What is the “third heaven,” and who went there in 2 Corinthians 12?

Well, hi everyone. I’ve got two questions that have come in this week that are somewhat related to my sermon from this past Sunday. If you missed this past Sunday, we are continuing in our message series about using, well, stewarding, well, the things that God so graciously entrust to us, our time, our lives, our work, our relationships, our families.

And we also looked at how God entrusts trials and suffering to us. It’s sort of a unique way of looking at our difficulty and our pain and our hardships in our life.

But if you missed that message, I encourage you to go back because I think that it can offer some encouragement to people who are walking through pain and difficulty in their life and some helpful perspective. But a couple of questions have come in related to the verses that come just before the section in which we drew our text from my sermon on Sunday.

We were looking at 2 Corinthians 12 verses, basically 5 1/2 5B to verse 10 in 2 Corinthians 12 on Sunday in my message. But there a couple verses before that that lead into those verses that are a little bit confusing. One question is, what is the third heaven?

And let me just read the verses that are in question here and we can tackle this question first. And then there’s a follow up question. Paul, the apostle Paul, who’s gone through so much hardship and suffering at the beginning of chapter 12, let’s start in verse 2, says, I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago was caught up to the third heaven.

Whether it was in the body or out of the body, I don’t know. God knows.

And I know that this man, whether in the body or apart from the body, I don’t know. But God knows, was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell. And I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself except about my weaknesses.

Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain so that no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say.

So what is this third heaven? This man in Christ who 14 years ago was caught up to the third heaven. And in the original language in which this was written, this was a relatively common concept in that day. They would speak in terms of different levels of heaven. So to speak, the same word.

Heavens could mean various things. For instance, the first heaven could refer to the earth’s atmosphere, it could refer to the sky and Then the second heaven might refer to what is beyond the first heaven, the second heavens being, for instance, the stars and the planets in outer space. But then the third heaven would speak of something that would be even beyond the first two heavens, so to speak.

And it would. What we’re talking about here is being in God’s presence.

We’re talking about paradise, we’re talking about heaven. And it’s not so much where is it located, as much as this man that is being described here had an experience where this person was transported. Sounds like to have a vision of being before God. And that leads to a follow up question here that is sort of tied into what is the third heaven is who’s being talked about here?

Because Paul’s saying, I know a man.

Who is this man? Well, Paul is speaking about himself because then he later moves to the first person and speaking about himself, Paul is referring to himself and I’ll tell you why in just a moment. But Paul’s experience was that 14 years prior to writing this, he experienced some type of divine experience and being brought before the Lord.

We don’t know exactly what happened. Was it perhaps a near death experience?

Was this around the time of his conversion, which we read about in Acts chapter 9, in which Paul was thrown to the ground and he had some kind of vision? Was it that? Was it one of the times when Paul was beaten and thrown out of the city and left for dead and people literally thought that he was physically dead?

Was there some kind of near death experience or was this some kind of vision or other type of dream? We don’t know.

But this experience was so visceral for Paul apparently that it motivated him to keep doing what he was doing, to keep speaking on behalf of the Lord, to keep pushing through, even in spite of hardship and trials. But why is Paul speaking about himself in the third person? Why isn’t he talking about himself saying, hey, I met with God?

Well, Paul is trying to distance himself from that because he doesn’t want people to think more of him than what they ought to. That’s what Paul says there.

And this ties in nicely. Then going back to verse 7 and 8, 9 and 10 that we looked at on Sunday in my message about Paul, focusing more. Listen, Paul would much, much rather speak about Jesus and talk about Jesus grace. But here he’s doing a bit of defending himself and justifying his credentials to be a genuine apostle.

Because as we read in chapter 11 of Second Corinthians, there were other people, opponents, people that Paul called super apostles, who would establish their credentials and say that they were genuine apostles, people, people who were called by God because they had these divine revelations and visions.

But Paul was not a genuine apostle. And so Paul is saying, actually, I know of a person who had a divine revelation that was amazing and he’s talking about it, but he’s doing so by distancing himself so that he’s not boasting in it. Because like these super apostles that Paul who, who were opposed to Paul, they may have had similar experiences, but Paul’s saying his is a bit different.

And Paul goes on even further to do something that they would not be willing to do, and that is to not boast about his credentials, but really to boast about his weakness, to boast about this thorn in the flesh that God had given him to keep Paul humble and dependent upon God. So Paul is going to focus on his weakness.

He’s not trying to say, I’m better than these people. He’s trying to say my revelations different. And I am a genuine apostle whose credentials include having been ushered to the third heaven. But I’d rather talk about Jesus, and I’d rather talk about my weaknesses. Because it’s in my weakness that God’s strength is made perfect.

If that makes sense to you, or if you have further questions about that. I do hope that you’ll wrestle with that a little bit and perhaps go back to the text or we could explore that a little bit further. But I hope that this has been helpful to you. The bottom line is that God is sovereign and he allows us to have experiences that draw us closer to Him.

But we don’t want to boast in our strength.

We want to boast in our weakness. Because it’s in our weakness that God’s strength is made perfect and his grace is sufficient for us. Thanks so much for joining us today.