“Bless the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! The Father is merciful and God of all comfort. He comforts us in all our trouble so that we can comfort other people who are in every kind of trouble.” 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 CEB

Paul doesn’t ease into 2 Corinthians. After his greeting, he begins with suffering. That tells us something about where Paul is as he writes.

Since the letter we finished yesterday, his relationship with the Corinthian church has become even more complicated. There has been a painful visit, strained relationships, criticism of Paul’s ministry, and continued division within the church. This letter will become an appeal for reconciliation, but Paul doesn't begin by defending himself or rehearsing everything the Corinthians have done wrong. He begins with God.

“Bless the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! The Father is merciful and God of all comfort. He comforts us in all our trouble so that we can comfort other people who are in every kind of trouble” (2 Corinthians 1:3–4 CEB).

The word comfort appears again and again in these opening verses. But Paul means something deeper than making someone feel a little better. God meets people in their suffering, draws near, strengthens them, and gives them what they need to keep moving faithfully. And notice what happens to that comfort. It doesn’t stop with us. God comforts us so that we can comfort others.

That’s an important picture of Christian community. Grace flows through the Body of Christ. What God has done in us becomes something God can use through us. The encouragement we once needed may become the encouragement we can now offer. The prayer someone prayed over us may teach us how to pray for another person. Even the places where we have been hurt can become places from which we learn to love more deeply.

Paul isn’t romanticizing suffering. He certainly isn’t telling the Corinthians that pain is secretly enjoyable or that Christians should pretend everything is fine. His own description is raw and honest. “We were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself.” (v. 8) Whatever happened to Paul in Asia, it brought him to the end of himself. He believed he was going to die.

Then Paul tells us what that experience did within him: “This happened so that we would have confidence in God, who raises the dead, instead of ourselves” (v. 9). That sentence may be one of the keys to understanding the whole letter. Paul had preached resurrection. In the previous letter, he had written to the Corinthians declaring that Christ has been raised and death will not have the final word. Now he was learning to trust resurrection personally.

Sometimes we know a truth before we discover how deeply we need it. Paul discovered that resurrection wasn’t only something God had done for Jesus or something God would someday do for believers. The resurrection revealed the character of the God Paul was learning to trust right now. When his own strength ran out, God remained faithful.

That doesn’t mean God always removes the suffering. Paul’s life doesn’t support that conclusion. Instead, Paul discovers that our hope ultimately rests somewhere stronger than our circumstances, our plans, our abilities, or even our ability to hold ourselves together.

We trust “the God who raises the dead.” That confidence becomes especially important as Paul begins addressing his strained relationship with Corinth. Some of them apparently believed his changed travel plans showed that he was unreliable—saying “yes” one moment and “no” the next. Paul answers by pointing beyond his itinerary to the faithfulness of God: “All of God’s promises have their yes in him. That is why we say Amen through him to the glory of God” (v. 20).

Our circumstances change. Plans change. Relationships become complicated. We sometimes reach places where we don’t know what happens next. But God’s faithfulness has been revealed decisively in Jesus Christ.

Paul says the Holy Spirit is already at work within us as God’s seal and the guarantee of what is still coming. The God who raised Jesus has not abandoned the work of new creation. God is forming us, strengthening us, and leading us toward the life Christ has opened for us. That means our suffering doesn’t have to become wasted pain.

Received in the grace of God, even the hardest places of our lives can deepen our dependence upon God and enlarge our capacity to love others.

We don’t have to pretend the trouble doesn’t hurt. We can bring it honestly before the God of all comfort. And when that comfort finds us, we can carry it with us.

Think of one way God has comforted, strengthened, or sustained you during a difficult season. Ask God to bring one person to mind who may need that same kind of encouragement today, then reach out to them.