Image: Early Spring Scene, North Garden, Virginia
The morning Bible reading at worship at CRBC Sunday before
last was taken from 2 Corinthians 12. In
the pastoral prayer that followed, I then drew upon Paul’s threefold request
that the “thorn in the flesh” be removed, the Lord’s comfort to him (in v.
12: “My grace is sufficient for thee:
for my strength is made perfect in weakness”), and Paul’s contentment in his
suffering (v. 10).
Over lunchtime we were discussing how Christian interpreters
have long drawn on Paul’s experience as a parallel to the circumstances of
ordinary believers. That conversation
sent me to Poole’s commentary to see how he made experiential use of this
passage in his exposition:
On Paul’s threefold request in v. 8:
It is lawful for us to pray for the
removal of bodily evils, though such prayer must also be attended with due
submission to the wisdom and will of God; they being evils in themselves, but
such trials as God intendeth for our
good, (as it were in Paul’s case,)and which issue in our spiritual advantage.
On the Lord’s comfort to Paul in v. 9:
Those dispensations of providence, in
which the souls of men have the greatest experiences of the power and strength
of Christ, are most to be gloried in; but such are states of infirmities. The text confirmeth Christ to be God blessed
for ever; for by his power it is that we
are supported under trials, his strength it is which is made perfect in the weakness
of poor creatures.
On Paul’s reference to his taking “pleasure in infirmities”
in v. 10:
A child of God seldom walks so much
in view of God as his God, and in view of his own sincerity, as when, as to his
outward condition and circumstances in the world, he walks in the dark and
seeth no light.
Indeed, believers can take comfort in laying the experience
of Paul alongside our own experience in the life and faith.
Grace and peace, Pastor
Jeff Riddle
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