Original Meaning

IT WAS CUSTOMARY in ancient letters to follow the opening address with a brief thanksgiving to a deity. Paul usually follows this pattern in his letters; but as with his letter openings, he expands its content in order to introduce the main perspectives and purposes of his letter. As O’Brien has shown, in Paul’s letters the reasons listed for thanksgiving serve an epistolary, instructive, and directive function that sets “the tone and themes of what is to follow.”¹

Second Corinthians 1:3–7 is no exception.² Thus, Paul’s prayer of praise introduces the main topic of his letter (its “epistolary” function), expresses his controlling perspective (its “instructive” function), and carries an implicit appeal to his readers to join him in his convictions (its “directive” function). In other words, rather than being a spontaneous outburst of unreflected piety, Paul’s prayer in 1:3–7 is a carefully crafted expression of his main points, which provides a crucial key to the theme, perspective, and purpose of his letter. Moreover, the opening declaration, “Praise be to … God” (1:3), follows the blessing (berakah) formula found in Jewish prayers of thanksgiving, in which God is declared blessed for benefits in which the speaker himself has participated.³ From the beginning, therefore, the focal point of Paul’s letter is on himself, thereby reflecting the apologetic character of the letter as a whole.

Though focused on his own experience as an apostle, Paul’s opening prayer of praise reflects the fact that the letter as a whole is theologically orientated. God the Father is praised in verse 3, and God is the subject of the action throughout verses 4–6. It is also Christologically qualified. The God who comforts in suffering is “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” just as the sufferings and comfort experienced are both explicitly associated with Christ (cf. v. 5). This twofold emphasis reflects Paul’s fundamental conviction that God is sovereign and that he is to be known ultimately in Christ, through whom we come to know the “compassion” (or “mercy”) and “comfort” (or “consolation”) that characterize the Father. Indeed, the vocabulary in this section confirms that the main theme of 2 Corinthians is the “comfort” that comes from God in the midst of affliction and suffering (cf. the climax of this theme in 12:7–10).

The concept of “comfort” (paraklesis) and “comforting” (parakaleo) occurs ten times in this short passage. The density of this concentration is even more striking in view of the fact that of the approximately thirty-one times these two words are found with this meaning in the New Testament as a whole, twenty-five of them are in Paul’s writings.⁴ Of these twenty-five occurrences, seventeen occur in 2 Corinthians and ten in this short introduction. 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.

As its counterpart, the theme of comfort is matched by the theme of suffering. The Greek word for “affliction” (thlipsis) occurs forty-five times in the New Testament, but is mentioned more often by Paul than by any other New Testament author (twenty-four times in the seven undisputed letters), yet more often in 2 Corinthians than in any other letter (nine times), and more often in 1:3–11 than in any other section (three times, plus one occurrence of the verb “to be distressed” [thlibo] in 1:6). Similarly, the related word “suffering” (pathema) is found sixteen times in the New Testament, nine times in Paul, and three times in 2 Corinthians, all in 1:3–7.⁵

In other words, Paul talks about comfort more than any other author because he talks about suffering more than any other author, and he does so more often in 2 Corinthians than in any other letter, and more densely in 1:3–11 than in any other section of this letter. There is no doubt that the passion with which he writes 2 Corinthians is matched by the pathos of the subject matter that distinctly characterizes this letter. From its very beginning, the reader’s attention is fixed on the problem of suffering and the promise of God’s comfort.

The focus of Paul’s discussion, however, is not on suffering and pain in general, or even on the suffering of Christians in particular. Paul’s use of the berakah-formula in 1:3, the structure of the argument in verses 4–6, and the continuation of his thought in verses 8–11 all indicate that he is referring primarily to his own suffering as an apostle. Paul’s use of first person plural pronouns throughout this section is part of his custom of employing a “literary plural” (often called the “apostolic ‘we’ ”) to reflect his awareness that he is not speaking merely as an individual, but as a representative of the apostolic office. Paul’s purpose in 2 Corinthians is not to reflect philosophically on the problem of evil (though his insights are no less profound). Nor is he intending to describe the character of Christian experience in general (in 1:7, the suffering of the Christian in view is that patterned on the suffering of Paul). Rather, 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). His perspective in this letter is therefore not abstract, but concrete. 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. As a result, Paul’s hope is that the Corinthians will come to understand the divinely ordained role that suffering plays in the life of the one concerning whom Jesus said, “This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name” (Acts 9:15–16).

Given his theme and perspective, Paul’s exhortations to the Corinthians are sometimes direct and forceful (cf. 2:5–11; 5:20–6:2; 7:2; 12:11; 13:5). But his basic plea to accept his legitimacy as an apostle also runs implicitly throughout the letter, beginning already in 1:3–11. Paul begins his letter by praising God for the very thing his opponents maintain calls his ministry into question: his suffering. In doing so, Paul’s praise itself contains the primary appeal of the letter. 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 (1:3, 11).

