2 Corinthians 1:3–11

After the opening words of greeting, the Apostle blesses God — the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. He had many trials and testings, and much suffering. In all these depressing experiences God ministered to him in grace. Therefore he blessed God in this outburst of praise. We can only bless God as we know Him. Trials, afflictions, sorrows and sufferings make God more real to the believer. They show His gracious favour towards His beloved people.

"Go," He says to Mary, "go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God" (John 20:17). We learn from these words that the place the Father would have us take as His children is the very place Christ Himself enjoys. As man, God was the God of our blessed Lord; as Son, His Father. These two relationships cover the whole position He held when He was here, and now that He is glorified at the right hand of God.

Then we find the relationship, "Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" — this defines the relationship we are in to Him, and then Paul adds "the Father of mercies." He is the spring and source of every mercy — it is all mercy, mercy every step of the way; every trouble is mercy, all His way with us is mercy. Paul begins with God. He starts from the holy glorious person of the blessed God Himself — all in Him is perfect fullness, divine sufficiency. Then the Apostle comes down to what He does: "who comforts us."

God is the God of resurrection. His way of dealing with His people is to show His strength in their weakness. If we want to know Him as the "Father of mercies and the God of all comfort," we must be ready for Him to put us into circumstances where we feel our need of mercy. Mercies are the forms in which the mercy that dwells in the heart of God expresses itself. The Corinthians did not think they needed much comfort. But Paul had to travel the world, and he carried the churches in his heart. He found out his need of mercy and comfort.

God is the blessed fountain and source of all the comfort we can receive. He is this because He is the God of resurrection. He has now been fully glorified in the death of His beloved Son. So He is set free in righteousness to let the mighty tide of His comforts flow out, with nothing hindering it on His side, into the sorrowing hearts of His people in every part of the world. In any time of need and distress, the only barrier to its inflow is our own state.

What perfect understanding the blessed God has of all our needs! And what infinite resources He has to meet those needs, ministering comfort to our hearts as He does. As those He has encouraged, it is our happy privilege to act in the same way towards others. How wide the circle of those needing comfort is! A letter to a grieving believer. A visit to the sick-bed. A word of cheer to the depressed. A helping hand to the harassed and weary. A word of encouragement to the young in the faith.

We must make a distinction. In Christ's sufferings in atonement no one can share. In His suffering for righteousness He is not alone.

Christ suffered for sin so that we never would. We are healed by His wounds; we do not share in them. What Christ suffered when God forsook Him in wrath, He suffered alone and in full. As far as we are concerned, His aim was that we should never taste one drop of that dreadful, bitter cup, which we could never bear. If we drank it, we would drink it as condemned sinners. But in the sufferings of Christ for righteousness, and in those caused to Him by His work of love, we are to have a part, poor and feeble as our faith is.

Notice that the sufferings are "of Christ." They are not only endured for His sake. They are the same kind He endured, because He identified Himself completely with God and God's interests.

The trouble he speaks of came to him from the place he held in the world as a man devoted to Christ. The sufferings of Christ abounded to a man for whom to live was Christ and nothing else.

God fits the comfort to the sufferings and gives it in proportion. If the sufferings are slight, the comfort is slight. If the sufferings abound, the comfort abounds.

His sufferings were for Christ, and his comfort flowed to him through Christ in an even greater measure. To suffer for that name was a marked privilege of his calling. And the One who had made him a chosen vessel for Himself did not forget him in his hour of need. The Lord stood by His afflicted and hard-pressed servant, and showed Himself to his soul with a fullness of blessing that more than made up for the pain.

Verse 5 refers to the sufferings of Christ in His service on earth, not on the cross, and such sufferings abounded in the apostles. And because of this, their encouragement also abounded through Christ: He could not fail them in such service. The word here for comfort or consolation is better translated "encouragement," because it is what stirs a person into active ministry.

Was it not the reckoning of grace? Whatever came on them, it was for their comfort. If affliction, the Lord would turn it to their blessing; if joy and consolation, no less to their blessing.

When he was afflicted, it was for the comfort of others. They saw the same kind of afflictions in people whom God honoured. They knew they shared the same blessed cause, and the same relationship with God. This touched their hearts and brought them back to those affections. When he was comforted, it was to comfort others with the same comfort he himself enjoyed in his affliction.

Salvation is a great, comprehensive word. In one sense the Christian has salvation now — "obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls" (1 Peter 1:9). That is salvation from God's judgment against sin... In another sense salvation is still future. It is "ready to be revealed in the last time," though now "nearer than when we first believed." In a third sense it is a daily experience (2 Cor. 1:6; Phil. 1:19): "work out your own salvation."

