From Jim McGuiggan... Suffering and Comfort

Suffering and Comfort

Suffering has many faces and biblical writers discuss it from many angles. The suffering that's most prominent in the New Testament is the suffering that comes as a result of faithfulness to Christ. In fact, so prominent is that face of it that Stanley Hauerwas thinks that disease, calamities and the like are left un-addressed in the New Testament. When we look at the pain and loss of little children, he thought, we are forced to stand silent. I think this is a mistake.

Still, in 2 Corinthians the emphasis is peculiarly (though not exclusively) on Paul's experience of suffering and how it works in with the gospel and his ministry. His opponents see his sufferings and loss as proof that he isn't a genuine apostle of Christ and that his gospel is false. In this letter Paul is always anxious to show that his suffering is one essential aspect of his commission. This is the primary thought about suffering throughout the book so we should expect it in 1:3-11. This means we should be careful how we use 2 Corinthians when discussing suffering--we need to let it speak it's own message and pay attention to its immediate concerns.

Still, 1:3-11 has a breadth of vision about it that suggests we should embrace Paul's personal situation without excluding wider concerns. God is the "God of all comfort" and not just Paul's comforter (1:3). And the comfort God gives Paul in his trouble is to enable God through Paul to give comfort to others (1:3). The affliction to which Paul offers comfort is not restricted to suffering for righteousness but embraces "any" or "all" afflictions with which people are afflicted (1:4). It's possible that the "any" affliction others might suffer is to be understood as within the parameters of suffering "for righteousness sake" but whether we should do that is another question. I don't think Paul here wants us to understand that he is offering comfort only to those who are suffering as a result of their faithfulness to God. That seems to me to reduce the power and breadth of the whole section.

While I think the section is broader than Paul's own immediate concerns he nevertheless has his own agenda in view. It may well include more than his situation but it includes no less. If opponents imply there's no good reason for someone like Paul to suffer Paul would insists that it enables him to be God's channel to comfort others and it taught him utter dependence on God (1:9).

His utter dependence in the face of imminent death is not on some god or other. It is not even on God, as he (gratefully) had known him in pre-Christ days. The God on whom his virtual death made him dependent is "the God who raises the dead" (1:9). Paul insists that his virtual resurrection was not only a physical rescue it was a theological eye-opener and faith builder. But it was more than that! And he will speak later of how his own (virtual) death and resurrection is in fact a rehearsal of the gospel (see 4:10-12).

So Paul's section on comfort while it has a breadth of assurance that covers those who need comfort in time of "any" affliction deals with more specific concerns that are especially relevant in the Corinthian situation. Nevertheless, we need to bear in mind that Paul never sees himself as independent, free-standing unit but always as a part of the body of Christ which suffers with and from and for the entire world.

©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.

Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.