What Salvation, Grace and Faith Really Mean — Zac Poonen

Salvation as Freedom from Sin's Guilt and Power

Praise the Lord. I want to speak this morning on what I've spoken on many times. Three important words not understood clearly by many, many Christians around the world. Salvation, grace, and faith. There are many newcomers in our church who haven't heard our speaking on this in earlier times.

And like the manna that fell from heaven for the Israelites every morning, it was exactly the same. But it was fresh. I trust what you hear will be fresh to you this morning. First of all, salvation. I want to relate it to a verse in 1 John chapter 3.

If we have a very low view of salvation, then our experience of salvation will also be very shallow. But if you look at salvation like this, the way I'm going to show you here in Scripture, you can experience a lot more.

You know, the Bible, Jesus said, you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. In 1 John chapter 3, and we read twice, it says that the Son of God appeared for this purpose. Two reasons. First of all, in 1 John 3 .5, he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.

So that's the first part of salvation, to take away the guilt of all our sins. And the only requirement for that is that we turn, repentance means turn away from it, a change of mind concerning sin, and that we acknowledge our guilt and believe that the entire punishment for our sin was taken by Christ on the cross and that he rose from the dead.

It's free. But there are these conditions, and that is to turn away from what I know to be wrong in my life. It's very important to understand that our understanding of sin, if you walk with the Lord, will become more and more, will become more and more sensitive to sin.

I see sin more clearly today than I did 54 years ago when I was first converted. But I could not repent then of the sins I know today. I didn't even know some of these things were sins. For example, to murmur or to be unthankful or to get angry.

I didn't know in those days that it was sin. A lot of believers don't know these are sin. So all that God requires when he says repent is to turn from what you know to be sin right now. God doesn't expect you when you're in the kindergarten to know what people know in the 10th standard.

But what you know to be sin, if you turn from that, you're forgiven, if you trust him. And therefore, it also is true that if we are walking with the Lord, we should be discovering more and more of what is sin in our life.

It's like a student. The Bible speaks about our Christian life on earth like an education. It's an education in what sin is because it's an education in how holy God is. We're not primarily looking at sin, we're primarily looking at the holiness of God.

And as we see the holiness of God, we discover a lot of things that we never thought were sin last year. And if you're not discovering new sins in your life, new areas of selfishness and new areas of pride perhaps, we'd say you're like a student who's still sitting in the same class year after year.

You may be getting a hundred percent, but it's like getting a hundred percent in the second standard for 25 years. It's not a great thing to boast that I'm getting a hundred percent if you're sitting in the same class for 25 years.

No student is happy to sit in the same class for another year. And no Christian should be happy with what his knowledge of sin was last year and definitely not with what his knowledge of sin was ten years ago.

This is the reason why Christians don't grow spiritually. Let me explain it to you. In the Old Testament, in Exodus, there is a verse which speaks about the children of Israel being in slavery. And it says there in Exodus in chapter 2, there was a particular time when God came to deliver them.

And it says here in Exodus chapter 2 and verse 23, the middle of that verse, the sons of Israel sighed. Sighed means it was a longing in their heart because of their bondage. And they cried out and they cried for help because of their bondage rose up to God and God heard their groaning and God remembered His covenant and God took notice of them.

And then very next verse you see God sends a deliverer. So notice those words. If there's a sigh, if there's a recognition that sin is a bondage, it's like being in prison. It's like being in multiple prisons.

You get one prison gate open and then you get into another one and then there's another prison gate to be open and it's a long while before we get out of the prison completely. But there are gates after gates after gates in this prison called sin.

And we must be moving forward getting more and more liberation, but it'll come only if there's a cry and we recognize this is a bondage and a sighing and a groaning. Very few Christians are groaning because of sin.

And that's the reason they don't always God doesn't take much notice of them. It says here God took notice of them when they came to that place. And so turning back to 1 John 3, Jesus came to take away our sin and it also says here in 1 John 3 verse 8, the Son of God appeared to destroy the works of the devil.

And that's a good way to think of salvation. We know that Jesus Christ came to save his people from their sins, that's the meaning of the name Jesus. So here is a definition of salvation. Destroying the works of the devil in your life.