Paul treats their endurance of sufferings for Christ as a moral condition of both comfort and salvation. The Spirit testifies to this constantly, and it stands in perfect harmony with the clear teaching of free grace. By grace we are saved through faith, and the Object of that faith is the crucified and risen Son of God. Their salvation will be complete when God presents them before His glory with great joy (Jude 24). Until then it is a hope, but a hope which does not put us to shame, a good hope through grace.

The Greek word hupomone (from hupomeno, "to sustain") is translated in older versions as "enduring" only here (2 Cor. 1:6), and as "patient continuance" in Rom. 2:7. That sense belongs fully to the word: it is a "patient endurance" that does not give way under trial and suffering.

If Paul is in tribulation, it is for the encouragement and salvation of the believers at Corinth, worked inwardly in them — the sense and comfort of it made real inside them — in the endurance of the same sufferings, which enables them to endure. It takes tribulation to work out patience as a lasting result. In the same way, God's encouragement and preservation only become real to us as we go through the trials that call for that supply.

In verses 3 to 7, one word occurs (in various forms) no less than ten times. It is translated six times by comfort, and four times by consolation. It points to a "cheering and supporting influence"... In the same verses the tribulation, the trouble, the afflictions and the suffering are mentioned only seven times. So even here the encouragement far outweighs the sufferings. Without a doubt, this is where the supernatural courage of the martyrs lay. God called them to face unusual suffering, and He carried them through it on a wave of unusual encouragement.

In 1 Corinthians 16:9 he had spoken of "many adversaries" in the area of Ephesus. After this the enmity increased. So verse 8 points especially to the height of the persecution, when Demetrius stirred up the uproar (Acts 19:23-41). The pressure became intense. It went beyond his natural strength to endure, so that he despaired even of life. Sometimes the vessel comes down to a point where, humanly speaking, there is no hope of survival. God is the only resource.

What experience did he mean? No one can answer that for certain. It may have been the trouble in Ephesus (Acts 19), which he refers to in 1 Corinthians 15:32, where he speaks of fighting with beasts at Ephesus. Others think it was a severe attack of sickness, or a powerful assault on his life from some other source. Whatever it was, he had been in such a peril that he almost lost his life.

With Paul, as with an earlier sufferer for the truth (Psalm 31:13), fear was on every side because of the spite of men. In heart and body alike there was a natural faintness (Psalm 73:26). He looked in every direction for a way of escape, and seemed to look in vain. His faith did not fail him, yet his natural spirit shrank back. He was a man with the same feelings and weaknesses as ourselves. And it is the heart that really is afraid which finds its sheltering rest in God.

So God proves Himself rich in mercy. He does this not only by giving favour in Christ, but by making His tried ones superior to all trouble. He does not do it by exempting those He loves from suffering and sorrow. He does it by giving the faith that accepts everything at His hands with confidence in His love… The apostle's mouth is open to the Corinthians. His heart had been repelled by their evil and hardness, and now it has expanded. He can now speak freely of deliverance, so that they too, humbled if not humble, may hear and be glad.

The pressure that came upon him was beyond human power to meet; indeed he had despaired of life. Yet he found that no trial, no opposition the Christian has to meet is beyond the sustaining power of God. The Apostle may despair of life, but he does not despair of God… What Paul could say in his great trials, the simplest believer has the privilege of saying, with the same trust in God.

Paul "despaired of life" in his tribulations for the Ephesian believers, but he did not turn coward. (Acts 19:23 etc. & 2 Corinthians 1:8). He was ready to go in and face the mob who were thirsting for his blood. There is no need to be discouraged even if tribulations do come… The word "tribulation" comes from the Latin word tribulum, which means "a flail." Most of my readers have probably never seen a flail, the tool once used to thresh wheat. I have seen one and used it. It gives the wheat terrible "tribulation" — but that is how the wheat is freed from the chaff.

If he looked inside himself for relief, "death" was the only answer. The more the pressure grew, the more plainly and surely he saw that he was helpless and mortal. He was learning, as God's Spirit teaches it, the real value of his manhood as a child of Adam. And there was need of this. God allowed the shadow of this great death to come over him for two reasons. One was to show the power and faithfulness of God as his deliverer. The other was to destroy all self-reliant confidence more thoroughly, and to bring a matching increase of positive and simple trust in God.

We must have the sentence of death in ourselves, so that we may not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead. Having life — the new nature — is not power over sin. This is what we have to learn: that all "power is of God." Trust in a new nature that we have received is still trust in ourselves as having received it. Self-confidence in any shape is still something foreign to God. It must be broken down, not built up.

In chapter 1 he says, "we had the sentence of death in ourselves" — no trust in natural life. All that belonged to the first Adam was gone, dead. So nothing could touch the ground of his confidence "in God who raises the dead." That confidence sets aside the fear of things around us. If I hold myself dead to the law and to Satan, what power has he over a dead man? The principle of power is that we are dead. Faith acts on this.

