ELIZABETH TURNAGE | CONTRIBUTOR

As I sat down to revisit this beloved passage from 2 Corinthians 1, I received a text from a young friend. She has suffered many serious health challenges for a person in her late twenties. In her text, she asked for prayers for some new health concerns. As I was responding, she sent another text, “Also, please pray for my friend. He starts chemo today. I told him I would be glad to talk with him whenever he needs a listening ear since I know what it’s like.”

How, I wondered, does a young woman who has suffered so intensely so early in life face her own concerning health news with such calm while at the same time asking for prayer for a dear friend? I believe she can do so because she grasps what the apostle Paul teaches in 2 Corinthians 1:3-11, where he lays out the connection between suffering and comfort, both from a theological and personal perspective.

Not “Why?” but “Who?”

Years ago, a dear friend from church was murdered at her home. I will never forget the wise encouragement our pastor shared at her funeral. He acknowledged our longing to know the answer to the question of “why” this tragedy had occurred. And yet, he insisted, deeper comfort would come through knowing the answer to the question “who?” Who is the God who enters our most horrific tragedies?

In 2 Corinthians 1, the apostle Paul shares answers to both questions, “why” and “who,” but he begins with the “who,” thus giving it precedence. Who is this God who meets us in our deepest affliction—when a child dies, when a job is lost, when spouses struggle with addiction? He is the God to be blessed, “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort, the God who comforts in all our affliction” (2 Cor. 1:3-4). He is, in short, the God who has “many mercies” for our “many miseries.”[i]

Why? Is Suffering Purposeful?

Now that he has named the “who,” Paul suggests some possible purposes for his affliction. Why would God allow him to suffer “hyperbolically” (the literal Greek translation of “utterly …beyond” in verse 8), so intensely that he felt he was as good as dead? In this passage, Paul offers at least three reasons for his and the Corinthians’ suffering (later in the letter, he will add more): to comfort others in their affliction; to share in Christ’s sufferings, thereby receiving Christ’s comfort; and to learn to rely on the God who raises the dead. As we understand Paul’s argument, we, like the Corinthians, grow in the crucial capacity to endure suffering.

 Purposes of Suffering

To comfort others in their affliction:

Apparently responding to a critique by the so-called “super-apostles” (see 2 Corinthians 11:5) that his extreme suffering disqualified him as an apostle, Paul countered that his affliction actually revealed his qualifications even as it benefited others.

For God’s beloved children, suffering serves many purposes; among them, Paul argues, is enhancing our ability to comfort others in their suffering with the comfort we have received from God (See 2 Cor. 1:4). As my friend suggested, who better to walk alongside her friend in health crisis than she who has suffered many miseries and received the Father’s many mercies?

To share in Christ’s sufferings.

We know that our union in Christ brings numerous benefits: we are adopted children of the Father; we are the branches nourished by Jesus the vine; we are the body of Christ and His beloved bride.

We think less often of the privilege of sharing in the sufferings of Christ as members of His body. And yet, if Christ’s suffering on the Cross brought redemption to us, might our suffering in the body of believers work out His redemption in us, making us more like Christ?

As Paul asserts in Philippians 3:10-11, sharing in Christ’s sufferings will ultimately lead to sharing in His resurrection from the dead. To share in one another’s suffering is to share in Christ’s suffering; to share in Christ’s suffering points us toward the end of our story, when Christ will return and wipe away all tears (see Rev. 21:4). What comfort we will know in that day!

To rely on the God who raises the dead.

How easy it was for the Corinthians, who lived in a wealthy, powerful culture, to lean toward self-reliance. And how easy it is for us to do the same. We rely on our expertise at work, our internet parenting gurus, our brains, beauty, or brawn, for strength and success, even in ministry.

Throughout 2 Corinthians, Paul insists that his very weakness, his “beyond-bearing” suffering, the suffering that led him to believe he was as good as dead, is one of his chief qualifications as an apostle. Why? Because it was through this suffering that he learned to rely fully and only on the “God who raises the dead,” the God who has delivered him “from such a deadly peril” and who will deliver again (see 2 Cor. 1:9-10).

We too benefit from suffering when it leads us to know the depth of our deliverance more personally. Pastor Tim Keller tells the story of a man on the brink of losing his career and family. He told Keller, “I always knew, in principle, that ‘Jesus is all you need’ to get through. But you don’t really know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.”[ii] We desperately need to know Jesus is all we need, and suffering provides that opportunity.

What about you?

Have you known the comfort from another dear saint when you felt “utterly burdened,” as if you were facing a death sentence? Have you yourself seen your sorrow alchemized into a balm for a wounded heart? Will you pray for those who suffer? Will you lean into the sure hope that the Father of all mercies will one day wipe away all tears (see 2 Cor. 1:11; Rev. 21:4)?

This is the invitation Paul extends; may we accept it boldly.

[i] Nathaniel Holmes. The full quote is “God knows we have many miseries, so he balances it with his many mercies,” found at https://gracegems.org/30/puritan_quotes.htm.

[ii] Timothy Keller, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering (Dutton, 2013), 5.

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