Have you experienced it? Are you experiencing it? Salvation has got three tenses. Past tense, where all the guilt of my past life has been cleansed in the blood of Christ and forgiven. Present tense, where I'm in the process of being delivered from all the wretched things I've inherited from Adam.

Can you think of some terrible things you have inherited from Adam through your parents? Lord wants to deliver you from all of them. To destroy the works of the devil. The devil has done a terrific work in the human race.

Penetrated the human race with poison and Jesus has come to destroy it. Not just to save us, but to destroy the works of the devil so that it doesn't exist anymore in certain areas and area by area. Something like the destruction of the Giants in Canaan and occupying that territory.

You know, if you... the Israelites, when they went into Canaan and killed one giant, they got his territory. And they killed another giant, they got his territory. But every sin you cling on to and don't take seriously to get rid of is going to hinder you from experiencing some part of salvation that Christ purchased for you.

Through, first of all, the blood he shed on the cross and secondly through the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has come to you know, execute the results of Christ's work in our life. And that is to destroy the works of Satan.

A little by little by little that we occupy the land and Satan's power over us is gone. So when you think of the works of the devil and we look back to see how the devil became the devil and what are the works that made him the devil.

And yet then you will see that it's exactly the same thing that he injected into Adam as a poison into a system that we have inherited. And so way back in the beginning, before there was any sin in this universe, good for us to see the origin of sin so that we know how, where to be delivered from it.

And there were, the Bible says, you read that in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, God created all the angels and one who was the head of the angels. We really don't know his name even though some people call him Lucifer.

But that's not his name. It's just a Latin translation of a word, but let's call him that for since that's how he's known. He was the head of the angels. Perfect. Bible says he was perfect in wisdom, beauty, position and pride came into his heart.

Pride as the Root of Sin

This was the first step. It's very important to know this my brothers and sisters. A lot of Christians and even unbelievers are very proud of the fact that, I mean rejoice in the fact that they don't commit adultery, they don't commit murder, they don't steal, they're honest, they're upright.

You may avoid all those things and still be one of the filthiest sinners in the world because of your pride and your arrogance and your conceit and the way you look down on other people and the way you speak down to other people.

That's worse in God's eyes. The origin of sin was not murder and theft and adultery. It was pride and it was an unseen thing in the heart and you can be proud of anything. You can be proud of your position, your money, your good looks, your intelligence, your Bible knowledge or your spiritual growth or the way God is using you or anything you've accomplished on the earth.

Pride is the root of all sin because that's where it originated. So until you've eliminated pride from your life, you're not going to say you're free from sin. And I'll tell you something, we will not be able to eliminate it completely till Christ comes.

Whether you know it or not, there's a little bit of pride in every one of our hearts. What we know we can eliminate but we must be discovering. So here is an area where there's a need for constant discovery of the areas of pride you have not yet seen.

The areas of the land of Canaan that are still under the control of the enemy. Don't be satisfied with people's opinion of you that they think you're a very humble man. The perfectly humble man that walked on the earth was Jesus Christ and until we become humble as he was, there's a lot to be cleansed away from us.

God's ultimate goal in salvation is to make us like Christ. It's very clear. Salvation means from what we were in Adam, be complete in Christ. That's a long journey and one of the most important areas that has got to be where we got to cleanse ourselves is the area of pride.

So salvation is salvation from pride. That's what made the devil rebel. You know, whenever we hear rebellion, what is it that causes rebellion in your little children at home or what is it that makes students rebel against their teachers or workers rebel against their authorities or rebellion in society or rebellion in the church that people rebel against the elders.

It is only pride. The root cause of it is pride. I mean they won't admit that. It's a shameful thing to say I'm proud so I'm rebellious. They will invent many other reasons that things are not doing well and this people not doing that doesn't understand or the elders are not doing things properly.

These are all silly excuses and the devil allows you to have so many excuses and if you don't see the root causes pride, you'll never be saved. So it's a wonderful thing when the Holy Spirit reveals pride to you.

That's how rebellion comes. So when it says Jesus came, salvation is to destroy the works of the devil. It's pride that makes a person question, do I really have to obey God? You know, that's the poison that Satan in put into Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

God had said don't eat of that tree. Knowledge of good and evil and what Satan was saying is do you really have to obey God? I mean, you got your intelligent being Eve. God's given you a lot of intelligence.

