Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.—2 Corinthians 1:3–7

Introduction

Comfort in Corinth and Comfort Today

Last week we saw that God is the God of grace and peace. This week we will see that God is the God of all comfort. The word forms for “comfort” (parakēlsis, parakaleō) occur 10 times in these five verses (1:3–7). The letter opens by Paul praising God for the comfort that he has received from God. The first section of the letter (1:1–7:16) ends with something of a reprise in which Paul returns to this theme of comfort. Both Paul and Titus were comforted by the Corinthians’ godly grief, longing for Paul, and zeal (7:4–16). Here the word forms for “comfort” occur six times (7:4, 6, 7, 13).

Let me read this passage so you can hear this reprise.

Make room in your hearts for us. We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one. I do not say this to condemn you, for I said before that you are in our hearts, to die together and to live together. I am acting with great boldness toward you; I have great pride in you; I am filled with comfort. In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy. 

For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted at every turn—fighting without and fear within. But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus, and not only by his coming but also by the comfort with which he was comforted by you, as he told us of your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced still more.—2 Corinthians 7:2–7

The way we use words today puts us in a perilous position to hear what the Bible meant to its original readers. The danger here is that you will hear a different connotation than what Paul intended. The word “comfort” has gone through a complete shift in our vocabulary. In a word, it has gone “soft.” Listen to commentator, David Garland explain this shift (Garland, 2 Corinthians, p. 60): 

In the time of Wycliffe the word was ‘closely connected with its root, the Latin fortis, which means brave, strong, courageous.’ The comfort that Paul has in mind has nothing to do with a languorous feeling of contentment. It is not some tranquilizing dose of grace that only dulls pains but a stiffening agent that fortifies one in heart, mind, and soul. Comfort relates to encouragement, help, exhortation. God’s comfort strengthens weak knees and sustains sagging spirits so that one faces the troubles of life with unbending resolve and unending assurance.

In other words, it used to have overtones of something that made you strong; now it seems to mean something that is soothing that you leave you soft. It went from a root “fortis” as a fortifying agent and now it seems to mean something that speaks of ease and relief. We are about to see how this “strong” sense of the word comfort will change the entire passage.

These two words occur with this meaning of comfort 31 times in the NT, while 25 of them are in Paul’s writings. Of those 25, 17 occur in 2 Corinthians. Of those 17, ten occur in these five verses. As Scott Hafemann says, “If Paul is the apostle of comfort within the New Testament, then 2 Corinthians is the letter of comfort, with 1:3–7 being the paragraph of comfort” (2 Corinthians, NIVAC, p. 60).

Twin Peaks of Praise and Hope and the Valley of Suffering

The way I want you to see this text is to see twin peaks with a valley in between. You could think of the valley as the valley of affliction. God’s deliverance makes the valley of affliction become a valley of comfort. This comfort leads to the twin peaks of praise and hope. 

We will start in the valley and then work our way up to the twin peaks:

1. The Valley of Suffering and Comfort (1:4–6)
2. Praise to the God of all Comfort (1:3)
3. Unshakable Hope for them (1:7)

The Valley of Suffering and Comfort (1:4–6)

The first observation to make is that it was very conventional for the giving of thanks to come after a greeting. We have some letters that are pretty short this way. Like a son writing to a father, sending greetings, thanking him for his generosity and then asking for more money. That is proof that ancient people are really not that different from modern people! 

Paul’s normal pattern is to encourage his readers by thanking God for what He has done in their lives (Romans 1:8–15; Philippians 1:3–11; Colossians 1:3–8; 1 Thessalonians 1:2–10; 2 Thessalonians 1:3–12; 2 Timothy 1:3–7; Philemon 4–7). 

For example, look at the way Paul opened 1 Corinthians:

I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge—even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you—so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.—1 Corinthians 1:4–8

But Paul completely breaks this pattern in 2 Corinthians.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction” (2 Corinthians 1:3–4). 

He starts with himself before turning the focus to the Corinthians. Is he thanking God in a way that draws attention to himself? The answer is “yes.” But the real question is “why?”

Here is the answer: Paul is thankful for them, but they desperately need to be thankful for him. They are questioning his apostleship. The real rub appears to be Paul’s suffering. Paul’s flashy false apostle opponents are claiming that Paul’s suffering proves that Paul is not a genuine apostle. Paul’s suffering is a sign of God’s lack of approval for Paul.

