rejecting Paul.
They mocked Paul because Paul took no money from the Corinthians.
His motive was absolute purity.
He didn't want to make them think that he was doing it outta something he could get from them.
It was for their sake that he took no money.
But this generous action they had spun to say that he wasn't even impressive enough to dare to ask for money.
His actions, they, they spun as trickery, as craftiness, craftiness, like the devil in the, the serpent in the garden, for example.
Driven by his love and his concern for the Corinthians, and unable to go to visit them himself.
He sent Titus to them to find out what was going on.
This action.
The super apostles accused Paul of, oh, he is strong in his letters, but he's weak face to face, and that's why weak Paul sent Titus.
He was cunning.
He was trying to exploit them.
No matter what he was doing, out of good motives, they were spinning as evil.
Have you ever experienced anything or something like that?
We all have mixed motives as far as possible.
There are times where we act for the benefit of others.
We act for the benefit of others at cost to ourselves, and we have negative motives attributed to us.
Have you ever experienced the pain that that causes the uncertainty about how to correct things?
And so we have God's appointed apostle who has seen so much.
Having his actions and motives undermined so that the Corinthians might disregard him,
but the stakes are much higher than just their attitude towards the apostle and maybe his hurt feelings.
This is much more than personal for to follow.
You know this to follow the Apostle Paul.
Is to secure your souls.
To not follow the apostle Paul is to jeopardize your very souls.
And so in chapter 10, he uses really strong language, almost cultic language.
He says, I want to take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ.
Paul is so zealous because their eternal destiny hangs on them continuing in what he taught.
It was for their sakes.
What a weight the Apostle has to carry to carefully navigate the way he relates to them, his
attitude to them, knowing that in every decision, their eternal souls way in the balance.
I don't know about you, but as every chapter of two Corinthians has been read this term,
I've thought this might be the most sobering and moving chapter of the New Testament.
As the apostle wrestles with so many big eternity shaping issues, and do you feel it here in chapter 12 as Kessie just read it to us.
He has so much, he's experienced so much to give with the possibility of being jettisoned to the scrap heap
by the Corinthians, coupled with the anguish of knowing that if that occurs, they could lose their salvation.
Now this is Paul's situation.
Perhaps in a smaller font, it's actually the reality of all ministry.
So what would we advise the Apostle Paul to do?
What should he do?
Well, to learn from what the Apostle does, we're going to look at the chapter in two parts.
Firstly, Paul's dealing with the Corinthians, and secondly, the dealing with supernatural agents.
So firstly, the Corinthians in chapter 11, which we didn't get a chance to look
at at Tuesday, and one of our chapels didn't get to look at on Wednesday either.
Paul says that he's gonna engage in some foolish speech, foolish speech, particularly is the foolishness of boasting.
Because it looks like he might defend himself and his ministry through the argument.
Look at me.
I'm the great one.
Give me credit.
And the reason for that is the hope that they might accept and listen to him and to our ears
Boasting his automatically negative, isn't it as negative connotations to it, but it need not.
Sometimes the word which we translate boasting is translated as glory.
Sometimes as rejoicing, it's actually holding up something for others to enjoy and benefit from.
Like, like when you sing the praises of your spouse, what you're doing is you're ing their
praises is calling on other people to rejoice in the blessings that flow from this person.
But of course, even that can turn dark, can't it?
It can become about you.
Look at the wife I've got.
So boasting in and of itself isn't a problem.
It's that it's can so easily tip over into extolling of yourself, and that's
why it gets such a negative rap in our world and when the dark side of boasting.
Is in play.
It draws attention to the wrong things.
And so Paul says he won't boast about himself in verse six because what it does
is make you focus on the person and not on what he does and why he does it.
And he won't talk about what he experienced in the third heaven because that's what will
consume them, and it will take their attention away from their relationship with him.
And so in chapters 11 and 12, Paul boasts.
But not in his greatness, but in what God is doing for the Corinthians through the work of the Apostle Paul, it is not self extolling.
It's so that the Corinthians can delight in what God's doing in them, so they
can clearly see that God is the conduit that God uses for his marvelous work.
Because if Paul boasts about himself, despite any positive benefits it might bring, it will suck the oxygen from the
deep relational care that he has for the Corinthians and divert their attention from the relationship to his experience.
And so there are two specific things that Paul says in his chapter about that relationship.
First one is Paul displays acted love.
The language of Paul in this chapter is so caringly and lovingly evocative.
Verse 14.
Now I'm ready to visit you for a third time and I won't be a burden to you.
'cause what I want is not your possessions but you, after all children shouldn't have to save up for their parents, but parents for their children.
So I'll gladly spend for you everything that I have and expend myself as well.
If I love you more, will you love me less?
See what he says there.
I want not your possessions but you.
You see he's not using them for his own ends to get something for himself.
This is the language of deep, intimate, and exclusive relationship.
