2 Corinthians 1

Chapter 1. Victorious SufferingPraise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. (2 Corinthians 1:3-5)Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians gives us a picture of the apostolic church, the second gives us the testimony of the apostle himself. It is intensely personal, and introduces us to the deepest experience of this man who stood nearest of all to the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ. His testimony in the present passage has reference to suffering—victorious suffering—suffering so borne as to bring out of it not only triumph but boundless blessing to other lives as well as his own. This passage contains several important points. Trial The word used for trial in this passage and repeated several times is the same Greek word in every instance, although it is variously translated in the King James by the several terms “tribulation,” “trouble” and “suffering.” The word “tribulation” first used is derived from a Latin root which literally means a flail, and it describes the crushing and humiliating blows which would be caused by such a fearful club as a flail applied to a bound and helpless human victim. The figure is not too strong to describe such sufferings as the Apostle Paul tells us were his frequent, indeed, his almost constant lot. We need not go farther than his Epistle to the Corinthians to find a picture of suffering most tragic and unprecedented in human life. If we turn to 1 Corinthians 4:9-13 we have an extraordinary array of dramatic and tragic afflictions: For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men. We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored! To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world.

1. A Spectacle The figure is exceedingly strong. The Roman emperors were accustomed at the close of the day, in the bloody amphitheater, to bring on as the last performance of the circus a battle unto the death. So Paul says that on the stage of Christian suffering, “God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men” (1 Corinthians 4:9). The Greek word for spectacle means a theater. Then he describes the various humiliations and afflictions appointed to him, ending with the vivid expression, “Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world” (1 Corinthians 4:13). If we turn to our present epistle we read, “For I wrote you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears” (2 Corinthians 2:4). Again in the fourth chapter we find him thus describing his trials, even in the midst of victory: “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus” (2 Corinthians 4:8-10). We read on a little farther and we come to the sixth chapter, and read such phrases as these: “in troubles” (2 Corinthians 6:4), “hardships” (2 Corinthians 6:4), “distresses” (2 Corinthians 6:4), “in beatings” (2 Corinthians 6:5), “imprisonments” (2 Corinthians 6:5), “riots” (2 Corinthians 6:5), “in hard work” (2 Corinthians 6:5), “sleepless nights” (2 Corinthians 6:5), “hunger” (2 Corinthians 6:5), “through glory and dishonor” (2 Corinthians 6:8), “bad report and good report” (2 Corinthians 6:8), “genuine, yet regarded as impostors” (2 Corinthians 6:8), “known, yet regarded as unknown” (2 Corinthians 6:9), “dying, and yet we live on” (2 Corinthians 6:9), “beaten, and yet not killed” (2 Corinthians 6:9), “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10), “poor, yet making many rich” (2 Corinthians 6:10), “having nothing, and yet possessing everything” (2 Corinthians 6:10).
2. Unrest Again in the seventh chapter we find this great apostle confesses to a state of unusual unrest that many of us, no doubt, had supposed he was exempt from, and that such hours of weakness only belonged to Christians like us: “This body of ours had no rest, but we were harassed at every turn—conflicts on the outside, fears within” (2 Corinthians 7:5).
3. Sufferings Once more we turn to 2 Corinthians 11:23-30, and the picture reaches its deepest coloring: I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn? If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. It would seem as if this heroic soul possessed the sublime ambition to surpass all other men in his sufferings for his Master, and that the only glory he sought was to have the heaviest share of the cross of Jesus and the sorrows of His church.