Paul’s tone in 2 Corinthians is, therefore, at once not only apologetic, but also confrontational. The motivation for his appeals is clear: On the horizon stands God’s judgment in Christ (5:10–11), to be exacted in advance when Paul makes his third and decisive visit to Corinth (13:1–10). The only hope for those still in rebellion against him is to repent, even as the majority has done already (cf. 2:5–11; 7:2–16). As for that majority, they must demonstrate the validity of their repentance by continuing to support Paul, by separating from those who will not repent, and by participating in the collection as part of the fruits of righteousness characteristic of the people of God (cf. 2:5–11; 3:18; 5:17; 6:1; 6:14–7:1; 8:1–9:15).

Paul’s Prayer of Praise for the Comfort of God (1:3–7)

PAUL BEGINS BY praising God because he is “the Father of compassion” and “the God of all comfort” (better: “consolation”). As verses 8–11 will make clear, the “compassionate comfort” in view here is not merely a subjective feeling of relief or psychological support. Rather, 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. God is “the God of all comfort” because he is the one who is “our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble” (Ps. 46:1; cf. also 23:4–6; 71:20–21; 94:17–18; Isa. 12:1; 40:1; 49:13; Jer. 31:13; 38:9). Our emotional comfort comes not from within ourselves, but from God’s commitment to sustain and save his people, no matter what.

For this reason, Paul moves from a statement of who God is in verse 3, to a declaration of what God does in verse 4a, to God’s goal for doing it in 4b. Because God is “the God of all comfort” (i.e., true comfort comes from God), he comforts Paul in all his troubles so that, in turn, Paul has the ability (“we can”) to comfort others no matter what comes their way. The resource Paul uses to comfort others is the same comfort he himself has experienced from God. 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. For this reason, God is the one who is to be praised (1:3), even though Paul is the one through whom others are comforted (1:4).

There is a type of “spiritual algebra” here. The measure of God’s comfort matches the measure of Paul’s suffering, with the result that others may be comforted to that same degree (“Paul’s suffering + God’s comfort = comfort for others”). This is the point of verse 5, which functions to support the principle stated in verse 4. 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” (for the way in which this is the case, see 1:8–11; 2:14–16a; 4:7–12).

The word translated “trouble” (thlipsis) in verse 4 can refer to distress or pain brought about either by outward circumstances (cf. Rom. 2:9; 5:3; 8:35; 1 Cor. 7:28; 2 Cor. 4:17; Eph. 3:13; Col. 1:24) or by mental and spiritual states of mind (cf. 2 Cor. 2:4; 7:4–5; Phil. 1:17), while the “suffering” (pathema) of verse 5 refers to misfortune, physical pain, and death (cf. Rom. 8:18; Phil. 3:10; Col. 1:24). So Paul views his troubles of every kind as an expression of the same kind of sufferings Christ experienced under God’s hand.

Likewise, the divine comfort Paul experiences also comes “through Christ,” that is, through Christ’s own experience of God’s commitment and ability to deliver him, even from death. Just as Christ’s experiences of suffering are replicated in Paul’s life, so too Paul is greatly comforted by his confidence in sharing in Christ’s resurrection (cf. 2 Tim. 3:11). In this sense, Paul participates in the dying and rising of Christ, the twin pillars of his gospel. Paul is confident, moreover, that the comfort that comes from being convinced of God’s ability and commitment to deliver his people, seen in Christ and now experienced by Paul himself, can be passed on to others. What God did for Jesus in his suffering, Paul is confident God will do for him; and what God will do for Paul, he will do for all who trust in God. This is the comfort the apostle has “through Christ” that he passes on to others.

Verse 6 applies the principle of “from comfort to comfort” to the Corinthians directly. The result of both Paul’s distress and his comfort is the same: The Corinthians are comforted. It is important to notice that this movement is not reciprocal. Paul does not say that when they suffer, he comforts them, and when he suffers, they comfort him. While the Corinthians’ comfort comes through Paul, Paul’s comfort does not come through the Corinthians, but through Christ. As Barnett points out, “According to vv. 4–5 the ‘comfort’ is not mediated directly to both parties, but given in the first instance to Paul, that he might ‘comfort’ them, which he does through his ministry….”⁶

This “one-way street” from God to Paul to the Corinthians will be developed throughout the letter (cf. 1:8–11; 2:14–3:3; 4:7–15; 6:3–10; 11:7–33; 12:7–13). Yet already here we see an important clue to its significance. The identification of Paul’s troubles (v. 4) with the sufferings of Christ (v. 5) as a means of mediating the comfort of the resurrection to the Corinthians (v. 6) reveals that Paul considered his suffering as an apostle to be a sovereignly ordained vehicle for mediating God’s presence in the lives of his people, just as Christ suffered on the cross and was raised from the dead for the sake of the church.