Paul absolutely turns this argument on its head. Paul moves from who God is in verse 3, to what God does in verse 4a, to why God does it in verse 4b. God is the God of all comfort (v. 3), who comforts me (v. 4a) so that I can comfort you (v. 4b). This is another way of saying that his suffering actually proves or vindicates his apostleship. He argues this way to show the “one way” street that God has ordained between Christ, an apostle of Christ, and a church of Christ.

The Corinthians are in danger of cutting the God-ordained cord that connects them to Christ. Distancing themselves from Paul, means they are distancing themselves from Christ—because Paul is Christ’s representative. Their distaste for weakness and suffering makes them susceptible to Paul’s flashy competitors, who are really false apostles. They are a step away from following what is false and thus becoming false.

The problem is not Paul’s lack of love or affection for the Corinthians. Quite the opposite. Listen for example to 2 Corinthians:

We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide open. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. In return (I speak as to children) widen your hearts also.—2 Corinthians 6:11–13

The Corinthians need to open up their hearts and give thanks for Paul. It would only further feed the arrogance of the Corinthians to thank God for what God has done for them. Paul needs the Corinthians to thank God for what God gives them through Paul. This is part of his self-defense, but it is not self-centered. As paradoxical as it sounds, Paul wrote about himself for their sake. Here is why.

God does not bless the Corinthians directly. He comforts the Corinthians by afflicting and then comforting Paul. Now Paul has something to give. God builds mutuality in the body between Christ, his apostle and his church. That is Paul’s point. God’s comfort creates comforters. If Paul did not suffer, God would not comfort, and thus Paul would have nothing to give to the Corinthians. 

The kind of suffering Paul talks about here is redemptive suffering, not reactive suffering. Suffering comes to us all in many forms because we live in a fallen world. I call the first kind “reactive” suffering because we do not ask for it or choose it, God sovereignly gives it and then we have to trust him through it. That kind of suffering is common to all. We do not downplay the pain of that kind of suffering.

The second kind of suffering is redemptive suffering. It is a calling and a choice. Someone senses a call from God to take on the risk of suffering for the sake of redemption. Listen to Paul explain it:

“For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation.” These were freely chosen sufferings that came with Paul’s call. Paul is sharing in Christ’s sufferings to bring Christ’s salvation to others.

It is the same as Colossians: 

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints.—Colossians 1:24

Jesus had to suffer to bring us salvation and Paul has to suffer to bring the message of Jesus’ salvation to the Corinthians and to the rest of the world. Suffering becomes like a delivery system. Paul’s suffering does not save them; his suffering is only redemptive in that he suffers in order to bring the Savior (and his message of salvation) to them. Jesus’ salvation is not lacking in content, it is limited only by not being known to all. That is where Paul comes in.

Therefore, Paul takes on suffering as part of the stewardship of his call. Paul’s suffering is not only oriented to bring the comfort of the gospel to them once, but to be a continuous source of comfort. In all of Paul’s suffering, his comfort becomes their comfort. “If we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings we suffer” (2 Corinthians 1:6).

We must draw another distinction here. Did you notice the key word that comfort produces? Patient endurance. Sometimes God comfort us by delivering us from the affliction (out of it). He will give an example of this next week in 2 Corinthians 1:8–11. But at other times he delivers us in the affliction by strengthening us so that we can endure it. That is the kind that he has in view in verse 6. The Corinthians have already heard of this type of deliverance in 1 Corinthians 10:13: “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”

They will hear about it again in 2 Corinthians 12. But Paul showed that God had a purpose in it that superintended Satan’s purpose of torment. God gave the thorn to keep Paul humble. “So to keep me from becoming conceited because of surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited” (2 Corinthians 12:7). Paul asked three times that it be taken away (12:8). God’s response was to highlight his purpose in making this a chronic thorn. God wanted Paul to feel weak so that the strength of God’s grace would be on clear display.

Some of you are in chronic pain. I confess that I have not experienced this kind of suffering like some of you have. But Paul did. And God’s explanation to him was simple. Because pride is a perennial problem, you need some chronic pain to remind you in your weakness of your perpetual need for my strength.