Think for yourself. What's the harm in that? You're not hurting Adam. You're not hurting any of the animals. You're not hurting God. It's just a fruit. Eat it. The point is not that. The point is has God forbidden it?

A lot of people don't think like that. That's because of their pride. They argue with reason. What's wrong with this? What's wrong with that? What's wrong with the other thing? Well, as long as you argue like that, it shows you a fantastic pride and the sad thing is you don't even see it.

It's like, you know, if a blind man said that this wall was black, how do you ever convince him that it's not? I mean, I wouldn't waste my time arguing five seconds with a blind man about the color of a wall.

And pride is like that. Pride blinds you so much that it's pointless arguing with him. I've had people argue with me about something in Scripture which is crystal clear to me. And I wouldn't waste my time arguing with him because I see the guy doesn't want to see the truth.

And the reason he can't see the truth is pride has blinded his eyes. Exactly like he blinded by pride which could make her say, well, that's right. Satan seems to be right in saying what's wrong in eating this tree?

What's wrong in disobeying God's Word? What's wrong in modifying it? A lot of Christians have modified God's Word in so many ways. They take verses in Scripture and say, well, that was only for the first century or that was only for that time and not...

Who in the world said that? You. How does that idea come into your head? You don't want to do something. And so of course you say, well, find some excuse not to do it. It's just pride. So that's how Satan infected man right in the beginning and when it says salvation is destroying the works of the devil, I want to urge you, my brothers and sisters, be wholehearted in cooperating with the Holy Spirit to destroy this wretched thing before it destroys you.

The reason why a lot of people do not grow spiritually is because they are not serious. They are not sighing like those Israelite slaves in Egypt. They're not groaning, Lord deliver me from this wretched pride that's ruining my life.

There's... we're going to talk a lot about that, but there's more. Then there's another thing that characterizes Satan in the beginning. There could be many things, but I just want to mention two of them.

One is pride. The other is self-centeredness, a selfishness that makes one think of oneself as the center of everything and when St. Lucifer looked at himself and said, why should God be out there? I want God to serve me as well.

I want to be the center. There are two Gospels being preached in the world today. One is a false gospel. And the way to find out the false gospel is it is centered in man. True gospel is centered in God.

As long as human beings thought that the earth was the center of the universe and that everything revolved around the earth, they had everything wrong. Their physics calculations were wrong and their understanding of astronomy was wrong because of one simple mistake.

I mean they could identify the stars and the Sun and the planets and name it and maybe even calculate the distance and all that. But there was one fundamental mistake man made. They didn't know which was the correct center of the universe.

It was not earth. But it looks like that. You see the Sun and the Moon and the stars going around the earth as it were and if you have not studied geography, you'll think yeah, the earth is the center of the universe.

It looks as if everything revolves and the whole heavens revolve around the earth and that's the mistake that man makes thinking that he should be the center. God created man so that God would be the center of his life and until you find God as the center of your life, the center of everything and like we're saying Jesus you're the center of my joy, the center of everything, you haven't really been fully saved.

I mean the salvation may have begun but you could have experienced only 1 of it. So that's the second thing that the Jesus came to destroy. Salvation is destroying the works of the devil, destroying pride and destroying self-centeredness and we have to discover.

This is something you'll never be completely free from till Christ comes again. Christ was the perfectly God-centered person that lived on the earth and we are self-centered and God has to move us from being self-centered to God-centered and that takes a long time.

It's not just giving up the movies and giving up gambling and drinking and smoking. These are all peripheral things which a lot of unconverted men also have given up long long ago. But to be delivered from self-centeredness and you see that in the devil right at the beginning Lucifer before he became the devil.

He said why should I be outside? Let God also serve me. I should be the center. Right now God is the center all of us are worshiping in and the angel said I want to be the center. I want people to glorify me and worship me and in a moment he became the devil.

Remember this? Pride made the most beautiful angel into a devil in a moment and pride can make you like a devil in a moment too. Self-centeredness made that angel into a devil and self-centeredness can make you into a devil too.

Make you behave like the devil at home. That's why a lot of people who say they've accepted Christ behave like the devil at home. They haven't been they haven't allowed Jesus to destroy the works of the devil in their life.

They haven't understood salvation as destruction of the works of the devil. Look at it like that from today onwards. What did Lucifer want? He wanted God also to be in his circle. The angels were all under him.