The ultimate consequence of Paul’s suffering and comfort is spelled out in verses 6b–7. 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. This ability to endure in the midst of adversity because of the comfort they have received is Paul’s “hope” for the Corinthians.

Moreover, Paul’s hope for the Corinthians is certain because he knows that their participation in his suffering, like his own participation in the sufferings of Christ, will never outdistance their common share in God’s comfort (v. 7b).⁷ Wherever God is present, there exists a sense of security and peace in the midst of our afflictions that derives from God’s commitment to deliver his people since God is, by the very definition of his nature, the “God of all comfort” (v. 3c). 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 end of all experience and theology is doxology.

Paul’s “Sentence to Death” As the Pattern of His Suffering (1:8–11)

PAUL’S ARGUMENT IN 1:3–7 raises the question of how his suffering and comfort actually produce this endurance among the Corinthians so that he can justifiably equate his experience with that of Christ’s. Against the backdrop of his opponents’ accusation that Paul’s suffering disqualifies his ministry, it is striking that he answers this question in verses 8–11 not only by calling attention to his suffering in Asia,⁸ but also by revealing just how drastic the situation really was. He knew that, humanly speaking, he was in over his head, both physically and emotionally (v. 8).

Indeed, Paul’s suffering was so severe that he saw no way out but death (cf. 1:9). In other words, the apostle felt as if he had received a “sentence of death” (v. 9a), which most likely refers to an official decision concerning his fate.⁹ But God’s purpose was not to kill Paul. Instead, the apostle was brought to what he thought was the end of his life in order that (see hina, v. 9) he would in no way rely on himself, but only “on God, who raises the dead” (cf. the outcome of this lesson in 4:7–9, esp. 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.¹⁰

In making this link, Paul takes the decisive step of interpreting the death of Christ as a type of his own “death” experience in Asia, so that Christ’s “comfort” on the cross as a result of hoping in the resurrection becomes a type of Paul’s own experience. 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).

Thus, just as Christ’s resurrection points forward to and secures our hope in God’s final deliverance of all his people (cf. 1 Cor. 15:20–28), so too God’s past deliverance of Paul establishes his confidence in the deliverance to come (2 Cor. 1:10b). Hence, this replay of Christ’s death and resurrection in Paul’s own life leads him to be confident that God can be trusted to deliver him in the future. This confidence for the future is the biblical notion of “hope,” a hope that Paul will continue to maintain with the help of the Corinthians’ prayers (1:10–11a).

Far from calling his apostleship into question, it thus becomes clear that Paul’s past deliverance and present endurance in the midst of suffering are the means by which God continues to display that he is both willing and able to deliver and sustain his people. Paul’s experience in Asia was an object lesson of the same divine faithfulness and power portrayed in the cross and resurrection of Christ. As such, it should draw others to join Paul in trusting and praising God in the present as they look to the future. Hence, since Paul’s suffering is the platform for the display of God’s resurrection power, the Corinthians should not reject Paul for his weakness. Rather, they ought to pray for Paul that, having learned to hope in God, he may continue to trust God in the midst of his adversities. 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).

Paul therefore ends in verse 11 where he began in verse 3, with thanksgiving and praise to God. This is not an accident or merely the result of a careful rhetorical strategy. The goal of Paul’s ministry, like that of his life itself, including his suffering, is to bring about thanksgiving to God, since this is the fundamental reversal of the heart of sin (cf. Rom. 1:21). In calling the Corinthians to join him in thanking God, Paul is calling them to express the heart of gratitude that comes from living a life of faith in the God who creates and creates anew. In short, he is calling them, as saints within the church of God (2 Cor. 1:1), to reverse the effects of sinful self-dependence and self-glorification in their lives (cf. Rom. 1:22).

In returning to the praise of God, Paul has fulfilled the three purposes of his opening thanksgiving. (1) In fulfillment of his epistolary purpose, Paul has made it clear that the comfort of God in the midst of adversity is the main theme of the letter. (2) By way of instruction, Paul has stated his corresponding thesis, namely, that his suffering, rather than calling his legitimacy into question, is the very means by which God’s comfort is mediated to others. (3) In mounting his consequent appeal, Paul invites the Corinthians to join him in thanking God for his suffering and deliverance, thus fulfilling Paul’s initial call to praise God in verse 3. If the Corinthians should spurn this invitation, their very refusal becomes an indictment of their rebellion against the gospel (cf. 12:19–21; 13:1–10).

Bridging Contexts

PAUL’S VIEW OF GOD. In order to move from Paul’s context to our own, there are at least three fundamental perspectives to keep in mind, all of which are increasingly alien to our worldview. We note first Paul’s view of God.¹¹ The movement in Paul’s thought from verse 3a to verses 3b–11 demonstrates that although God is known by his actions, his actions derive from his character, not the reverse. Because God is the God of all comfort, therefore he comforts Paul, and the comfort Paul experiences must come from God.