Application: God Does Not Waste Your Affliction—So Don’t Waste Your Comfort

Someone may wonder what all of this has to do with you? Does this stuff only apply to apostles? Here is the point for all of us. God’s comfort does not make us comfortable. God’s comfort makes us comforters. God’s comfort is not a pat on the back, it is God drawing near to intervene! In this sense it is the same as the kind of comfort God announced through the prophet Isaiah using the same word for comfort as Paul:

“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins” (Isaiah 40:1–2). Then you have the one crying in the wilderness preparing the way for the coming of the Lord and the revealing of the glory of the Lord (Isaiah 40:3–5). Then he comes, “Behold your God!” Behold, the Lord GOD comes with might, and his arm rules for him … He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms” (Isaiah 40:10–11).

God drawing near like this is not cheap grace that leads to us becoming consumers of comfort. It is costly grace that creates comforters. The comforted do not become comfortable; they become comforters. 

In other words, to be comforted is to be commissioned.

Costly grace→Comfort→Commissioning

Cheap grace creates consumers of God’s comfort.

Cheap grace→Comfort→Comfortable and Complacent

There is a troubling trend in the Christian church to become so subjective about God’s call. What does God want me to do? What are my gifts? What does he want me to do with my life? The desire to serve God is not the problem—the problem is the passivity of it all. I will wait for God to split the sky and draw a road map for my life on my living room wall.

I want to present an entirely different paradigm from this text. What if instead of waiting for God to send you an email, regard his comfort as a commissioning to comfort others? What if the question “Has God comforted you in your affliction” led to something? If the answer is “yes,” then consider yourself commissioned! Comfort is not a passive thing. It is an action of God’s grace. Comfort will produce a corresponding action from his people. The comforted become comforters.

We sometimes cite texts like “serve in the strength that God supplies.” This text says something similar: comfort others with the comfort that God supplies.

Take heart, dear friends, God does not waste any affliction. We should not waste any comfort! God calls the apostles to go through suffering so that when he comforts them, they can now comfort others. God’s comfort becomes God’s commissioning to comfort others in the comfort he has supplied! The comforted become comforters. This flow chart for comfort revolutionizes how we view our afflictions and how we view our life together in the body of Christ.

Let me try to say it another way. I talked about comfort foods earlier. I am not against comfort foods. Everything that God gave should be received with thanksgiving. We can use comfort foods, we just don’t trust in them as a replacement for God.

If the comfort of God’s grace is conceived of as a food, do not think of it as a comfort food (chicken pot pie, dumplings, potato soup) that makes you want to take a nap on the couch. Rather, think of the comfort of God’s grace like a big meal of pasta that runners eat before a marathon. It is fuel to help us run the race of faith when the winds of resistance blow against us.

Let me give one last example of something like this in our own body life together. Sometimes men that struggle with overcoming lust make the mistake of getting accountability with other men who feel afflicted with the same struggle. This is a mistake. Too often, this kind of accountability only comforts someone in their sin by patting them on the back and saying that it is ok. They have to say that because they are failing too. Far better to be with someone that the Lord has strengthened to come out on the other side of that affliction! I realized this when I asked someone that struggled with looking at lustful things, how they did over the summer. They said, really well, I only fell into looking a few times. Others that had fallen several times would have encouraged him.

I said, “What do you mean ‘really well.’ Three times is three times too many! If I struggle with anger and you ask me how I did this summer and I say “Really well, I only punched three guys this summer”—you are not going to agree with my assessment of pretty well. We need to have accountability with people that the Lord has so worked in that they are on the other side of whatever we are currently in.

Kempton Turner has been comforted by God to climb out of the cesspool of sexual struggle. He now feels a commissioning to comfort others with the comfort he has received from God. Come to the pure pleasures seminar on Saturday, May 11 from 9am–noon. May his tribe increase of those who feel that to be comforted is to be commissioned.

Let me give you one more example of redemptive suffering that is perennial. We are going to have an adoption choir Sunday night. Many parents counted not only the physical cost, but also the ongoing emotional cost of bringing brokenness into their families. They heard it as a calling. And they said “yes” to what has become some perennial joys and pains—a pointed life of sorrowful yet always rejoicing. We can support them and pray for them.