If you're a super apostle, maybe you would call this language claustrophobically, smothering, something
that the apostle does to fulfill some psychological need in himself, but that's far from the truth.
Paul explains the nature of this relationship as a parent to their child.
Parents go through sleepless nights.
Many of you know this.
And it doesn't end when they turn two, you worry every day of their life for them, and you'll gladly do it again.
And again.
Parents surrender their freedoms for the good of their children.
They give up their personal resources for their children.
The traffic is one way from the parent to the child.
They do it willingly and lovingly, willingly and lovingly, and a great personal cost.
Here, Paul, in verse 14, I will gladly spend for you everything that I have, and he goes further and expend myself as well.
This expression of love is limitless.
It unleashes everything that I have.
For your benefit, and this is how the great Apostle Paul describes his relationship with the so often recalcitrant Corinthians,
but parental love like this has the danger that it cares so much for maintaining relationship.
That the parent does whatever they can to preserve it, especially if the relationship's fragile, like it's with the Corinthians.
And that can make you timid, not wanting to rock the boat, soft peddling hard words.
That should be said, but that is not how Paul loves.
He calls out bad behavior.
Maybe it was the Super Apostles who let the Corinthians get away with all sorts of bad behavior, but that would destroy them and dishonor God.
Rather for Paul, the life that God calls people to is the best life for them and it's the
parent's responsibility to call it out when that is not the case in the call for change.
And so in love, Paul will discipline them despite how they might respond to him in this tenuous relationship.
For the end of the chapter verses 19 to 21, have you been thinking all along that I've been defending ourselves to you?
We've been speaking in the sight of God as those in Christ and everything we do dear friends, is for your strengthening
for I'm afraid that when I come, I won't find you as I want you to be and you may not find me as you want me to be.
I fear that there may be discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, slander, gossip, arrogance, and disorder.
Wow.
Um, I'm afraid that when I come, my God will humble me before you and I'll be grieved over many who
have sinned earlier and have not repented of impurity, sexual sin, debauchery in which you've indulged.
Okay?
I am not going to soft pedal things.
It is for your sake and for the glory of God that I'm gonna call these things out.
I. By the way, I think the humbling that Paul speaks of here is the humbling that a father feels when their child goes astray.
A humbling that originates in the grief of poor behavior and it mourns the loss of the child walking in the right way.
Yet another example of the love that Paul has for the Corinthians and so love enacted love that is not timid is a great lesson for we pastors.
But there is much more to these verses.
It's not just Paul's relationship with the Corinthians that's addressed here.
It's the supernatural dimension that we actually are permitted a glimpse here.
Now, I dunno if you've ever watched the movie The Truman Show.
Any of you seen it?
Yeah.
Okay, great.
Some of you wouldn't 'cause you're young.
Um, it was actually one of the most influential movies of the 1990s and it still challenges our obsession with reality tv.
It's the story of a baby who was discarded at birth, who is raised on a sound stage called Sea Haven Island, where
he's surrounded by actors his whole life and every day of his life becomes a reality show, and yet he doesn't know it.
He never gets the chance to leave the island.
A fabricated island is his entire reality.
That's all his existence knows.
But one day he thinks that there might be more to existence than just this
island, and so he sails across the water and hits the edge of the sound stage.
That's what you can see there, where he exits the reality that he had always known and there he sees in existence that he had never imagined.
Now, while we don't know what Paul saw in the third heaven, in verses seven to 10, we get
a glimpse of this bigger universe like Truman does as he exits the sound stage verse seven.
In order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me three times.
I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me, but he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my powers made perfect in weakness.
Therefore, I'll boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.
That's why for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.
For when I'm weak, then I'm strong.
And so let's think about Paul, God and the devil.
These words in verses seven to 10 are so familiar to us.
Familiar, especially in times of torment that we can lose the shockingness of
them because Paul is the divinely appointed apostle who had experienced so much.
He grieve constantly for the, and the dangers for the souls of the Corinthians.
And what will God do in that circumstance?
God who is all powerful, who is always active in his world, what will he do if you are a friend of Paul back in the first century?
What would you pray for, expose, bring to an end the destructive super apostles.
Would you pray for that?
Restrain the work of Satan?
Would you pray for that?
I've prayed prayers like that for milder, but somewhat similar circumstances, and I think there are
appropriate prayers and that's why when we read these verses that come from outside of the sound stage.
They're so shocking.
Verse seven, after all that I've experienced, for the sake of God, Paul says, in order to keep me
from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in the flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me,
to keep me from becoming conceited.
What about what's going on for the Corinthians?
What we see here is God's intimate and deep care for the individual.
The individual matters to God.
Paul, as great as he is, he's not just an operative to be used by God.
God cares for this saint soul, and his concern for this saint is that he grow in Christ's likeness, and so he intervenes for him with the thorn.
Thorn in the flesh.
You can read all of the options and you won't be able to come up with an answer.
What we do know though, is it was painful and it was a torment, and I think we do ask, what is God doing here?