This has at least two important implications. (1) God’s character is not in flux or in a process of development in response to his own unfolding actions or as a consequence of the actions of others. Though we know God’s character through his acts within history, his character is not derived from that history. Instead, Paul teaches that history itself is dependent on the display of God’s absolute sovereignty and freedom from constraint, whether in creation (cf. Rom. 1:18–25; 1 Cor. 11:9; Col. 1:16; 1 Tim. 2:13), in providence (cf. Acts 17:24–31; Eph. 1:9–11; Col. 1:17), or in redemption (cf. Rom. 11:33–36; 1 Cor. 10:11; Eph. 1:3–8). Even more striking is Paul’s conviction that God’s character is also manifest in and through the circumstances of Paul’s own personal life (cf. Gal. 1:15; Eph. 3:1–6; Phil. 1:12–26).

(2) The ultimate purpose not only of history in general, but also of our own history in particular, is to reveal the majestic character of God, to which his people respond with the praise and thanksgiving due his name (1:3, 11). Moreover, Paul’s emphasis in this passage on God’s “comfort” reflects his conviction that the glory of God’s sovereignty is most profoundly displayed in his merciful goodness toward those who trust in his “compassion” no matter what the circumstances (cf. Rom. 8:28–39; 9:22–29). In moving from Paul’s worldview to ours, we must therefore maintain the “Godness” and “God-centeredness” of God in a world that is prone to place humanity at the epicenter of the universe. Contemporary popular theology does not often contain such an emphasis on the centrality and sovereignty of God, but bringing Paul’s perspective into our own age is virtually impossible without it. For when Paul speaks of “God,” it is in the light of his conviction, well known to the Corinthians, that

there is no God but one. For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”), yet for us there is but one God [cf. Deut. 6:4; 10:17], the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live. (1 Cor. 8:4–6)

Paul’s view of suffering. The second controlling perspective is Paul’s view of suffering. The apostle will develop his understanding of the purpose of suffering more fully as the letter unfolds. But already we have seen that the words he chooses to refer to his troubles (thlipsis and pathema) were general terms that could be used to signify both physical and emotional distress, as well as the suffering caused by persecution.

Hence, Paul’s full-orbed definition of suffering speaks against those who, whether in Paul’s day or our own, attempt to limit the kinds of suffering that can legitimately be experienced by those who are filled with the Spirit. In such a “health and wealth gospel,” those who truly live by faith may be persecuted, but they will not be subject to emotional illness, physical sickness, or financial distress. Yet the general terminology Paul uses in this context to describe affliction, together with his own experiences of physical suffering, persecution, natural deprivations, economic hardships, and the emotional distress of anxiety (see 1 Cor. 4:11–13; 2 Cor. 2:12–13, 17; 4:8–9; 6:4–10; 11:23–28; 12:7; Gal. 4:12–16), makes such a limitation impossible.

At the same time, Paul never glorifies suffering per se. There is no evidence that he sought it or encouraged others to do so, as if it were a sign of special spirituality. Hence, the emphasis among some of the early church fathers on actively seeking martyrdom as the highest form of Christian witness is a dangerous misapplication of Paul’s view of suffering.¹² For Paul, suffering is not intrinsically good, nor is it a Christian virtue. Rather, suffering is a page in the textbook used in God’s school of faith (cf. vv. 8–10). 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).

Paul’s view of the ministry. Third, and most important for Paul’s present purpose, we must keep before us Paul’s view of the ministry. This theme too will be developed as the letter continues (cf. 2:14–3:3; 4:1–6, 10–12; 5:11–6:2; 10:7–18). Here Paul’s implicit appeal is that his readers praise God for the very suffering his opponents think will call Paul’s ministry into question. 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. Like the suffering righteous in the Old Testament and the Suffering Righteous One, Jesus Christ, Paul is led into situations of suffering in order that God may display his resurrection power through Paul to others.

Through Paul’s ministry, characterized as it is by his experience of God’s past deliverance and present comfort in the midst of his suffering, believers come to experience the peace that comes from hoping in God’s resurrection power. Hope for the future is the engine that creates comfort in the present. As a result, Paul’s suffering is an essential, legitimizing characteristic of his ministry as an apostle (cf. again Acts 9:16). It is not in spite of, but in and through Paul’s suffering that his legitimacy is established. As we have seen, this is the major theme of 2 Corinthians.

One of the most difficult aspects of reading 2 Corinthians, therefore, is to know how to apply Paul’s suffering as an apostle to general Christian experience. To begin with, we must remember that the mediation of God’s comfort is not reciprocal between Paul and his church. The movement is a “one-way street” from God through Paul to the Corinthians (cf. 1:6). This reflects Paul’s conviction that as an apostle, unlike believers in general, he was called to suffer as the revelatory means by which God’s power in Christ is portrayed to others (cf. also Phil. 1:12; 3:10–11; Col. 1:24; 1 Thess. 3:3–4, 7; 2 Tim. 2:9; 3:10–11). In return, God comforts Paul through the positive response of the Corinthians to his ministry (cf. 7:6–7; cf. Rom. 1:11–12).