But he said there's one person outside God. I want him. What do I mean by a man-centered gospel? A man-centered gospel is one that preaches Jesus can do this for you. You are the center. You know He can do this for you.

He can forgive your sins. He can bless you. He can prosper you. He'll give you a car. He'll give you a house. He'll do everything for you. He'll heal you. You are the center of his life. It's absolute nonsense.

God is the center. I was reading somewhere about a thing called dog and cat theology. It's very interesting. You know how dogs behave and cats behave? Very different. Both are pets. A dog can love his master so much.

When the master does so much for that dog, the dog so rejoices in that and says, wow my master is so good. He must be God. How could somebody be so good to a wretch like me? That's the right attitude.

But a cat is different. Cat also, the mistress takes care of it and does so many things for it. Pats it and gives it milk and everything else. The cat says, wow my mistress is so good to me. I must be God.

That's why she's doing so much for me. This is dog and cat theology and all of us are in one of these two categories. Oh God is so good. I'm sure I must be so important to him. I must be such an important person that he treats me so nicely.

No, it's because he is God that he treats us nicely. We need to recognize now. It's not because we are so great. That's the difference between self-centeredness and God-centeredness. So a gospel that says Jesus will do this and Jesus will do this for you.

He'll heal you. He'll bless you. It's a false gospel. Because it's centered in you and the thing is so many Christians can't see through it. They're so blessed. They think by what they hear. But it's very interesting all these television evangelists and all these preachers say God can do mighty miracles.

He can do so many things for you and me. The only thing he can't do is give me money. So you better give me that. That's what the preacher says. There's only one thing in the world this mighty God cannot do.

He can't give me money. You fellas have got to give me that. He'll do everything else for me. Don't be fooled by this type of deception. These are con men, confidence tricksters who got into the pulpits of today.

Preaching what they call the gospel. It's a man-centered fake. This is the thing that made Lucifer into a devil and it'll make all so-called Christians who follow this man-centered gospel into devils ultimately.

It doesn't deliver them from sin in their home. It doesn't deliver them from sin in their life. It doesn't deliver them from road rage when they drive on the roads. It doesn't deliver them from anger or sexual lust or internet pornography or any of these things.

They just hope that God will give them better houses, better lands and heal them and finally take them to a glorious heaven where he'll give them a mansions and crown and all that. You got it all wrong, brother, sister.

That's the work of the devil and Jesus came to destroy it. To make us centered in God. It's not God revolving around me. No. It's me revolving around God saying, Lord, not what will you do for me, but what can I do for you?

What do you want me to do, Lord? That's the word that changed Paul on the road to Damascus. What will you have me to do, Lord? You become the center of my life from now on. My dear brothers and sisters, this is salvation.

And Jesus has come to destroy completely the works of the devil in your life. I can't do it myself. I can't destroy my pride. I can't destroy my self-centeredness, but I can say, Lord Jesus, I've seen it.

I've grown and sighed like the slaves of Egypt in Egypt. I want you to deliver me. He'll do it. God will take notice of you like it says by the Israelites. Okay, the second word is grace. Well, you know the very well-known verse where all these three words come together, Ephesians 2 verse 8, which says, by grace are you saved through faith.

All three words come there. Salvation, grace, and faith. One of the most misunderstood verses in the New Testament. By grace are you saved through faith? Okay, we understood a little bit of salvation.

Grace as Help and Power from God

Now, let me explain to you a little bit about grace means. Here's another word that's been misunderstood and clouded over by the devil through the years. And most people, particularly those who go to Bible school and get all confused there, understand grace as unmerited favor.

God's unmerited favor. That means a favor that God shows me which I don't deserve. Well, my dear brothers and sisters, let me say that is an absolute falsehood. Because the Bible says there was no grace in the world until Jesus Christ came.

John chapter 1 and verse 17. The law came by Moses, but grace came through Jesus Christ. There was no law of commandments till Moses came. It was a period before the law and then Moses came with the law and then Jesus came with grace.

But unmerited favor? Everybody's got it in the world from the time of Adam. When God made clothes of skin from animal skin for Adam, he didn't deserve that. The guy had disobeyed God, but God gave him unmerited goodness.

