Comfort for Suffering Saints

Do any of you lack comfort? I know I sure do.

Sometimes life can feel like bouncing from one heartache and painful circumstance to the next with little relief or sign of letting up. Perhaps you’ve been told (and you’ve come to agreement with) this fact: we all suffer.

If you’ve lived a day on earth, if you’ve ever loved someone, or ever read portions of Scripture, you know this to be true. Life is filled with pain and suffering. And sadly, it’s not a fleeting or one-dimensional pain and suffering – its multi-faceted, seemingly endless, and profound.

You’ve known it in your miscarriage, you’ve felt it in your broken friendship or marriage, you’ve been haunted by it in the death of family or even in the death of good ideas, good jobs, or good times. Yes, we all suffer. We are surrounded by suffering and sufferers – and furthermore even the way you and I respond to suffering can perpetuate our hurt, dark days, and feelings of hopelessness.

Yet, there is more. Yes, God has promised that in this life we will have trouble, but every one of those chafing sorrows can be soothed with the balm of divine comfort (Ps. 34:19). How can I say as much and with what authority?

Paul’s Praise in Pain

In Paul’s second letter to the group of Jesus followers in Corinth, he starts his address to them by praising God. This praise may not seem remarkable, if we think of Paul as some superhuman who never had a bad day or whose position as apostle protected him from the same stuff of sorrow that we experience. But rather than living unscathed from life’s troubles, Paul was plagued with sorrow like ours.

Paul’s body had been bloodied for the message of Jesus. Paul’s spirit had experienced many a sleepless night. Paul’s heart had gotten to a place where he despaired of life itself. Yet for Paul, there was still praise to give to God. Why?

Praise 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 receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ…

2 Corinthians 1:3-5

Paul has room to praise the Lord, even in his oppressive season of suffering because of who God is and what He does for us. Paul would have no reason to bless God if God was distant or untangled from us. If God was far off in our pain and sorrow, none of us could praise the Lord today. But the truth is, though we suffer, we suffer in the sight of the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort. As the psalmist would say, even though God knows we are dust, He does not treat us as such (Psalm 103). Rather he treats with the compassion of a loving Dad towards His kids!

No matter your pain or experience of life’s sadness, friend, I want you to know who God is. Yahweh is the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness… (Exodus 34:6). This is how the LORD, our God has revealed Himself to us. We should not expect that God who describes Himself as such would be far off from us in our suffering or unhearing to our prayers for relief. Rather, we should expect that this Father of compassion is intent on showering comfort on in all our troubles. He is, after all, the fountainhead of all comfort! We who suffer do well to remember who God is and what He does for us. He doesn’t scold sufferers. He doesn’t wait for them to fix up their life. He does not wait for their tears to dry.

He runs. He wipes. He loves. He holds. He gives. He helps. He comforts. Our conclusion about God should be that He desires to outweigh every ounce of suffering in my life with 2,000 pounds of compassion.

Paul’s Principle: Share in Suffering -> Share in Comfort

The principle of Paul’s life is simple: we share abundantly in the suffering of Christ, yet also our comfort abounds through Christ! There are several conclusions that Paul makes (and we should make!) in the first 11 verses of 2 Corinthians:

• God comforts in all our troubles, not just the ones we feel are “spiritually justified.” Does that make sense? God isn’t just interested in helping church planters persevere through persecution, even though that was Paul and Timothy’s experience of this principle. God pours comfort through the cracks in our souls, not just the gaping holes! God comforts those who suffer, not those who deserve it. Blessed are those who mourn, they will be comforted (Matthew 5:4)

• God comforts us so that we can comfort others. We who have experienced the comfort of God through healing, through answered prayer, through growth in grace should recycle that comfort into others’ lives. Its true that no man is an island, but it is equally true in Christ that no man is a swamp. We should never seek to hoard the comfort God has shown us; rather in humility we should value others above ourselves (Phil. 2:3).

• God often gives us more than we can handle. Paul says that they felt like they were under the sentence of death, which may resonate with your experience of pain and life’s entangling net. Yet, Paul believes this happened so that “we might not rely on ourselves but God” (v. 9). Do you see the sum of your life’s circumstances as an invitation to rely on God? This is not to say that God is the author of sin; perhaps it’s better said that God authorizes suffering so that we might rely on Him, our Father of compassion!

• God comforts through the prayer of the saints. Listen to Paul’s view of prayer: on Him we have set our hope that He will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers (v. 11). Paul’s confidence is ultimately set on the God who delivers, but he asserts that the church’s prayers help! He says it a different way in the following verse: [upon my deliverance] many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted [by God] to us in answer to the prayers of many.  God’s arm does not need to be twisted by our prayers, but He has ordained that through our prayers, we may access and appropriate His generous favor, for our lives and others!

Finally, we cannot miss the ultimate way in which God intends to comfort those who suffer – resurrection. The message of the Bible – yes, the Gospel of Jesus – is not that those who trust in Jesus will be impervious to suffering in this life. The message of the Gospel is that those who have ultimate hope in Jesus will be entirely healed of suffering through His resurrection. It is not in this life that we should expect suffering to cease. But hold on to this, my dear brother or sister – it will cease. Suffering will bow down to King Jesus. He will make all things new! God has raised us up and seated us with Christ so that in the coming ages He might show us the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:7).

Paul states that even though his sorrow and trouble brought with it the feeling of death sentence, he chose to rely on God who raises the dead (v. 9). My fellow sufferer, there is comfort in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Since God has rescued Christ from all his suffering through resurrection, we will have forever comfort from our suffering through ours!