“Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Corinthians 12:10 (NASB)
On account of Christ and for the advancement of His gospel Paul went everywhere and endured hardships. That’s what “for Christ’s sake” means in this verse. Paul recognized God’s purpose for his life. He willingly obeyed God.
Paul said he was willing to endure hardships and welcomed and took pleasure in them if it meant he advanced the gospel’s reach to more people who had not heard. His trials, persecutions, hardships, and difficulties came because he spread the gospel message. He’d rather experience pain because of evangelizing than comfort from not doing it. Paul’s pain became his badge proving he lived to serve Jesus. Because of that he could and would be content with pain, hunger, harassment, etc. These maladies proved to himself he was obeying Jesus and following His example.
Paul’s weakness/feebleness came from his “thorn in the flesh.” It caused him physical and mental pain. As a human, hunger and physical maladies.
Insults typically come from a person who feels superior to or wants to assume superiority over another person. The Jewish religious leaders who refused to listen to Paul would have insulted him, as might any other number of people. Their sense of superiority came from hubris—pride in themselves and who they considered themselves to be.
The distresses Paul wrote about would be the dire straits and calamities he lived through like being bit by a poisonous viper, being shipwrecked, and not having enough food. These also affect a person’s mind like pain and insults.
The persecutions are done by people against what the speaker says. They pursued/hunted Paul down like an animal to suppress him speaking. They wanted to punish God’s messenger in order to conquer him and prove what he taught wasn’t so great after all. This threat attacked his mind with fear of pain and could cause physical harm. Insults were verbal only and could cause mental pain. Persecutions went a step further to cause physical pain, too.
Difficulties were extreme calamities. They caused physical and mental limitations. They were magnified distresses. These could be things like being put in chains in jail with only the food and drink that his friends took to him.
Paul explained why he willingly chose to encounter and endure insults, distresses, persecutions, and difficulties. He may have grown to expect them. Paul said he walked forward “for Christ’s sake” knowing he’d face what most people ran from. What did he mean by this phrase? I explained this in the first paragraph. Paul walked into and endured mental and physical trials because it advanced the spread of the gospel to regions and countries of people who didn’t know about Jesus and the salvation He gives. His joy was the product of obeying Jesus and from the Holy Spirit who rejoiced each time a person believed in Jesus for salvation from sins and death.
Paul willingly chose to obey knowing he most likely would encounter insults, distresses, persecutions, and difficulties because he was weak—he had a thorn in the flesh—and was not mighty enough to deflect or stop them from happening. He knew God could stop or deflect them, but sometimes didn’t. Why? Because, the Lord said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfect in weakness” (vs 9). Because Paul was obviously weaker than God, the strength, power, conviction, endurance, and faith people saw in Paul, though he experienced hard things, was the Lords’s strength, power, conviction, and endurance. Paul’s human weakness and frailty allowed people to see strength they knew could not come from him. They would see it and realize each of these originated in and came from God. Paul, in his devoted belief in Jesus and His love and obedience to Him, showed God’s power. In his weakness, God used Him and made him strong in appearance, word, and action to reach each person who saw and heard him.
How devoted are you to God? Would you obey God if you knew you’d meet with opposition, especially opposition that could cause you physical and/or mental harm? That opposition is no greater than trusting and following God like Abraham to go to a new and unknown country like Abraham or entering the home of an antagonist like David did or being known as a follower of Jesus like Stephen was.
What is God telling you to do or say? What is holding you back from obeying Him immediately? Be like Paul, Noah, Peter, Abraham, and Jesus. Don’t consider your weakness as an excuse from obeying. When we are weak, Jesus’ strength, love, and power to save will become apparently obvious and people will be saved. At what point will you be content, when disobeying God or when following Him in obedience though you don’t understand why He’d use you or how it can be done with the few talents you have? Contentment comes from obeying God.