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 (1:6–7; cf. Acts 14:22; Phil. 1:29; 2 Tim. 3:12). There is therefore a qualitative and quantitative difference between the suffering that will come their way periodically (cf. Phil. 2:26–27; 1 Thess. 1:6; 2 Thess. 1:4–7; 1 Peter 1:6–9; 4:12–19; Heb. 10:32–34; 12:4–13), and the daily experience of suffering that was an essential aspect of Paul’s calling as an apostle.

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. Nor should we assign a revelatory role or higher degree of spirituality to those who suffer more than others. In the providence of God, some believers live significantly more peaceful and healthy lives than others. Furthermore, when we do draw a parallel between Paul’s suffering and our own (as in 1:6–7), we should not trivialize Paul’s suffering for the gospel by equating it with our experiences of inconvenience, ego-deflation, or lack of middle-class material comforts. Nevertheless, all Christians must face the last enemy, death. And God calls all believers to experience the lack that comes from daily considering the needs of others more important than their own (cf. Mark 8:34–35; 10:43–44; Phil. 2:3–5).

In fact, the way of life that comes from living by faith in future grace [cf. Paul’s emphasis on his hope in God’s future rescue in 1:10] will very likely involve more suffering, not less. When you know that your future is in the hands of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-wise God who promises to work all things for your good, you are free to take any risk that love demands—no matter what the cost. It is a biblical truth that the more earnest we become about being salt of the earth and the light of the world, and the more devoted we become to reaching the unreached peoples of the world, and exposing the works of darkness, and loosing the bonds of sin and Satan, the more we will suffer.¹³

So those who are not suffering should not seek to do so. Rather, they should seek to be faithful to God, banking their hope on his promises so that meeting the needs of others becomes more important than securing their own future. Though such a call will no doubt involve suffering, the circumstances surrounding this life of faith are up to God.

In applying Paul’s example it is also important to stress that the apostolic age is over. When drawing parallels between Paul’s relationship to his churches and the ministry of contemporary pastors, we must distinguish between Paul’s functions as an apostle and his office as an apostle. Pastors and missionaries today fulfill many of the same functions that Paul performed, and for this reason we may rightly ask whether they too might not be called to suffer on behalf of their people in essentially the same way Paul was. Certainly the age-old dictum that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church is often true.¹⁴

But neither our pastors nor our missionaries, nor even contemporary martyrs, occupy the intrinsically authoritative office held by Paul as an apostle (see comments on 1:1). The authority of the pastor and missionary remains derivative from and subordinate to Scripture as the deposit of the prophetic and apostolic witness. A person’s suffering in and of itself, though it may reveal the purity of one’s motives (cf. 1:12–14), should never be used as a reason to accept the authority of his or her teaching. Only the revelation of God’s Word in the Scriptures can be the plumb line of truth.

Contemporary Significance

THE CHARACTER OF WORSHIP. As we have seen, Paul employs the standard Jewish berakah-formula in 1:3–11, grounding his praise in 1:3 with reasons garnered from his own experience, an experience permeated with the will and presence of God. Paul’s use of this form carries an important lesson for the nature of prayer. As this structure indicates, praise is the expression of our adulation of God’s character that flows from a serious reflection on the way in which he works to accomplish his purposes for the good of his people. There must be reasons for prayer.

Moreover, the transition from verses 3–7 to 8–11 indicates that a primary purpose for corporate prayer, even when it focuses on the experience of an individual, is the incorporation of others into our praise. Paul’s thanksgiving in verses 4–7 leads to the Corinthians’ joining him in verse 11, which in turn is a fulfillment of Paul’s admonition to declare God’s praise in verse 3. Biblical worship therefore avoids two extremes: contentless expressions of praise on the one hand, and human-centered “testimonies” on the other. Genuine praise is not a mindless act designed to escape thinking about our daily lives, nor is it a means of sugarcoating our circumstances. Our praise of God should never be transformed into some sort of Christian “mantra,” nor should it be used to make things look better than they really are. We praise God in the midst of our adversity not because things are not as bad as they seem (they could be worse!), but because of who God is and of what he does in and through the reality in which we live.

It is not the command to praise God per se that gives birth to true worship, but an encounter with the living God. As 1:3–11 illustrates, therefore, the way to bring about praise for God is to ground our call to praise (1:3) with declarations and illustrations of the praiseworthy character of God himself (1:4–11). For the same reason, testimonies should not degenerate into news reports about how bad the circumstances really were (note the lack of details in verses 8–11), or into thinly veiled vehicles for displaying one’s “accomplishments,” good or bad (cf. 11:18, 23). Nor should “leading worship” call attention to the abilities of the worship leaders. Instead, those who testify to God’s mercies should present a God-centered display of his character and attributes as seen in his works on behalf of his people (1:11; cf. Isa. 64:4). The goal of worship, after all, is not to display our performance or experience, but to enlarge the circle of those who enjoy the comfort and therefore praise the glory of God (cf. 2 Cor. 1:3, 11).