Right from that first act of goodness to Adam. Till today. The oxygen that people breathe. It's unmerited favor. What about those suicide bombers who breathe God's oxygen and go and kill people? Isn't that unmerited?

You think they deserve to breathe that oxygen? No. What about the terrorists who blow up buildings and planes? God gives them air to breathe. It's absolutely unmerited, but it's not grace. So don't ever let any theologian fool you saying grace is God's unmerited favor because everybody in the world gets it.

And the thing is, you know, if you don't understand the real meaning of a word, you'll be satisfied with something less. You know, if you think a bicycle is a car, I mean, you're not foolish enough to think that, but supposing somebody has never seen a car in his life.

Somebody tells him I'll give you a car one day and he gives him a bicycle and say this is a car. And he boasts that he's got a car. And all he's got is a bicycle. You'd look at that and say, hey, that's not a car, man.

Who fooled you? That's exactly how I look at sort of Christians and say that's not grace, man. Who fooled you? Who fooled you that that's grace? You got a cycle and you call it a car that doesn't make it a car.

And you call some unmerited favor, which everybody in the world gets and you call that grace. It's not grace. Grace can be understood only in the scriptures and it's hardly found in the old testament.

You can only find it in the new testament, really. And here's another proof that everybody doesn't get grace. That it cannot mean unmerited favor. James chapter 4, it tells us that grace has to be merited, not unmerited.

That means only certain people will get it who have a certain qualification. God gives grace to the humble. James 4 and verse 6. Do you think everybody in the world is humble? Unmerited favor? It is merited.

Merited means you're going to have some merit to get it. What is that? Humility. The more humility you have, the more grace you will get. It's not a merit as much as it is a law. You know, it's like water.

Water always flows to the lowest place first. So if you are lower down than others, the water will come to you. I mean, you see that in Bangalore when the water supply runs short, the people whose houses are a bit lower down, they get water all the time.

The people whose houses are a little higher up on roads and all, their sump dries up. It's like that water always flows down to the lowest place. And the spirit of grace always goes down looking for the humblest man around and gives him grace.

And the next humblest will get a little less and the next humblest will get a little less, but the humblest man will get all of it. And Jesus got tremendous grace because he walked in humility. So it's merited.

Not everybody gets equal amounts of grace. If it's unmerited, then we get it all without merit. What a deception it is to call grace unmerited favor. There are a lot of things like this which I find very few preachers expose the fallacy of what Christians have believed for years.

When Copernicus discovered that the earth goes around the sun, people wouldn't believe it. When Galileo, the Roman Catholic man in Italy, when he proclaimed in Italy that the earth goes around the sun, even the Pope opposed him.

They said the Bible says the sun rises and the sun sets. How dare you oppose the Bible and say that the earth goes on its own axis? And do you know they said they were going to cut off his head for speaking against the Bible.

So they pulled him up and brought him into court to stand before the Pope and say acknowledge that the sun goes around the earth. Galileo was a sensible man. He didn't want to lose his head. He said, okay, the sun goes around the earth.

And he sat down and told his lawyer, whatever the Pope may say, the earth still goes around the sun. And today people discovered Galileo was right and the Pope was wrong. And not only him, thousands of people in the world were wrong.

So it's like that, you know. We can say unmerited favor. Everybody says unmerited favor. It's not. It's something you have, if you're humble, you get it. If you're not humble, you don't get it. So let's see what this grace is.

In Hebrews in chapter 4, here's one definition from scripture of grace. It's good to get a scriptural definition. Like we saw a scriptural definition of salvation, destroying the works of the devil. So here, let me give you two scriptural definitions of grace.

One, it says about overcoming sin. In Hebrews 4 .15, it's speaking about Jesus Christ as a high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses and our struggles. And which weakness is he talking about?

He's not talking about our headaches and stomach aches and physical weakness. He's talking about our spiritual weakness, which is sin, temptation. We are tempted because we are weak. And it says your Jesus was tempted also, so that he can sympathize with our weaknesses.

And that's another thing that devil has blinded Christianity to. He wants to rob you of a high priest who can sympathize with you. In all of Christendom, hardly anybody proclaims this, that Jesus Christ can sympathize with your temptation struggles because he was tempted like you.

The devil wants to rob you of the comfort we get in that and the strength we can get in that by saying no, no, no, no, no, no, he was not tempted like us. And he's robbed you of that comfort and leaves you defeated by sin.

