¹Boasting is necessary, though it is not profitable; but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. ²I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago—whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows—such a man was caught up to the third heaven. ³And I know how such a man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, God knows— ⁴was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak.

Paul is on a roll, if we follow his thinking carefully. Using the boasting stratagem to get his point across to the Corinthians seems distasteful in his mind. Yet he does it because to not do so would allow the self-seeking pseudo-apostles in Corinth to go uncontested. So Paul continues on with something that would normally be uber-boastworthy, a vision he had, unparalleled in the NT record except in the book of Revelation.

The questions are debated: What exactly did Paul experience? Was he referring to his own experience (using third-person references due to the humbling nature of the experience) or someone else’s? What is the “third heaven”? Was he hearing “angelic language” as the cosmic tongues of “inexpressible words”?

To be sure, the event was riveting, and the telling of it carries the emotion of the one who experienced it. Consider the following verses, where Paul continues to speak of his own boasting and foolishness (2 Cor. 12:5-6) and then the thorn in the flesh given him “to keep me from exalting myself” (2 Cor. 12:7 twice!). We see this as Paul, who having learned humility, refers to himself in the third person, as though to emphasize not so much the out-of-body nature of the experience but the humility of seeing that things are so much greater than him and what he is doing here on earth—things far beyond him. One may think of the parallel in John’s gospel account, where John does not refer to himself by name but as “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” which most commentators take as evidence of his humbleness from being close to Jesus.

Paul’s experience took place fourteen years prior to this writing to the Corinthians. We have no record of any specific event where it happened, but we do know that he was once stoned and gave all appearances of being dead (Acts 14:19)—what we would today call a “near-death” experience. Speculations aside, Paul himself doesn’t know how to frame the experience (whether it was out of body or in body) other than to introduce it as related to “visions and revelations of the Lord.” It is not so much what he saw or heard (which was inexpressible), but the fact of the experience that he focuses on. It was uber-boastworthy, but this is what has humbled him from actual boasting.

Lord, humble me by reminding me that the picture is bigger than just me.