Here is God's man deeply exercised in his concern for the Corinthians, and yet given another excruciating torment.
Why would God do this?
And I think a reasonable answer is, oh, it's not God.
It was the cunning, crafty work of Satan after all the thorns called a messenger from Satan.
That's true, but it doesn't absolve God because Paul knows that this torment is actually in God's hands because he asks God three times.
No, he doesn't ask God.
He pleads with God three times to remove the thorn.
Paul knows that God stands over all like Job did that we just read of in chapter 13 a moment ago.
By the way, it's not wrong to ask God to take pain away, and it's also not a sign of indifference on God's part or anger towards you.
If God's answer to you is no, that's one of the things we can learn from this, but how can Satan.
God both be involved in the same activity.
How can the thorn be both from God and a messenger from Satan?
Either it's gotta be God or it's gotta be Satan, hasn't it?
And here is part of the solution.
Uh, just a quick di uh, digression.
Uh, some of you have, see, heard me speak about this before.
When can a circle be a triangle?
If you've, if I've given you the answer, don't yell it out.
The answer is it can't be.
Because a triangle has three sides.
A circle has an infant number of sides.
It's impossible for the two to coexist.
Isn it, it can't.
A circle can't be a triangle, except if next slide,
you move into three dimensions and you look at a cone.
You look at a cone from the top and you see a circle.
You look at a cone from the side and you see a triangle.
It's only when you move outside of the situation that you are in.
Into the third dimension that you actually understand things and so you say, how can God and Satan both be intimately involved?
The answer is, we are humans.
We're like two dimensional beings.
God is in absolute control, and yet this is a messenger from Satan used entirely for the purposes of God.
And so the thorn is good for Paul's soul, and the pain is used by God to purify Paul and to keep him from conceit.
And so he can say, when I am weak, then I am strong.
Eight small words, easy to say, really hard to believe, and really hard to bring inside your very being.
How easily the devil can deceive us.
He takes good things like our successes and uses them to lead us astray.
Weakness enables us to see things properly, but even more astoundingly than that, God uses this
thorn, not as an afterthought, as if, oh, the devil gave it, so what can I do to make it useful?
God deliberately uses it for his glory.
Verse 10 is where Paul says, when I am weak, then I am strong.
We need to hear that because that's a subversion of our world's paradigm, but it is not merely a subverting of the world's paradigm.
It is not merely whoever wants to be great must become least.
We must learn that we must learn, don't view reality the way the world does.
That is important and true.
To leave it there is to only pay attention to the end of verse 10 and ignore the most important part, which is the beginning of verse 10.
So in verse 10, that is why for Christ's sake, I delight in weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.
For when I'm weak, then I'm strong.
Verse 10.
The motivation is not the subversion of a paradigm.
It's for Christ's sake, the paradigm is not subverted because it's good that things be overturned.
It's not subverted in order to keep people on their toes, like the tactics that some of our ward leaders use, everything
that Paul does, all that he endures is for the sake of Christ, for the glory of God, and what a model for us is that.
Over the last few days, as I've been reading two Corinthians 12, I've been challenged by how I pray, and so I've interrogated
my prayers and I've asked myself after I have prayed, am I asking for my ease or am I asking for the glory of God?
Are the things I am asking for because I think I know a better, easier way for me.
Rather than the pathway I think that God has set out for me, and as I've asked those questions, it's changed my prayers.
My prayers are now less about things and events, and more about promoting boasting
glorying in Christ about perseverance so that God might be praised and to my shame.
It's only now that these themes are much more common in my prayers.
And so to finish, we are not the apostle.
I assume that none of you have experienced the third heaven, and Howard would be able to confirm
it even if you say you have, and nor do we have the certainty of Paul for the source of the th.
And so what do we learn?
Well, Paul is a great model.
Pray for such love.
For the flock that bites that's entrusted to us.
Pray for wisdom to best relate to them.
Pray for resoluteness and perseverance.
Pray that you'll be spared from self ag grandest because of your office or the experiences that you'll have,
and pray that in the midst of difficulties, no matter how tormenting God will be glorified through them.
But I wanna add.
Also know and be convinced that this life, this Christian life has tormenting pain and the experiences of pain while
they're the result of our broken, fallen world are under the hand of God, that God might be glorified and people blessed.
Only you have that message.
To bring to our world
the revelation of God through his apostle takes us outta sea haven Island Distress not ease is a normal experience of life.
And unless you've seen beyond the island, no one knows how to handle distress.
Living appropriately in this distress blesses you and glorifies God, and no one naturally thinks like that.
It is the blessed gospel.
Our only hope.
Anyone's only hope that makes sense of torment and only you Christian have something to say that no one else can say.
Only you have the answers to the reality of our existence, and these answers are true for when I am weak, then I am strong.
For Christ's sake,
Karen Beilharz: Thank you for listening to Moore in the Word, a podcast of Moore Theological College.
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