For we do not wish you to be ignorant, brethren, as to our tribulation which happened [to us] in Asia, that we were excessively pressed beyond [our] power, so as to despair even of living.
Paul opens his second letter to Corinth with a confession: in Asia he was crushed past his strength and gave up hope of living. Two questions follow — what happened to him, and why tell a struggling church that he had reached the end of himself?
One writer traces the hostility as it grew around Ephesus. He reads this verse as its peak.
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.
Others are less certain. Paul names the province, not the event.
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.
"Beyond our strength" is not an exaggeration. His faith held. His nerve as a human being still gave way.
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.
Paul had reason to stay guarded with Corinth. Their evil and hardness had pushed him away. Instead he opens up, and one writer sees God's mercy in that, and Paul's heart expanding again.
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 despair here has a limit. Paul lost hope in one direction only, and what he learned there is open to anyone.
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.
Giving up hope of survival did not make Paul retreat. And the very word he uses for his trouble carries its own picture.
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.
- Pressure. Commentators differ about the trouble in Asia; many link it to the uproar at Ephesus. What is certain is that Paul came close to death.
- Beyond power. The load went past what he could carry. His faith held, yet his natural spirit shrank back, for he had the same feelings and weaknesses as we do.
- Only resource. When the vessel comes to the point where survival looks impossible, God is all that is left.
- Despair with a limit. He despaired of life, not of God — and that same trust is open to the simplest believer.
- Threshing. The flail is severe, but it frees the wheat from the chaff. Paul faced the mob instead of retreating.
But we ourselves had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not have our trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead;
In Asia the pressure crushed Paul beyond his strength, and he gave up on staying alive. Now he tells the Corinthians why God let it go that far. The ordeal had a purpose, and it had everything to do with where his trust rested.
When Paul searched himself for a way out, only one answer came back. The pressure was teaching him what he was worth in himself, and God allowed it for a reason.
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.
The trial had to take something away first: Paul's reliance on himself. That reliance can hide in respectable places, even in the new life God gives.
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.
Paul accepted the verdict and lived on the far side of it. Once a man stops counting on his natural life, threats lose their grip.
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.
Paul names God to fit the danger. Against men who could kill him, he sets the God who can undo their worst.
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.
Paul's crisis was extreme and tied to his particular calling. That does not make the lesson unusual.
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.
Verse 9 does not end in loss. The man emptied of self-reliance came out of it with something to give away.
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).
- Verdict. Looking inside himself for a way out, Paul found only one answer: death. The pressure taught him the true value of his own strength.
- Purpose. God allowed that sentence for a stated end: to destroy self-reliant confidence and to grow simple trust in Him.
- Depth. Self-confidence has to go in every form. Even confidence in the new nature God gives is still trust in myself.
- Object. Trust moves to the God who raises the dead — the one power that can undo whatever an enemy is permitted to do.
- Overflow. The man emptied of himself came out richer, not poorer, with comfort to pass on to others in trouble. Writers note this lesson belongs to every believer, not to apostles alone.