4. Our Lot “As water reflects a face, so a man’s heart reflects the man” (Proverbs 27:19). While his sufferings may have been preeminent, yet he was also the forerunner in that path of affliction which all the saints have walked. One of his earliest messages to the churches of Asia was, “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). Still it is indeed sadly true, as so finely expressed in the world’s oldest poem, “Man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble” (Job 14:1). “For hardship does not spring from the soil, nor does trouble sprout from the ground. Yet man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward” (Job 5:6-7). And yet how light our sorrows seem compared with his. After the catalog we have just read, some of us must feel ashamed that we have ever murmured or complained. But trial is always hard, and sometimes the lesser afflictions are more difficult to bear than the greater ones. Let us recognize this fact at the very outset and go forth expecting trial, and we will not be disappointed when it comes. If, on the contrary, we go forth expecting sunny skies and paths of roses, we will indeed be ill-fitted to meet the realities of life, and defeat and disappointment will face us at every turn. God has woven the strands of sorrow into the web of human life, and they are as necessary for our discipline and our usefulness as the golden threads of gladness. Comfort How beautiful and cheering is the picture here given of God as “the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort” (2 Corinthians 1:3). We cannot know Him in this blessed and benignant capacity if we do not have suffering and trial. We would never see the stars without the darkness, and we never know our Father’s heart until our heart aches with sorrow. Nothing is more beautiful than some of the inspired pictures of the tenderness of God. Is an earthly father compassionate? “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him” (Psalms 103:13). Is an earthly mother quick to feel the anguish of her children, and the best healer of a broken heart? “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem” (Isaiah 66:13). Do father and mother sometimes fail us? “Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me” (Psalms 27:10). “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!” (Isaiah 49:15).
5. Human Comforters God comforts us sometimes by human instruments: “But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus” (2 Corinthians 7:6). There is a sweet ministry of human sympathy, and none of us can be indifferent to the love and fellowship of our friends in the hour of sorrow, nor should we be slow to “carry each other’s burdens, and in this way [we] will fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).
6. God Our Comforter But the best of all consolations is the “comfort of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 9:31). God has His own way of healing the broken heart and filling the soul with joy and peace when it is sinking with sorrow. There are moments when the heavens seem to open and the heart of God touches our hearts with strange, supernal rest, and even ecstatic exultation, and we wonder why we are thus visited and loved. Frequently it is in preparation for some severe blow that is about to strike us. God is forearming us by a special touch of His love. Sometimes again, when everything around us is fitted to depress and crush us, the heart is lifted up with strange joy and strength which surpass all human explanation, and our first thought, perhaps, is: “Surely someone is praying for me just now, I feel so strengthened and comforted.” And so it comes to pass, as we have already said, that in the severest trials we are often carried most triumphantly, while in those of less weight we sometimes become irritable and lose our victory. But the special teaching of this passage is that the comfort is always commensurate with the tribulation. “For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows” (2 Corinthians 1:5). As far as the pendulum swings downward in the stroke of agony, it rises in the rebound of consolation. Our suffering are the sufferings of Christ; our comfort is also His. We have a little glimpse of the source of His peace and joy in the picture of His earthly life. In that hour when His heart was crushed with the foreboding of the coming cross, we are told that He was “full of joy through the Holy Spirit” (Luke 10:21), and again, “who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame” (Hebrews 12:2). It is your privilege to claim His joy in proportion to your weight of trial. If He is pleased to test you with unusual afflictions, just turn around and test Him with unusual behests upon His grace and sympathy; for the promise is, “Just as you share in our suffering, so also you share in our comfort” (2 Corinthians 1:7). Service “If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort” (2 Corinthians 1:6). The apostle tells us here that the very object of our peculiar experiences of suffering and trial is “so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (2 Corinthians 1:4). His sorrow is the school of Christ that disciplines him and equips him for the ministry of consolation. Indeed, we will often find that after we have passed through some special experience of trial, God will send to us someone who has been similarly afflicted and use us to lift them up and bear them through even as He has carried us. Sorrow, therefore, is not accidental, but part of the divine plan of love and education for us. A Special Emergency He has spoken generally of trial and affliction, but now he comes to a particular experience. “We do not want you to be uninformed,” he says, “about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia” (2 Corinthians 1:8). And then he proceeds to describe in detail that great and mysterious blow that crushed him sometime during his evangelistic campaign either in Ephesus or Asia Minor. What that trial was Bible expositors are far from agreed upon. Some regard it as a physical attack of sickness which almost took his life. Others, and the larger number, connect it with his grief on account of the sad condition of the church in Corinth, which had in great measure repudiated his apostolic authority, and even gone into the grossest and most shameless immorality. His heart was quite broken about it, and it would appear as if he had even been hindered from visiting them lest he should bring sorrow to them instead of gladness.
7. What It Was It is very touching that this great and good man should have been so sensitive to the sins of men and the glory of his Master that it made him ill to hear of their wrongdoing. Certainly it became a physical stroke which nearly took his life; but it is delightful to think of it as having originated in a spiritual cause and having sprung from the noble unselfishness of his heart.
