2 Corinthians 12:2 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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2 Corinthians 12:2

Comments

‘I knew a man above Christ above fourteen years ago.’ So reluctant is he to speak about himself, he does so in the third person. He speaks as though he is talking about someone else, but we know he is speaking of himself. And in verse 7 he comes clean, as it were – ‘And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelation.’ So, it is clear that he is speaking of himself, but he speaks so reluctantly that it is in the third person for several verses.Whatever was revealed to Paul at that time, he does not divulge; it is not for us. His epistles and all that we receive from him, his teaching, the revelations by which they came were not given at this time. This is something just for him which he is not permitted to speak about, it is so glorious, so sublime. It is for him, and he kept it to himself for 14 years. ‘I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell.)’ He does not know whether it was some kind of literal resurrection or just his disembodied spirit. It was so realistic; it could have been either, but he is uncertain.‘Such a one caught up to the third heaven.’ The following verses will explain what that means: it is paradise. In the language of Paul, the first and the second heavens are in all probability, the earth’s atmosphere, and then the skies frequently described as the heavens in the Scripture containing the stars, the constellations. Then the heaven of heavens, the third heaven, the highest heaven; that is the abode of God, the spiritual realm on high. That is all it means, it is simple. He does not speak of a fourth or a fifth; anything else is human fantasy. It is just language which denotes that he was caught up into paradise where are all the saints who have gone before, where Christ lives and reigns on high. A place of such glory that it cannot be expressed in human language.

Application

Today, people invent spiritual experiences, and they say they have been taken up to heaven and so on, and they write books about it and publicise these unlikely fictions to the world. The apostle had this experience and said not a word for 14 years. And now when he divulges it, it is for a purpose and even then, he does not describe it, he does not tell us any of the details.

Questions

This timeframe helps us to place the event. We know when this second letter to the Corinthians was written, and 14 years before that, just a month or two maybe before 14 years, places the apostle in AD 44. So we know at what period, at what time of his life this particular revelation or literal event took place. It was not when Christ appeared to him outside Damascus: that was before AD 44. Some say it was very early on when he spent time in Arabia, but that is several years before AD 44. Some believe it was when he was stoned and taken up for dead at Lystra. But it could not have been then because that was some years after AD 44. In fact, all the references to visions in the book of Acts and elsewhere as far as Paul was concerned, are either before or after this date. This event is something not mentioned anywhere else, this supreme spiritual experience. AD 44 was just about the beginning of the first missionary journey, which places this experience at or a little before the first call from Antioch and his setting out on the first missionary journey. Now this is only speculation, but it is a very fitting time for this tremendous experience because it is at the beginning of the worst of his sufferings and persecutions. We have seen already that soon after his conversion he was preaching in Damascus, and he was virtually hounded out of the city and had to escape in a fish basket, let down the outside walls. So there were troubles before AD 44. But that was really the beginning of his labours, his greatest labours, and his fiercest persecutions and opposition and so on. So it would be very fitting that God did something for him as a mighty encouragement to fortify and support him in all that lay ahead.

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2 Corinthians 12:2 Commentary and Bible Study