Untitled Sermon (2)
Consequently, Paul does not begin this letter by offering thanksgiving for what God has done in their lives but with hope that they will give thanks for what God has done in his life through his affliction.
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
We know God’s promises best when we are in the direst need of them
Israel’s God, by contrast, is one who sees the misery of the people, hears them crying out, and is concerned about their suffering so that he comes down to rescue them
Paul is referring to his present state of peace in the midst of adversity because of his confidence in God’s willingness and ability to deliver his people. The experience of God’s deliverance in the past and the corresponding surety of his deliverance in the future (cf. 1:10) is the “comfort” of his people in the present.
Our emotional comfort comes not from within ourselves, but from God’s commitment to sustain and save his people, no matter what.
It is God’s faithfulness to Paul that enables him to pass on to others the same assurance of God’s commitment to deliver them as well
No matter how great the affliction, it has never outweighed the comfort Paul has received from God. This is true because, as verse 5 now explicitly indicates, Paul’s trouble can be equated with the sovereignly superintended “sufferings of Christ”
At the first level, Paul’s experience of God’s comfort is to produce “endurance” among the Corinthians whenever they undergo the same sufferings that befall Paul (cf. 4:10–12). Like Paul, they too can rely on God to “comfort” them. Conversely, the Corinthians’ ability to endure patiently the same sufferings Paul endures will be evidence that they have indeed experienced God’s comfort through Paul.
Therefore, the ultimate purpose of Paul’s argument in verses 3b–7 is not to comfort the Corinthians, but to bring honor to God as the one who has shown himself in and through Paul’s afflictions to be the faithful Father of the Lord Jesus Christ (v. 3a).
The movement of Paul’s thought in 1:4–7 is not immediately obvious. In simplified form, it would seem to run this way:
v. 4 God comforts me when I suffer so that I can comfort others who suffer,
v. 5 (for in fact my experience of God’s comfort is as abundant as my experience of Christ’s sufferings).
v. 6 So then, my suffering ultimately leads to your comfort as you patiently endure comparable suffering.
v. 7 That is, as you experience suffering, you will also experience God’s comfort brought to you by me.
From its very beginning, the reader’s attention is fixed on the problem of suffering and the promise of God’s comfort
Paul’s desire is to defend his apostolic ministry in the face of those who called his legitimacy into question, primarily because of his weakness and suffering (10:10; 11:7; 13:3).
Paul’s ultimate goal in doing so is not to guard himself, but to strengthen the faithful (cf. 5:12) and win back the wayward (cf. 12:19)
Paul understands that the gospel itself is embodied in his own experience as Christ’s apostle, so that in defending his legitimacy he is fighting for the salvation of the Corinthians
Rather than rejecting Paul for his suffering, the Corinthians should join Paul in praising God for the afflictions Paul continues to experience on behalf of Christ and the church
It is not suffering itself that teaches us faith, but God, who uses it as a platform to display his resurrection power in our lives, either through deliverance from suffering or by comfort within it (vv. 4–6, 10).
Far from being ashamed of his suffering, Paul testifies that his afflictions are the very means God uses to reveal himself in and through Paul’s life as an apostle
Moreover, having learned the lesson of faith, whenever believers do in fact suffer (and Paul promises them that they will), they too are to exhibit the same hope-driven endurance manifested in Paul’s life, thereby joining him in becoming an example to others
We must be careful, then, not to move directly from these passages concerning Paul’s suffering as an apostle to our suffering as believers. We must not conclude from Paul’s calling that all Christians must suffer alike
As a prayer of thanksgiving, this opening passage, though concerned with Paul’s suffering as an apostle, is ultimately about God.
Paul’s call in 1:3 to praise God as the one who comforts us is not a cold, lifeless theological formula, but the very means by which we find the rest that comes from knowing God’s sovereign commitment to deliver his people.
The other reason Paul praises God in this passage is because of his confidence that the Corinthians too will be recipients of God’s comfort in the midst of their suffering (1:6–7, 11). The basis for his confidence is his own past experience of God’s comfort (here experienced as an actual deliverance from his suffering)
But, for Paul, God is the one who leads Paul into suffering, sustains him in its midst, and delivers him from it—all to the glory of God himself and for the eternal good of his people (cf. 2:14; 4:7–18; 12:9–10).