The character of God. As a prayer of thanksgiving, this opening passage, though concerned with Paul’s suffering as an apostle, is ultimately about God. A moment’s reflection will reveal just how countercultural this is in our day and age. Such a theocentric perspective is difficult to recover and maintain in our cultural milieu. Few today focus attention first and foremost on the character of God; doing so does not seem to have relevance for our daily lives.

For example, in the contemporary church the popularity of topical talks concerning our “felt needs” far outweighs any interest in contemplating the nature of God as revealed in the Scriptures. When was the last time you heard a sermon series on the attributes and purposes of God as revealed in the history of redemption? “Theology” as the study of the nature and purposes of the transcendent God is viewed as arcane, abstract, and out of touch. Instead, surrounded by a “new age” Gnosticism that champions personal enlightenment through private “spiritual experiences” as the pathway to knowing the god within each of us,¹⁵ even the church finds herself self-absorbed.

Thus, in order to regain the significance of Paul’s worldview, we must recover his affirmation that the comfort of God so desperately needed in our day derives not from within, but from knowing the transcendent God as the one who has delivered and will deliver his people. In order to restore the Pauline gospel, God himself must become the central subject of our worship, of our conversation, and of our theology. Only then will we be able to combat the tyranny of subjectivity that is seeping into our churches through the cracks of our theology as it spreads throughout our culture. For as David Wells has documented, we have “bought cultural acceptability by emptying [ourselves] of serious thought, serious theology, serious worship, and serious practice….” Hence, “the fundamental problem in the evangelical world today is that God rests too inconsequential upon the church. His truth is too distant, his grace is too ordinary, his judgment is too benign, his gospel is too easy, and his Christ is too common.”¹⁶

Ironically, then, given the pervasive influence of our own culture, one of the best ways to gain contemporary significance is to return to the theological reflections of earlier periods. Hearing a word from the past often enables us to gain perspective on our own cultural situation, with its own particular forms of idolatry. In regard to regaining a sense of God-centeredness in all we do and experience, including our suffering, a serious reflection on Chapter 2 of The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) is extremely helpful:

I. There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will, for his own glory; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek him; and withal most just and terrible in his judgments; hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.II. God hath all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of himself; and is alone in and unto himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which he hath made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon them: he is the lone foundation of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things; and hath most sovereign dominion over them, to do by them, for them, or upon them whatsoever himself pleaseth. In his sight all things are open and manifest; his knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent upon the creature; so as nothing is to him contingent or uncertain. He is most holy in all his counsels, in all his works, and in all his commands. To him is due from angels and men, and every other creature, whatsoever worship, service, or obedience, he is pleased to require of them.

The contemporary relevance of such a focus on God himself is well illustrated by the life and thought of Karl Barth, in most people’s estimation the greatest theologian of the twentieth century. Barth’s renewed emphasis on the doctrine of God turned an entire generation of church leaders away from the Protestant liberalism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As Eberhard Jüngel, perhaps the leading interpreter of Barth’s thought, put it:

The freedom of God: for Barth, that was God himself. The unmistakable greatness of his theology arises from his unwavering intention to think of God himself. The polemical aspect of his theology is directed against all surrogates. No idea, no ideology, no pious postulate, and especially no theological concept may take the place of God. God confides in no one. He speaks for himself. He reveals himself. Barth uncompromisingly demanded that we think of God himself!¹⁷

Unfortunately, the re-escalation of a human-centered epistemology brought about by the rise of postmodern thought has once again made personal experience, whether that of the individual or the individual’s social class, gender, or culture, the all-determinative matrix by which truth is determined (see Contemporary Significance section of 1:1–2). This has transformed our view of God into a view of ourselves and recast thought about God into an exercise in self-discovery. Those most in need of God’s comfort are thus shut off from its only source, the “God of all comfort” himself.

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. So Paul’s prayer of praise in 1:4–7 stands not only as a needed corrective to the cultural currents of our day, but also, and more critically, as the pathway to a true experience of God’s comforting presence. To seek our comfort in God is to glorify him as the God of all comfort. Hence, our search for comfort is, in the end, a search for the glory of God, who shows himself glorious by comforting his people.