I know in my own life, I never saw it for 16 years after I was born again. But when I saw it, that's the time I began to overcome sin. When I realized, you know, when I was tempted as a young man and I understood this truth, I said, Lord Jesus, you were tempted exactly like me when you were in Nazareth when you were 25 years old.

I want to have the same attitude to sin that you had in Nazareth when you walked on earth, tempted like me. That strengthened me. I've got a high priest who can sympathize with my struggle in temptation.

I hope you have one. It makes all the difference when you're tempted. It says here, this same priest can sympathize with our struggle and he did not sin even though he was tempted like us in every point.

You name the area where you're tempted. Jesus was tempted in the same way, but he didn't sin. So there's no more excuse for your sinning because he was tempted like you are. He made himself weak so that he could be tempted.

Therefore what? Therefore, verse 16, let's come to the throne of grace. First of all to receive mercy, which is forgiveness for our past sins, which Jesus did not need. But to get another thing with Jesus God, which is grace to help us in our time of need.

So here is a definition of grace. Help in the time of my temptation. Because when it says need here in the context, need is referring to temptation. So this is the first definition of grace. Help in the time of my temptation.

And when Jesus said the Holy Spirit is a helper, he is a spirit of grace who comes to help me in the time of my temptation. That means when I'm tempted, when Jesus was tempted, the Holy Spirit helped him as a man to overcome.

And when he went up to heaven, he sent the Holy Spirit so that when we're tempted today, the spirit of grace will come to help me. But it says here, I have to come to the throne of grace and ask for it.

You have not, because you ask not. Why not start asking in the time of temptation? God, give me grace now. It's getting a bit too much for me. I fear I may lose my temper now. Give me grace. And you'll be amazed to see how you who were such a slave to your anger didn't get angry in that provocative moment.

Or in some other temptation when you're tempted strongly to do something wrong. Maybe you're sitting at the computer and you're strongly tempted to watch some pornographic sight. The pressure is building up on you and you say, Lord, I'm just, give me grace.

Give me grace. And the spirit of God reminds you of Jesus. If he were sitting at a computer, there wasn't one of those days, but if he were, what would he do? Give me grace, Lord, to have the same attitude that Jesus had.

I'll tell you, I'm not talking theory. I've proved it for many, many years now. Not one or two years. So this is the first meaning of grace. Help in the time of my temptation. Let me read that again in Hebrews chapter 2 and verse 18.

Since Jesus, verse 17 first, Hebrews 2 17, he was made like us his brethren in everything. That's another thing the devil doesn't want you to know. And therefore, verse 18, he was tempted and in that temptation he suffered by putting his self-will to death and therefore he's able to run to help those who are tempted today.

The word original meaning there, he runs to help those who are tempted today. Are you being tempted today? He became like you and was tempted like you so that he can run to help you. Whatever your temptation is, think of the area where you're falling.

Think of the Goliath that's standing up in your life and saying, you can't conquer me. Say to that Goliath, in Jesus' name, I'm going to bring you down. Whether it is anger, sexual lust, an unforgiving spirit, whatever it is, a murmuring habit, then Goliath can come down because there is someone who can come to your aid with grace.

Don't let the devil blind you to the true meaning of grace. The second meaning of grace is in 2 Corinthians in chapter 12. We not only have temptations in our life we also have what we call trials, difficulties.

Grace in Weakness, Trials, and Temptation

Sometimes it could be a physical weakness, which despite much prayer we have not been healed of. Sometimes it could be some person persistently troubling us, maybe a difficult son, some people have a difficult wife, some people have a difficult husband, some people have difficult in-laws, mother-in-laws, brothers-in-law and mothers-in-law and brothers-in-law, all types of people who people have difficulty with.

These are trials in our life. Sometimes it's a trial that comes in our office, financial difficulties, other type of pressures. You know, we are living in a world where there's so much pressure, people losing their jobs.

That can be a terrific pressure in a time when there's such a lot of unemployment to lose your job. Here it says, Paul had what he called a thorn in the flesh. He has not defined it so that we can apply to any type of suffering that we have in our flesh.

He says, there was given to me, verse 7, 2 Corinthians 12 verse 7, a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me. Do you believe that mighty apostles can be tormented by Satan through one of his messengers?