<p>12:2 <i>I knew a man in Christ, fourteen years ago-</i> Paul makes one of his most significant boasts mindful that he should not be boasting really. This may explain his reference to himself only in indirect terms, in an attempt not to boast overmuch about such a holy thing. He does this elsewhere (see on Gal. 1:6). &quot;I knew a man&quot; would be better &quot;I know a man&quot; (RV); the person in view was still alive. The vision which he received may well have included something about Jew and Gentile unity; for 14 years previously on some chronologies would take us to the time of the Jerusalem Council. Or the reference could be to the trance in the temple (Acts 22:17) in which he was told to go to the Gentiles.</p><p><i>Whether in the body, I do not know, or whether out of the body, I do not know; God knows- </i>Paul stresses this twice. Perhaps his idea was that the mode of the vision was unimportant; it was the message which was all important. The mode of revelation was important to the Jewish mysticists; whilst Paul is indeed trying to outboast them 'foolishly', he is also saying that the mode is insignificant. Whether a man went to Heaven in a bodily form to get a revelation is irrelevant compared to the message.</p><p><i>Such a person was caught up to the third heaven</i>- The picture of being &quot;caught up&quot; is presented right after that of Paul being let down the wall of Damascus as refuse, into the rubbish tip at the foot of the walls; an incident he presents as his greatest humiliation. But it was that bringing down which was the basis for his being lifted up so high, following the pattern of the Lord Jesus.</p><p>The idea of seven heavens currently held in Judaism and Islam is not Biblical. There were at Paul's time only three understandings of heaven: the literal air, the sky, and Heaven itself where God dwells. Paul may simply mean 'Heaven' but he uses this Jewish terminology because his opponents in view were Judaists. Another popular suggestion is that the first heaven refers to the Mosaic law; the second heaven to the Christian dispensation, and the &quot;third heaven&quot; to the Kingdom age. But this is problematic because one would expect 'heavens and earth' to be the phrase used for a dispensation of things. And before the Mosaic law there was also some form of Divine dispensation upon earth, which this schema ignores. So I read Paul as simply referring to 'Heaven', which he parallels with &quot;paradise&quot; (:4). Paradise was understood in Jewish terms as Heaven; although one could argue that it refers to the Kingdom of God on earth when the paradise of Eden is restored. We would note in that case that Paul has recently presented the Corinthian church as Eve in paradise, now tempted by the serpent of the Judaizers (11:3). If paradise was where the Corinthians were now situated, in prospect at least, perhaps Paul means that he saw a heavenly vision of how things really are for the church from the Heavenly viewpoint. It would be this vision which motivated Paul to keep on keeping on so tenaciously with the Corinthians, and would explain his obsessive insistence upon the success of the Jerusalem Poor Fund. This heavenly vision of how God saw the Gentile believers would have likewise inspired Paul to continually view them as being&nbsp;justified in Christ and acceptable to God. It would explain his extraordinary motivation for the Corinthians, and why he mentions this vision at this point. He doesn't utter in words what he saw- because his ministry for them was a public statement of his striving to achieve that ideal.</p><p><br />We are real life men and women, only too aware that although yes, we are in Christ, we are also all too human still. We still sin the sins and think the thoughts and feel the feelings of those around us. We are only who we are, born in such a town, living in such a city, doing a job, trying to provide for a family. In our minds eye we see the spotless lamb of God, moving around Galilee 2000 years ago, doing good, healing the sick. But He was there, and we are here now, today, in all our weakness and worldly distraction. He was as He was, but <i>we</i> are as we are. Reading through his letters, it is apparent that Paul saw himself as two people: a natural man, a Jew from Tarsus, a Roman citizen living in the Mediterranean world... and also, a man in Christ. This is why he here says of himself: &ldquo;I knew a man in Christ&rdquo;, who had great visions 14 years previously (at the council of Jerusalem of Acts 15), and who was subsequently given a &ldquo;thorn in the flesh&rdquo;. &ldquo;Of such an one will I glory: yet of myself I will not glory&rdquo;, he writes (2 Cor 12:5), as if separating himself from this more spiritually exalted man who saw these visions. Paul is surely telling us that he sees himself as two people. He makes the point clearly: &ldquo;I will not be a fool... I am become a fool&rdquo; (:6,11). He was the greatest apostle; although he was nothing (:11). This language comes to a crisis in 12:10: &ldquo;When I i.e. the natural Paul am weak, then am I the spiritual Paul strong&rdquo;.</p><p>The Corinthians were mainly Gentiles, but Paul speaks of them as &ldquo;When you were Gentiles&hellip;&rdquo; (1 Cor. 12:2 RV). They had a new racial identity in Christ, and yet, he also reminded them at times that they were Gentiles. We too cannot obliterate who we are or where we came from. But superimposed upon this must be the realisation than now, we are in Christ.</p><p>Paul is in many ways a working model of how we should be aware of the two people within us. In writing to Corinth, he was highly sensitive to the danger of sinning by justifying himself as he needed to. To overcome this problem, he speaks (through the Spirit) as if he is two quite different people; the fleshly man, and the spiritual man. 2 Cor. 11 is full of statements concerning himself, which he makes &quot;as a fool&rdquo;. His frequent usage of this word &quot;fool&quot; points us back to the Proverbs, where a &quot;fool&quot; is the man of the flesh. Ecc. 10:2 says that a fool has a 'left handed' mind, which in Jewish thinking was a reference to the &quot;man of the flesh&quot; of the N.T. There are a number of apparent contradictions between passages in 2 Cor. 11,12 which are explicable once it is appreciated that Paul is speaking firstly &quot;in the flesh&quot;, and then concerning his spiritual man. Thus he insists that he is not a fool (11:16; 12:6), whilst saying that he is a fool (12:11). He says he will not boast about himself, but then he does just that. He claims to be among the greatest apostles, and in the same breath says he is nothing (12:11). His boasting was &quot;not after the Lord&quot;, i.e. the man Christ Jesus within Him was not speaking, but the fool, the man of the flesh, was speaking (11:17). The supreme example of this separation of flesh and spirit in Paul's thinking is shown by 12:2: &quot;I knew a man in Christ (who heard great revelations)... of such an one will I glory, but of myself will I not glory&quot;. But 12:7 clearly defines this &quot;man&quot; as Paul: &quot;lest I should be exalted... through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh&quot;. The &quot;man in Christ&quot; of whom Paul spoke was his own spiritual man, who was &quot;in Christ&quot;. It is interesting that here Paul defines &quot;myself&quot; as his natural man, whereas in Rom. 7:25 he speaks of &quot;myself&quot; as his spiritual man. The point is made that at different times we identify ourselves either with the man of the flesh, or with the spiritual man within us. In 2 Cor. 11,12, Paul consciously chose to identify himself with the natural man, in order to boast to the Corinthians. It is worth noting that &ldquo;fourteen years ago&quot; takes us back to the Council at Jerusalem. The revelations given to Paul then were probably confirmation that the Gospel should indeed be preached to the Gentiles. This was the &quot;third Heaven&quot; dispensation. The wonder that Paul would be used to spread the Gospel world-wide so mentally exalted Paul that he needed a thorn in the flesh to bring Him down to earth. Yet, for the most part, we seem to shrug our shoulders at the wonder of our preaching commission.</p>