Scott Hafemann
Yes, he surely did. And underlying all these circumstantial sufferings that he endured because of his apostolic ministry, like you mentioned, from his travels to his imprisonments, there was the underlying constant affliction. The thorn from the evil one, as he calls it, given to him by our sovereign God that I think was relentless migraine headaches. There’s been some more recent studies on the medical terminology that Paul uses in describing the thorn in the flesh when he talks about it as a hammer that used to buffet his head. And folks have seen from ancient medical textbooks that that language was used to describe debilitating migraine headaches.
My wife suffered from those for years and was hospitalized with them, and I know therefore, just how painful and debilitating they are. In other words, there were times when people with these kinds of migraines would lose their eyesight, would become paralyzed, would of course, be so sick that they would be vomiting and not be able to collect their thoughts. The only thing they can do is, especially if you’re thinking in the first century without medicine, is just hold on for dear life until the headache would pass.
Paul talked about the fact that the Lord had granted him that thorn in the flesh in order to keep him humble in light of the amazing revelations of the gospel that he had received. And I should say this, that on the flip side, of course, when the super-apostles were bragging about their own spiritual experiences and critiquing Paul because they thought he suffered too much to be an apostle of the resurrected Christ. Paul finally had to trump their boasting with his own description of the time when the Lord took him in a vision up to his own presence in the third heaven. What’s amazing to me is that happened in Paul’s life 14 years before he ever told a single person about it. I mean, if that happened to me, I’d be
talking about it tomorrow morning He waited 14 years, and he only did it in the third person when he was forced to do it because of the boasting of his opponents and the other thing.
Then, of course, that’s the text in the context from which we learn about his thorn in the flesh. And how’s this for counterculture? When he comes back out of his vision and he reports what he saw and learned in the Lord’s presence in the third heaven, the only thing he said was, God said no to my prayers. You get to go into God’s presence. And the one thing you hear is, no. No, I’m not going to take away your suffering. Because my power is made perfect in your weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).
David Capes
Yes, it’s interesting to me that he asked three times, and then it seems as if you never ask again. Do you think he was thinking about Jesus in the garden at that point? We don’t know that he’s had a record of that, but Jesus asked three times, Father to let this cup pass from me. And God said no to that. And now he is before God, and he’s asking God three times. God is there any way you can let this thorn in the flesh pass from me. And God said, No.
Scott Hafemann
That’s a great parallel. And students of the text have wondered, why three? Why not five? Why not two? Why don’t you just ask once, right? I think the best answer I’ve heard and this is not unique to me, but from what I’ve studied, is that there’s a tradition of praying three times for things. Because it symbolizes the beginning, the middle and the end. So, it’s a way of talking about, you’ve prayed it out. You’ve prayed it through. There’s nothing more to ask. You started, you went through the middle and you finished. And so, three was a way of talking about the completion of the prayer.
David Capes
So not necessarily strictly those three times.
Scott Hafemann
It might not have been three times, but it could have been. In other words, if you prayed three times, that should be sufficient. Because it should be the beginning, middle and the end of your concerns.
David Capes
And are you going to be satisfied after that third with God’s answer? Or, in some cases, a non-answer. That’s fascinating. So, what has the study of Paul meant for you personally, as you think about your own life as a professor, as a Christian, as a father?
Scott Hafemann
Well, I think this comes back to, actually, what I’m going to talk about in the third session related to Paul’s suffering, and that is the question, what’s new in the new covenant? And what’s been most impactful in my life was to see that for Paul, what’s new in the new covenant is not a new message. The gospel he preaches is the gospel that’s been preached from Genesis on and was the promise from God that under the new covenant, God was going to match the proclamation of His Word with the transforming power of his Spirit for all those whom he was bringing into his people.
Because you remember, under the old covenant, Israel often got the word, the Torah, without the Spirit. And so, it just condemned them, and because they didn’t keep it, of course. So, the promise of the new covenant is that you’re going to get the law with the spirit. The message of God with the Spirit, so that he will be enabling you to fulfill His will, to keep His commandments. I think what’s been most impactful in my life is to recognize that trusting in God’s promises always expresses itself in obedience to God’s commandments.
Because of the empowerment of the Spirit, so that I can never claim to be trusting God’s promises, even the promise of forgiveness at the cross, if I’m not expressing that trust in obedience to God’s commands. Because obedience, for Paul, is simply trust gone public, just like disobedience is distrust gone public, right? The classic example would be, if you’re trusting God to meet your needs for tomorrow, then you don’t steal today. But if you say, well, I trust God to meet my needs, but I’m stealing, it’s a contradiction in terms. It’s an impossibility. It’s cognitive dissonance. To trust God to meet your needs would mean not to steal.
But actually, it even means more than that. All of the commandments of God, for Paul, are symbols pointing to a reality beyond themselves. So that when the reality comes, you don’t need the symbol anymore. The reality for not stealing is obviously trusting God to meet your needs. In such a way that, as Paul tells the thief, stop stealing, get a job so that you might give to others. So instead of taking from others, the fulfillment of that command is to give to others. The challenge of it is to recognize then that if I’m following Christ, and if his presence through the Spirit is a reality in my life, then the expectation is that I will actually be obedient to His commandments as I trust his provisions.
And so that’s, I think, the most impactful thing. Because when I see myself disobeying, I don’t try to screw up more willpower and say, Oh, I just have to obey. No, it’s not a self-help program in any way. It’s not the power of positive thinking. It’s not willpower. It’s what promise of God am I not trusting that’s manifesting self in this disobedience. What do I need to trust God for that I wouldn’t do this again. And so that link in Paul’s theology between trusting God’s promises as they themselves express our obedience is the most impactful thing. Because before I was studying Paul in detail, I was taught by well-meaning Christians, don’t get me wrong, but I was taught that there were two things you had to do to be happy in Jesus. As we used to sing way back in the 70s, you had to “trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus than to trust and obey”.
As if the life of faith consisted of two things, and believing wouldn’t be enough. You’d have to believe and obey. But then, of course, somehow, why should I obey? It was just a complete confusion to me, but now I realize that there’s only one thing you need to do to be a Christian, and that is trust-obey. In other words, you just work on trusting God and watch the way in which as you study his word, that trust is to be manifested in obedience to His commandments. So, we’re not trying to add obedience to the life of faith. We’re simply strengthening our life of faith and watching the way it expresses itself in obedience. So that’s how I think the commands work. Commands are all calls to trust God. The commands of God are simply the promises of God in disguise.
David Capes
I like it. I haven’t heard it put that way before. Fantastic. Dr Scott Hafemann, thanks for being with us today on The Stone Chapel Podcast.
Scott Hafemann
Yes, and let me just say thanks for inviting me to teach this course on Paul and his letters in the LCTM Certificate Program that you’ve got off the ground now, and to all the listeners out there, come on over.
David Capes
Do it. Come on over. Thanks so much.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