Our missionaries have also gone outside the camp to bring Jesus’ salvation to some of the hardest places on earth. Our Barnabas teams exist to support them in their calling of redemptive risk for the sake of the nations. 

Now we can work our way up to the twin peaks of this text. Paul wants us to praise the God of all comfort, and he wants us to have unshakable hope.

Blessed Be the God of All Comfort (v. 3)

Allow me to make two observations here about this declaration of praise and worship. 

First, this is not a mere convention to begin with praise; Paul lived a life of praise. It is not a command to get us to do something we don’t want to do. It is to be an overflow. No one said this as clearly and forcefully as C.S. Lewis. I am choosing to share a long quote because I had heard parts of this many times, but reading it in full made more lights come on for me than hearing snippets. I hope the same will be true for you. This is a long quote, but I feel like he needs the microphone (C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Praise in the Psalms):

When I first began to draw near to belief in God and even for some time after it had been given to me, I found a stumbling block in the demand so clamorously made by all religious people that we should “praise” God; still more in the suggestion that God Himself demanded it. We all despise the man who demands continued assurance of his own virtue, intelligence, or delightfulness; we despise still more the crowd of people round every dictator, every millionaire, every celebrity, who gratify that demand…The Psalms were especially troublesome in this way—”Praise the Lord,” “O praise the Lord with me,” “Praise Him.” (And why, incidentally, did praising God so often consist in telling other people to praise Him? Even in telling whales, snowstorms, etc., to go on doing what they would certainly do whether we told them or not?) 

The miserable idea that God should in any sense need, or crave for, our worship like a vain woman wanting compliments, or a vain author presenting his new books to people who never met or heard of him, is implicitly answered by the words, “If I be hungry I will not tell thee (Psalm 50:12). Even if such an absurd Deity could be conceived, He would hardly come to us, the lowest of rational creatures, to gratify His appetite. I don't want my dog to bark approval of my books. 

But the most obvious fact about praise—whether of God or anything—strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless (sometimes even if) shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. The world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers praising their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game—praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious minds, praised most, while the cranks, misfits, and malcontents praised least. The good critics found something to praise in many imperfect works; the bad ones continually narrowed the list of books we might be allowed to read. The healthy and unaffected man, even if luxuriously brought up and widely experienced in good cookery, could praise a very modest meal: the dyspeptic and the snob found fault with all. Except where intolerably adverse circumstances interfere, praise almost seems to be inner health made audible. 

I had not noticed, either, that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: “Isn't she lovely? Wasn't it glorious? Don't you think that magnificent?” The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can't help doing, about everything else we value.

I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with…This is so even when our expressions are inadequate, as, of course, they usually are. But how if one could really and fully praise even such things to perfection—utterly “get out” in poetry, or music, or paint the upsurge of appreciation which almost bursts you? Then indeed the object would be fully appreciated and our delight would have attained perfect development. The worthier the object, the more intense this delight would be.

The Scottish catechism says that man's chief end is “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy him. 
Paul is inviting us to enjoy God with him.

But look a little closer at what Paul is asking us to enjoy. This is the second observation. If we are to live a life of praise, then we must come to grips with suffering. It does not take the power of the Holy Spirit to recognize something that is beautiful and want to sing about it. Non-Christians do that all the time. The world is a world of beauty so it rings with praise. But the world is also saturated with suffering. Suffering causes singing to die in most people. This is where the power of the Spirit and the grace of God set Christians apart from the rest of the world. How is it that Christians can praise God in the midst of the ugliness of suffering?

Christians do not glorify suffering. It is hard and it hurts. We don’t minimize it as if we are fake and stoic. We acknowledge that it hurts. We praise God in the midst of suffering when God shows up in our suffering. We see more of God so we praise him more. The praise is sometimes more raw. When you come face to face with your powerlessness and your inability to rescue yourself from suffering, you are positioned for a life of praise. When you come to the end of your rope and then God comes with might, his deliverance will elicit praise.

It is so important that Paul who suffered much could live a life of praise. Suffering did not make him sullen. It made him sing louder. The song came from a deeper place—it was not shallow praise, but deep praise.