As a result, Paul’s hope derives from his confidence in God’s ability to rescue his people in their affliction for the purpose of creating faith in his comforting sovereignty and love. And it is this confidence that leads Paul to prayer and praise rather than to resignation and self-pity
This means that when suffering strikes, we can be sure that God will either deliver us from it to show himself powerful and teach us faith, as he did for Paul in Asia, or, as our faith grows, will give us the strength to endure in order to show himself even more powerful, as he did for Paul in regard to his “thorn in the flesh” (2 Cor. 12:7–10; cf. 4:7–12; 6:3–10).
This side of Christ’s return (cf. the future deliverance of 1:10), God is glorified in our lives not primarily by performing miracles, but by enabling us to persevere because of our trust in him as the one who raises the dead
Paul’s message in 1:3–11 reminds us that just as redemption took place through the coming of Christ, so too God’s plan for strengthening the faith of his people is not ultimately a program, but a person. The life and proclamation of the pastor, replicated in the faith of his people in the midst of their own sufferings, is the primary way God grows his church.
This effect runs counter to the Roman utilitarian attitude toward religion. Most adherents expected their service to the gods to profit them in some way.
Third, the afflictions serve to deepen Paul’s faith in God’s power rather than to weaken it.
Fourth, and most important, Paul’s experience has taught him that God comforts him so that he can be a comfort to others. God’s comfort is not intended to stop with us. God always gives a surplus, and God intends it to overflow to others
Some in Corinth may have cast doubt on Paul’s sufficiency as an apostle because he was a victim of such great suffering (2:16).
παράκλησις is the controlling concept in vv. 3–7, where this word group occurs ten times. In NT usage the term has three basic meanings: encouragement/exhortation, appeal/request, and comfort/consolation. Throughout 2 Corinthians the “comfort” Paul is depicting is a consolatory strengthening in the face of adversity that affords spiritual refreshment. It is much more than verbal solace or an expression of sympathy. While its source is always God, this comfort sometimes is mediated by fellow believers (e.g., 7:6–7, 13).
The divine purpose in granting such strengthening aid during suffering is to enable the sufferer to administer comfort to others: εἰς here is telic, “to the end that” (Barrett 56), “so that (we may be able)” (RSV, NRSV), although an ecbatic meaning is certainly possible, “and thus (enables us)” (NAB), “so that (we are able)” (NJB).
The verb translated “flow” and “overflow” (perisseuei) belongs to a family of words that in commercial contexts expresses profit or surplus
Ministering in this present evil age brings him a surplus of suffering that becomes almost unbearable. But the consolation column also shows a surplus, and it more than balances the suffering
A fourth view understands Paul to be referring to sufferings Christ himself endured. This interpretation would mean that the solidarity between Christ and his followers applies also to his sufferings
The passage in 2 Cor 4:10–11 should tip the scales toward this last view
Therefore he believes that his apostolic ministry extends Christ’s earthly ministry, which included suffering and hardship
He not only preaches Christ crucified, but he lives it. And his suffering brings him joy because he recognizes it to be an irrefutable confirmation of his close tie to his Lord.
because Christians do not merely imitate, follow or feel inspired by Christ, but actually live in him, are part of him
If Paul had chosen to shrink from the dangers he faced and to retreat unscathed to safer places, many in the Gentile world would not have heard the saving word of the gospel. As Christ endured suffering to bring salvation to the world, Paul endured it to bring the message of salvation to the world
The problem was that the Corinthians did not appreciate the significance of his suffering. They considered that all this suffering cast doubt on the power of his apostleship. His life seemed to be filled with suffering, not with the Spirit
As Hafemann puts it, some of them thought, “Surely God’s redemption in Christ was meant to free us from such effects of this evil age!”
This understanding of endurance as something that comes from God and is focused on God (see Rom 15:5) runs counter to a do-it-yourself religion.
