Do You Need Comfort?
Are you feeling hurt and discouraged today? If so, Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 1 will be a timely relief. The background from 2 Corinthians involves ongoing tensions between Paul and some church members who questioned his authority and teachings.
2 Corinthians 1-2
Today's Scripture Passage
A Few Thoughts to Consider
Are you feeling hurt and discouraged today?
If so, Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 1 will be a timely relief. The background from 2 Corinthians involves ongoing tensions between Paul and some church members who questioned his authority and teachings. After addressing various issues in his first letter (1 Corinthians) and making a painful visit to Corinth, Paul wrote this second letter to defend his apostleship, encourage reconciliation, emphasize generosity, and address concerns about false apostles influencing the community. He writes in 2 Corinthians 1:3-7,
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. 4 He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 5 For just as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. 6 If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings that we suffer. 7 And our hope for you is firm, because we know that as you share in the sufferings, so you will also share in the comfort.
What was this affliction? Paul doesn’t say, but in 2 Corinthians 6:5, he notes that some of the afflictions the Corinthians endured include beatings, imprisonments, riots, sleepless nights, and times of hunger. “So far, God has delivered him from every peril. But when God delivers Paul from one distress, the apostle tumbles into another.”[1]
Through this affliction, God provides comfort. The Greek word translated as comfort, paraklēsis, is used in 2 Corinthians 29 times—this out of the 59 times it’s used in the New Testament. As David Garland writes, “The comfort that Paul has in mind has nothing to do with a languorous feeling of contentment. It is not some tranquilizing dose of grace that only dulls pains but a stiffening agent that fortifies one in heart, mind, and soul.”[2]