The riotous mob in Ephesus put the sentence of death on him, and did their best to carry it out. The Apostle met the situation with the "sentence of death" in himself. This brought him to nothing as to any hope or trust in himself, or in any power he had. He was shut up to God and His power. He trusted the God who raises the dead. So even if the mob had been allowed to do their worst, God would undo all they had done.

Someone may say that in 2 Corinthians 1 it is mainly apostolic service that is in view. That is true. But it is just as true that all of us — believers — have to learn the same lesson in our life of service here. We do not have to go through the extreme persecution and trial that came on the apostle and his companions in Asia. Still, we have to learn not to trust in ourselves, but in God, who raises the dead.

Immense pressure lay on the apostle from outside, but his own spirit stayed calm and steady… He met the great crisis with the death sentence lying on self, and God as the Object of his faith. So he was not only delivered, as verse 10 states, but enriched in spirit. He was filled with comfort and consolation, so that he could "comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God" (verse 4).

From the Acts of the Apostles we can identify a few of the experiences he speaks of. For instance, "once I was stoned" — that was as recorded in chapter 14. He speaks of being "often near death." One occasion was the riot in the Ephesian theatre, recorded in chapter 19. He calls this "so great a death" in the first chapter of our letter.

The trouble that came on him in Asia, whether through the disturbances at Ephesus or elsewhere, had, humanly speaking, put his life in danger. As he says, "we despaired of life itself." And he accepted this "sentence of death" in himself. As far as human probability went, there was no prospect of his recovery… The lesson is plain: a believer, when God so purposes, is entirely outside the working of natural law. God holds him in His own hand, and his continuance in this life therefore depends entirely on the divine will.

He was almost put to death, but God did not allow him to be killed. This met a man who already held himself to be dead. The sentence of death was written on him, and he held himself to be dead. So his confidence was not in any life he had as a man, but in God who raises the dead.

Here Paul seems to celebrate God's saving power three times over. Looking back, he acknowledges redemption as a deliverance from eternal death. Out of his own experience, he confesses the guiding and keeping faithfulness of the One he trusted. Looking forward, he speaks with triumphant boldness and assurance. Faith has always spoken this way when it thinks about the unchanging character of the God on whom it casts its care.

The apostle may despair of life, but he does not despair of God… Looking back he can say, God has delivered. Looking around he can say, God "does deliver." Looking on he can say, God "will yet deliver." And what Paul could say in his great trials, the simplest believer has the privilege to say, with the same trust in God.

Future deliverance is certain too, whatever form that deliverance takes. In its fullest sense, of course, it comes when we are taken out of this world to be with Christ.

We cannot live on past experiences, but faith argues that God is always the same, and that as He has delivered, He will keep on delivering.

God's way of dealing with His people is the display of His strength in their weakness. You need not fear being brought to death if He is the God of resurrection. Do you have the sentence of death in yourself? It is everyday clothing. A Christian should never take a step except on the principle of having the sentence of death in himself… If we want to know Him as the "Father of mercies and the God of all comfort," we must be ready for God to put us in circumstances where we feel our need of mercy.

His confidence is in God. God did deliver him. He kept him from being killed, though Paul feared it. Verse 11 speaks of the part all God's people had in the power of deliverance that rested on him. It is a remarkable expression: "the gift bestowed on us through the prayers of many persons." This was at Ephesus.

Even the most faithful and mature Christians feel how much they depend on God, and on all His people. In one sense Paul's gift as an apostle depended on the prayers of the saints. God meant it to be so, in order that the church might be joined together in love. The apostle stood in a prominent place, and perhaps he received power through the prayers of a poor woman who could not leave her bed. But all hidden fruit will be seen on the last day. It is encouraging to see that God honours the hidden members, the ones that look least worth honouring to human eyes.

It is given to us to fight in every way for God's people. We are not only saved, blessed, given a share in glory and joy in God; God is also pleased to make us partners, co-workers under Him in His own divine privilege of love and blessing. This is grace indeed!

The Apostle is glad to recognise that the Corinthian saints shared his trials with him. They had worked together in prayer for him, so that the gift given to him would bring blessing to souls and so lead to thanksgiving to God. He could count on their prayers with confidence, for his conscience told him that his motives in his service were pure.

The Apostle did not expect the danger to stop. He knew instead that it would continue all through his course. So he looked to be delivered again, and for the Corinthians to have the privilege of helping to this end by their prayers. Then God's gracious answers would call out a greater volume of thanksgiving. If many had joined in the asking, many would join in the giving of thanks.

In such deliverance the prayers of God's people have a precious part. Prayer is a ministry we must not treat lightly. God is pleased to use it to give grace that helps His beloved servants. This in turn makes many give more thanks to God for the servants He has encouraged. So hearts are drawn out in affection for one another, true service is encouraged, and much thanksgiving brings glory to God.