The “same sufferings” refer to “the sufferings of Christ (1:5). Paul believes that all those connected to Christ crucified will experience suffering, and he implies that they should therefore not disparage Paul for his suffering.
1:6 At this point, for the first time in this paragraph, the distinction between Paul’s experience and that of the Corinthians becomes explicit. If the four gnomic presents of 1:4 point to universal Christian experience with particular relevance to Paul himself, in 1:5 the spotlight falls on the apostle alone, for he implies that the comfort he receives from God overflows into the lives of the Corinthians. He suffers, they benefit (cf. 4:12).
Since they share Christ, they share Christ’s sufferings. Since they share Christ’s sufferings, they also share Christ’s comfort.
The Corinthians therefore appear to be getting on quite well in their community and do not seem to experience much, if any, social ostracism. They manifest little evidence of any countercultural impact so central to the preaching of the cross (1:18–25).
If they continue to disparage his sufferings as something that afflicts only a frail and ineffective apostle, then they will not understand the wisdom of the cross (1 Cor 1:18–25). If they do not see that the power of God works most powerfully through weakness and affliction and even when the sentence of death hangs over mortal flesh, then they will not truly experience God’s power in their lives—only vaporous, momentary, spiritual ecstasies (see 1 Cor 12:1–2). They will also vainly rely on themselves, a fatal decision that brings its own sentence of death and repudiates the only power that can raise persons from death.
Partners in suffering become partners in comfort. If they do not share his sufferings, then they will not share his consolation. They should not, then, look upon his suffering with such a jaundiced eye.
Paul does not present theological speculation divorced from his own real life experience. He begins the body of the letter with a recent example of his experience of affliction and God’s comfort
He wants to tell them what his affliction and deliverance means theologically in hopes that it will deepen their relationship with him and increase their thanksgiving for the grace bestowed on him by God
We find many signs in Paul’s correspondence with the Corinthians that some in the church deplored all his suffering and belittled his ministerial power because of them. They regarded all this affliction to be unseemly and an embarrassment to their interpretation of the gospel’s power, which was supposed to lift one above all deadly perils to a higher spiritual plane
In the final analysis we cannot know precisely what affliction Paul had in mind because he does not tell us. He only describes its severity
He relates this incident to unveil a theme that runs throughout chaps. 1–7. It has three components: his suffering as an apostle (2:14–17; 6:4–10; see also 11:23–29); how this suffering has driven him to rely completely on God and not himself (4:7–12; see also 12:7–10); and how this suffering will eventually result in his divine vindication
He knew that, humanly speaking, he was in over his head, both physically and emotionally (v. 8)
Building on his prior identification in verse 5 of his suffering with the sufferings of Christ, this somewhat standard Jewish confession consequently becomes an intentional allusion to the resurrection of Christ.
Like Christ, Paul too was called in his “death” (i.e., his overwhelming suffering in Asia) to trust the God who raises the dead. And just as God raised Christ from the dead, so too God delivered Paul (1:10a).
Paul’s experience in Asia was an object lesson of the same divine faithfulness and power portrayed in the cross and resurrection of Christ
And as a result of the many prayers being offered up on Paul’s behalf, others will join in praising God for displaying his great mercy and comfort to his apostle (v. 11).
The roots of human pride grow deep
Calvin commented that Paul was no different from other human beings in being tempted to place his confidence on his own powers rather than on God. The roots of human pride grow deep
God raises those who are dead, not those who are already exalted. God’s power is made perfect in the weakness of the cross of his Son, and that divine pattern of working in the world continues in the cruciform ministry of his apostle. This wonderful affirmation of faith is Paul’s opening salvo for deconstructing the Corinthians’ worldly mind-set.
He is confident that God will continue to deliver him, but the verdict of death has not been removed. His hope is set on God’s final deliverance from death
Paul’s personal deliverance is not the sole goal of the prayer but the giving of thanks to God for his joyous deliverance
Paul is not soliciting their prayers for his benefit alone. The surplus of suffering brings a greater surplus of comfort that overflows into the lives of others.
The pattern of suffering and deliverance drives him further into the arms of God, who alone has the power to raise the dead, and increases the volume of prayer.