8. Physical Whatever its cause, a few things are very certain about it. In the first place, it was “far beyond our ability to endure” (2 Corinthians 1:8). It was beyond what seemed possible for him to bear, and, indeed, his strength gave way under it and he was ready to sink in physical prostration and really die. “We despaired,” he says, “even of life” (2 Corinthians 1:8). Not only so, “indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves” (2 Corinthians 1:9). Literally it might be translated, “We had the answer of death in ourselves.” His very prayers seemed ineffectual, his faith failed to grasp deliverance, and death was written on every part of the firmament and horizon. What a trial, dear child of God! What a comfort to you to know that if such a trial should ever come to you, a trial in which outward pressure and inward depression combine to plunge you in utmost despair, still you may hope and trust and overcome. A Great Deliverance He overcame. “He has delivered us from such a deadly peril” (2 Corinthians 1:10). It would indeed have been a great death; for had it come to that, Paul would have failed, his enemies would have triumphed, the great adversary would have been pleased and God’s cause would have seemed to go down in a dark and humiliating defeat. It was something like that hour in Gethsemane when the Master felt that He could not die, and yet it seemed as if He must. “With loud cries and tears” He pleaded with His Father, “the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission” (Hebrews 5:7). He did not die, but overcame and lived to offer up His life later without defeat, a voluntary sacrifice of victorious love. And so there are times when we cannot afford to sink and God will give us victory. Not only so but he adds, “He will deliver us” (2 Corinthians 1:10). The deliverance continues, the experience of God’s help in the past has established a habit of trusting and triumphing in the present. And still farther it reaches on to the future and faith rises to triumphant hope as he adds, “On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us” (2 Corinthians 1:10). In this conflict, he tells us his confidence was not in himself, for all human light had failed, but “on God, who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:9). He looked for a deliverance that required nothing less than the Almighty Power which raised Jesus Christ from the dead and set Him in the heavens. This is the divine pattern of the power that we may still claim. Ours is the God of Resurrection and we may still sing, Nothing is too hard for Jesus, No man can work like Him. Finally, he tells us that in this great conflict, he was upheld and helped by the faith of his friends. “You help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many” (2 Corinthians 1:11). And so we come back again to the ministry of mutual help and helpful prayer. This is the special province of the Holy Spirit: to lay upon our hearts the needs of friends and lead us out in intercession for them, sometimes when we do not even know the circumstances of their need. Enough for us to respond to the burden of the Spirit and hold ourselves ready to bear the sufferings of others and share in the priesthood of our blessed Master as He continually makes intercession for us. Conclusion In conclusion, our first duty in trial is to accept it, whether we understand it or not, as a dispensation of divine wisdom and love. God has two hands, and the first presses us down, the second lifts us up. In a very fine metaphor, the Apostle Peter bids us first “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand,” and then adds “that he may lift you up in due time” (1 Peter 5:6).
9. Submission In a school for the deaf a distinguished visitor was listening to the silent examination of the little ones. Not a word was spoken, but as each question was presented in the language of signs, a little one would write the answer on the blackboard. Finally the visitor was asked if he did not wish to submit some questions himself. Noticing a little shriveled, pinched face in front of him that seemed a living embodiment of pain, he asked, “How do you explain the fact that a God of infinite power and wisdom has allowed you to be such a sufferer?” The question was translated into the language of signs and the little fellow was called to the platform. For a moment, the pinched face took on a shade of deeper pain, and then it lighted up as he stepped to the blackboard and wrote the words, “Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight.” The hush of silence that had rested upon that audience was broken by murmurs and sobs of deep response. Surely, that is quite as glorious as the faith that overcomes disease and pain.
10. Deliverance But having learned the first lesson, let us not forget the second. There is a time for resignation and there is a time for aggressive faith and victorious deliverance. It came to Paul, it came to Jesus, it comes to every trusting soul. “I will be with him in trouble,” is only one-half the promise. After we have learned that lesson well, there comes the rest, “I will deliver him” (Psalms 91:15). God has made complete provision for our victory over suffering as well as over sin. Let us not miss our sorrows or lose our battles, but take the comfort He has so dearly bought and pass it on to a brokenhearted world.