2 Corinthians 12:10

‘Wherefore I take pleasure (‘gladly boast') in weaknesses: in injuries (or ‘insults'), in necessary hardships, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake, for when I am weak, then am I strong.'

This placed here might suggest at first sight that the ‘thorn in the flesh' covered all these seen as one whole, the burdens of his ministry. But it is more likely that the one enabled him to also face the many. He was hardly likely to expect God to remove all these. They were a part of the sufferings of Christ which he expected constantly. So they cannot be the specific thorn in the flesh. But the sufficiency that he received in respect the power of Christ abiding on him because of the thorn helped to maintain him in all his sufferings. For he had learned the secret that his weakness so threw him on God that he always emerged the stronger.

Paul again lists examples of the troubles that he has endured for Christ's sake. Three of the four appear in the earlier lists. All four are troubles that Paul faced on his missionary travels. The first one, hubris, has in mind wanton acts of violence. Paul uses it in 1 Thessalonians 2:2 of the “injury and insult” that he experienced at Philippi when he was publicly whipped and imprisoned without good reason (Acts 16:22; compare Acts 14:5). Ananke (compare Acts 6:4, “necessary hardships”) refers to the divine necessity which necessitates such adverse circumstances as calamity, torture and bodily pain. Diogmos is commonly used of tracking down a prey or an enemy and has in mind persecution (compare Acts 4:9, “persecutions”). Paul may well here be thinking of how he was pursued from city to city by hostile Jews. Stenochoria (compare Acts 6:4, “distresses, difficulties”) refers to finding oneself in a tight corner or in narrow straits, pressed in with no apparent way of escape.

‘For when I am weak, then am I strong.' This is true for two reasons. Firstly because his weakness drives him back to God so that he remains totally dependent on His power, and secondly because the weakness itself renders him usable by the God who uses the weak things of the world to confound the mighty. It is in his very weakness that the power of God can be most effective, that the power might be of God and not of him.