Some of us are in danger of not being worshippers because we are not in touch with our weakness. Sometimes people feel pressure in the church to act like they have it altogether. Let me be frank. If you act like you always have it altogether, then you make praise impossible because you act as though you don’t need to be delivered—you act like you have arrived and don’t need grace or God anymore. How do can you urge someone to praise God with you and enjoy his deliverance if you act like you never needed it in the first place? Being in touch with your weakness and your need for deliverance, primes the pump for praise to come when the deliverance comes!

That is what we are going to see next week in 8–11. Suffering creates desperation, and then dependence on God, and then God delivers, and we have doxology we want others to join in the enjoyment of the deliverance!

But this section also has another kind of suffering in view. The church comes into its own in both of these realities. We are to be sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. The church comes into this picture because a shared joy is a doubled joy, a shared sorrow is a halved sorrow.

Unshakeable Hope in Suffering (v. 7)

I hope you see now why this last verse is important as a summary of what Paul has been saying. It is connected to the first peak of praise. So much of the Christian life hinges on properly identifying the source of comfort. He does specific things and He should get specific praises for them. If we fail to acknowledge God as the giver of comfort, you make yourself vulnerable to false comforters who give a false sense of security and hope. Affliction takes many forms and comes from many sources, but comfort has a singular source—so our hope should be singular. If suffering comes in the path of following Christ, then one can reason that abandoning Christ would offer an escape from suffering. This logic is flat out false. One may escape more suffering because Christians are more of a target for persecution. But there is one thing fatally wrong with abandoning Christ. Abandoning Christ to escape a little more suffering actually means abandoning the only source of comfort (This paragraph is influenced by David Garland, p. 63). Suffering can thus lead to praise because suffering whittles away all false hopes so that there is only one hope left—Almighty God.

Conclusion

Blessed be the Name of the Lord

We are going to sing a song that says, “Every blessing you pour out, I turn back to praise. When the darkness closes in Lord, still I will say, ‘Blessed be the name of the Lord.’”

We don’t want to be simplistic and think that hearing a sermon will replace the pain with praise. This is not automatic. Sometimes it is a process and it takes time. Yes, there are supernatural times when God will be so near and so present in our suffering that someone like Paul can praise God at midnight in prison. I love watching videos about the persecuted church of people in prison who are using lavish language of how close God was to them in suffering. Next week we are going to see that there are steps—a process.

One of my dad’s brothers died before I was born. He was something of a legend to me because he held the record for number of points scored in a basketball game at my high school. He scored 44. I never got close. I think the best I did was 32.

I never knew him because he died while trying to rescue someone that had fallen into a manure pit. The fumes had already killed the man long before my uncle got to him and then my uncle died as well.

I asked my Grandma one day how she handled the pain. She said it was so hard. She read the book of Job where it says, “The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). She said that she could immediately say, “The Lord gave” and during her time of grieving she could fully acknowledge that “The Lord has taken away.” However, she said it took a long time before she could say, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” It was a process, but her faith came out stronger, more refined, and her praise was not shallow—it was deep.

The church comes into its own in both of these realities. We are back to sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. The church comes into this picture because a shared joy is a doubled joy, a shared sorrow is a halved sorrow.

This is my prayer for you: that you would have the unshakable hope that God is for you and with you in the pain. You do not just have to grit your teeth, duck your head, and stay strong in your strength. Let the weak say, “I am strong.” Let the poor say, “I am rich,” because of what the Lord has done.

I want to call you to “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:14–15).

Blessing those who persecute you shows your hope is not in them changing but in your Unchanging God who is always for you. This teaching shows up in so many places in Scripture. Look at Philippians:

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents. This is a clear sign to them of their destruction, but of your salvation, and that from God. For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake, engaged in the same conflict that you saw I had and now hear that I still have.—Philippians 1:27–30

The Romans marched in such a way that their shields would overlap. When attacked, they did not scatter. They stood strong together; they stayed in formation. This was a sign that made their opponents tremble because it made a statement: our ranks cannot be shaken. You are going down.

Christians, stay in formation together. When you take up the shield of faith against the fiery darts of the evil one, lift the shields up together so that they are overlapping. In the midst of the fight, let us feel the mutuality of linking arms together so that we are in tune with one another in our battle song. Sometimes the song will be a song of mourning, sometimes it will be a song of jubilee. Let us stay in tune with one another so that what moves others to weep, moves us to weep as well. May what moves others to rejoice move us to rejoice as well.

Discussion Questions