Seen in this light, Paul’s call in 1:3 to praise God’s character is, in effect, a call to be comforted, since in doing so we are affirming in the midst of our adversity that God is the one who can do so. God’s commitment to show forth his glory is, therefore, the comfort of his people. The most comforting thing God can do is to call us to praise him as the one worthy of our honor. John Piper’s exposition of the significance of this crucial perspective is again helpful:

But is it loving for God to exalt his own glory? Yes it is … God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him…. Therefore God’s pursuit of his own glory is not at odds with my joy, and that means it is not unkind or unmerciful or unloving of him to seek his glory. In fact it means that the more passionate God is for his own glory the more passionate he is for my satisfaction in that glory…. Therefore when we read hundreds of texts in the Bible that show God passionately exalting his own glory, we no longer hear them as the passions of an overweening, uncaring ego…. God is utterly unique. He is the only being in the universe worthy of worship. Therefore when he exalts himself he thus directs people to true and lasting joy. “In your presence is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures for evermore” (Psalm 16:11).¹⁸

The character of God’s sovereignty in suffering. 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). Paul’s entire argument, however, is built on his underlying conviction that God’s sovereignty extends over all circumstances. To curtail the extent of God’s power or purposes in the world is to cut off the possibility of comfort in the midst of adversity.

For Paul there are no such things as “luck” or “accident.” To follow his thought we must resist limiting God’s sovereignty in the face of suffering. The comfort of God in this text is not his empathy with us as someone who feels the tragedy of evil but is helpless in it. Nor does the comfort of God reside in his actions as a “fourth-quarter quarterback,” who is brought in after things have fallen apart to save the day just before the whistle blows. There is no comfort in suffering if God is not sovereign over it. To pare down God’s sovereignty is to render suffering a triumph of evil and sin against the limited will and power of God. 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).

Against all “down-sizings” of God in order to cope with the “problem of evil,” Paul confesses that one divine purpose in suffering is the glory of God (1:3, 11) by the sanctification of his people (1:4–10). Although we cannot understand fully God’s ultimate intent in the tragic events of life (or even in the normal, routine matters!), it is possible to say that an essential part of God’s purpose in all things is to honor himself by creating a people who, like Christ, trust him in every circumstance (1:9–10; cf. Rom. 8:28–30; Phil. 3:10 with Heb. 5:8). 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.¹⁹ In a similar way, listen to the confession of Dietrich Bonhoeffer from New Year’s Day, 1943, as it reminds us of Paul’s own experience recounted in 1:8–11:

I believe that God can and will bring good out of evil, even out of the greatest evil. For that purpose he needs men who make the best use of everything. I believe that God will give us all the strength we need to help us to resist in all time of distress. But he never gives it in advance, lest we should rely on ourselves and not on him alone. A faith such as this should allay all our fears for the future. I believe that even our mistakes and shortcomings are turned to good account, and that it is no harder for God to deal with them than with our supposedly good deeds. I believe that God is no timeless fate, but that he waits and answers sincere prayers and responsible actions.²⁰

It was this bedrock conviction that enabled Bonhoeffer to endure his subsequent imprisonment and eventual death at the hands of the Nazis.²¹

The character of endurance in view of the comfort of God. Our response to the comfort of God’s sovereign presence is to endure the suffering that comes our way, confident that it is a divinely orchestrated aspect of our school of faith. Under God’s sovereignty, the “endurance” spoken about in 1:6 as the goal of Paul’s apostolic suffering cannot be reinterpreted as some sort of Stoic self-discipline, in which we attempt to conquer suffering by controlling our emotions. Paul is not talking about will power in this passage. Nor should Paul’s thought be perverted into the “power of positive thinking,” in which we try to “psyche ourselves up” into believing that things are really not as bad as they seem (they are usually worse), so that we can overcome our circumstances if we would “only put our mind to it.” Moreover, nothing could be farther from Paul’s thought than the “new age” conviction that all we have to do is to get in touch with “the god within us.”

In stark contrast to all such self-help strategies, by “endurance” Paul means that trust in God’s power and purposes in the midst of adversity expresses itself in a steady not giving up. His words in 1:6 must have reminded the Corinthians of what he had said earlier in 1 Corinthians 10:13: We endure in faith because of our confidence that “God is faithful,” so that “he will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” Note that in this verse Paul again makes it clear that God is active both before temptation strikes and in the midst of it. Note too that the “way out” is not necessarily an immediate deliverance from temptation, since God provides the “way out” in order that we might persevere, not escape.

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). In either case, God will not allow us to suffer beyond what we can handle. Indeed, Paul knew that God had spared the life of Epaphroditus not only for Epaphroditus’s sake, but also for Paul’s own sake, since Paul would not have been able to handle it if Epaphroditus had died (cf. Phil. 2:27).

Nevertheless, our passage makes clear that God did not rescue Paul in Asia or spare Epaphroditus in order to encourage others to seek a miracle. Paul’s deliverance from his suffering in Asia was intended to encourage the Corinthians to endure suffering in their own lives (1:6). 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. God rescued Paul in the past so that he might trust in God’s future rescue while he suffered in the present (1:10). God spared Epaphroditus, Paul’s fellow worker and soldier in the causes of Christ, in order that Paul might learn to be content no matter what, knowing that the Lord was committed to doing whatever it took to meet his real needs (Phil. 2:30; 4:12, 19).

Anybody can worship Santa Claus. But hanging in there with God in the midst of intense suffering, as Christ hung on the cross, magnifies the worth of God as the one who sustains us. God’s goal in suffering, therefore, is to teach us that in life and in death, as in all eternity, he himself is all we ultimately need. God never intends to destroy his people, nor will he allow anyone or anything else to do so. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ (Rom. 8:31–39). In placing Paul in a situation in which he despaired even of life itself (2 Cor. 1:8), the only thing God destroyed was Paul’s self-confidence. In return, Paul received God himself. In response, the apostle gave God praise. To return to the past again, this focus and foundation of comfort finds an enduring expression in the first question of The Heidelberg Catechism (1563):

Question 1. What is your only comfort, in life and in death?

That I belong—body and soul, in life and in death—not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who at the cost of his own blood has fully paid for all my sins and has completely freed me from the dominion of the devil; that he protects me so well that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, that everything must fit his purpose for my salvation. Therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life, and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.²²

The priority Paul places on endurance as our response to God’s sovereign power and will points to two important implications for modern Western culture. (1) On the one hand, contrary to the movement made popular by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, we must resist “accepting” affliction and “welcoming” death as merely a normal part of life.²³ For Paul, death is still “the last enemy” (1 Cor. 15:26) and the result of sin in the world (Rom. 5:12). The gospel is not a coping mechanism, but the promise of resurrection life in the future, the inauguration of which is God’s power for a new life in the present. In destroying the stranglehold of sin, Christ vanquishes the “sting” of death. (2) On the other hand, we must also resist at all costs the “health and wealth gospel” (on this “gospel” as a perversion of the true gospel, see comments and application to 4:7–12 and 11:1–6, below). The glory of the gospel is its declaration that the message of the cross is the power of God.

The former attempt to sanitize suffering and death expects too little from God, as if the kingdom of God has not been inaugurated (i.e., it operates with an “underrealized eschatology”). In this view, all we can hope for in life is the status quo. Thus, we must have faith to accept things the way they are. The latter attempt to purge suffering from the life of the Christian expects too much from God in the present, as if the kingdom of God has been inaugurated in all its fullness (i.e., it operates with an “overrealized eschatology”). In this view, true believers can expect to experience almost all the glories of heaven already on earth. Thus, we must have faith to ignore the way things are.

In contrast, Paul proclaims an endurance of faith that lives in the tension of the “overlapping of the ages,” in which the kingdom of God is certainly here, but is not yet here in all its fullness (i.e., we operate with an “inaugurated eschatology”). In Paul’s view, we must have faith in the sovereignty and goodness of God in and through the way things are—expectant, enduring, full of praise, confident that God is glorified through comforting his people in himself.

The character of the pastor. Finally, Paul’s experience as an apostle leads to the conclusion that those called to proclaim and embody the kingdom of God are called to a unique role within the church. Through their lives of trust (1:9), integrity (see the next section, 1:12–2:4), and mercy (2:5–11), in the midst of adversity, the saints entrusted to their care will see displayed before them the reality of Christ’s death and resurrection. This implies that the life of the pastor will normally be characterized by a quality (and even quantity?) of suffering not usually experienced in the lives of those gifted for other, equally important roles within the church (see esp. 11:28). If bringing about the endurance of faith in the lives of God’s people is the goal of Paul’s ministry, his own life of faith as a servant of the new covenant (3:4–6), lived out publicly before them (4:7–15; 6:3–10), is the means to that end.

In watching their apostle, the Corinthians see the comfort of God enfleshed in Paul’s experience. Hence, the movement in this passage from God to Paul to the Corinthians illustrates that God calls those in ministry, especially through leading them into afflictions of all kinds, to be an example to the church in a way that cannot be said of the church as a whole. The suffering of the pastor or missionary functions as a primary vehicle through which the truth of the gospel is mediated to God’s people (cf. 2:14–3:3; 4:7–12; 6:3–10; 12:9–10). To quote Barnett again:

Paul’s experience of suffering and comfort in the course of his ministry is replicated in every generation in the lives of godly missionaries and pastors in their interrelationships with their congregations. While both minister and people suffer as they bear witness to Christ in an alien culture, there remains a distinctive role and therefore a distinctive suffering to the Christian leader. As the comfort of God is experienced in the life of the leader, so it will be passed on through ministry to the people.²⁴

In the midst of a contemporary church that is often caught up in techniques and technology as the way to grow, 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.

One of the central messages of 2 Corinthians is the centrality and significance of the pastoral office. And at the heart of the pastoral office is the suffering of the pastor, even as Christ came as the suffering servant who was obedient to the point of death. In an age when pastors are being increasingly reconfigured as professional therapists, business managers, and coaches in the game of life, such an understanding seems as strange as it is needed. It is this high view of the ministry in particular, and at the same time the surprising character of that same office, that informs the next sections of Paul’s letter.