Today we begin Part 2 of our series entitled To Corinth with Love. We began the first part of this series at the beginning of this year, and we looked at 1 Corinthians. Today we begin our study of 2 Corinthians which may contain more than one letter from Paul which has been edited and put together by some unknown later redactor.
We learn from Acts 18 that Paul first visited Corinth in the early 50s of the first century, while Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, that is the region encompassing the southern part of Greece. Gallio was rather a famous figure in the first century, being the brother of the philosopher Seneca who was the tutor of Emperor Nero.
Paul’s first letter (perhaps lost, perhaps preserved in 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1)
1 Corinthians may have been written as early as 54. And 2 Corinthians, or at least chapters 1 through 9, may have been written as early as AD 55.
With that introduction in mind, let us begin our study by reading 2 Corinthians 1:1-11. Listen for God’s word to you …
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,
To the church of God in Corinth, together with all his holy people throughout Achaia:
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
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. If we are distressed, 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 we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.
We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as 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.
Salutation
In many ways Paul’s second letter to the Church at Corinth is like the opening of many a first century letter. First century letters opened with a salutation that identified the sender or senders of the letter and offered a greeting to the recipient or recipients of the letter. Paul begins by introducing himself. He calls himself an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.
It seems that the Corinthian Christians, or at least some of them, are questioning Paul’s apostleship. The word “apostle” means a “sent one”. We are all sent of God to share the good news of Jesus Christ with others. But Paul was an apostle in a special sense—in that he claimed to be a witness of the resurrected Jesus, like Jesus’ first twelve disciples were apostles. Acts 9 tells how Paul met Jesus in a vision on the road to Damascus and was commissioned by Jesus to carry the Gospel to the Gentiles. Paul is keen throughout the Corinthian correspondence to emphasize his authority as an apostle in the fullest sense of the word.
Paul also mentions Timothy as a co-sender, though not an author, of this letter. He calls Timothy a brother in Christ. We hear about Timothy for the first time in Acts 16. He is a resident of Lystra in Asia Minor. This is the place where, after Paul’s first visit, he is stoned by his fellow Jews and left for dead outside the city. Then Paul has the courage to get up and walk back into the same city where his persecutors are resident. We do not know for certain, but it is possible that Timothy witnessed this as a young man and that the example and the preaching of Paul is what led him to faith. It seems likely that Paul was the one who introduced Timothy to Christ for on several occasions Paul refers to Timothy as his son in the faith. (See 1 Corinthians 4:17; Philippians 2:22; 1 Timothy 1:2,18; 2 Timothy 1:2.)
After introducing himself and Timothy, Paul tells us who he is writing to, namely “the church of God in Corinth, together with all his holy people throughout Achaia.”
The word “church” means “called out ones”. That is who these Corinthian Christians are. They have been called out of the world by God in Jesus Christ. And so have you. So have I. Paul is writing to the “called out ones” in Corinth, but also to all of God’s holy people throughout Achaia, that is, throughout southern Greece.
What does it mean to be holy? The word “holy” means “set apart”. So here we have a second important descriptor of Christians. Christians are “called out” and “set apart” to belong to God. To be holy does not mean that we are perfect. We are not “holier than thou”. Christians are not without sin. Christians are simply called out by God and set apart to belong to him. That is true of you as well if you have put your faith in Jesus Christ.
The salutation concludes with Paul’s greeting to the Church at Corinth. He says, “Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Paul turns a typical first century epistolary greeting into a greeting that carries a real wallop—a powerful theological message. This greeting, though it is unique to Paul, becomes typical of him. He wishes the Corinthians “grace” and “peace”. Paul joins a typical Jewish greeting of “shalom” with the typical Christian greeting of “grace”.
Where do grace and peace come from? They come from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. For Paul, Jesus has become central. Paul cannot simply talk about God, even in an epistolary greeting, without talking about the Lord Jesus Christ.
You know, the words we use to talk about people who are important to us are very revealing. Paul speaks of God as Father. No Jew called God their Father until Jesus came along and started calling God his Abba, his Daddy. And Jesus taught his disciples to do the same thing.
Furthermore, Paul calls Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, the anointed one. And he calls him “Lord”. This title, “Lord”, was reserved in the Hebrew Scriptures for God alone. So, right from the get-go, Paul is letting his readers know that he regards Jesus as divine. But not only that, Paul regards Jesus as his Master, his Leader, the one in charge of his life. Is that how you regard Jesus?
Thanksgiving
After the salutation, Paul moves on to the next traditional element in a first century letter. First century letters usually “included a brief word of thanksgiving to the gods for good health, deliverance from calamity, or some other beneficence.”
Paul identifies the God he is thanking very carefully. He says,
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.
So again, we have the emphasis on God as Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ who is co-equal with God the Father. And then Paul uses this traditional word of thanksgiving to introduce the theological theme of his letter: comfort. Whereas 1 Corinthians is a letter of challenge in many ways, I think you will see that 2 Corinthians is a letter of comfort.
Comfort
Forms of the word “comfort” appear 10 times in 5 verses in this opening passage of thanksgiving. The Greek word for “comfort” is an important one in the New Testament. I bet you wondered why Paul does not mention the Holy Spirit in his opening greeting of this letter. Why does he mention the Father and the Son but not the Holy Spirit? Well, I think Paul does mention the Holy Spirit, but he is sneaky about it.
The noun, Paraclete, is the word that Jesus uses to describe the Holy Spirit in the Gospel of John. Paul uses forms of the same word here. And the word means to come alongside of. We should picture God, through the Holy Spirit, coming alongside of us, putting his arm around us, and giving us comfort, giving us courage.
Troubles
Then, Paul introduces another key word: troubles. My friend, Tim Hansel, used to say that God promises us four things: peace, power, purpose, and trouble! The word in Greek is θλίψει. It literally means pressure. Have you ever felt pressured in life?
When I was in elementary school, I remember one time during outdoor recess when one of the teachers gave all the students a huge empty cardboard box to play with. It was amazing how a group of elementary school students could be entertained with a cardboard box in the 1960s. Today you have to give them TVs, computers, and smart phones. But in the 60s we were happy with a box.
Well, a whole group of us got playing with that box. We wanted to see how many of us could fit in the box. A lot. We must have got somewhere between 10 and 20 kids in that one box. The problem was, in a matter of moments, the kids in the box turned into a dog pile. And what was worse was that I ended up on the bottom. Talk about pressure! That may have been the first time I ever got the wind knocked out of me. I was scared. I was panicking. But fortunately, some teacher noticed what was going on and put an end to our box play before anyone got really hurt. Today there would probably be lawsuits. As it was for us, the bell rang, and we went on to the next thing which was probably fingerpainting.
But I tell you that story to give you an example of pressure. Θλίψει can mean physical pressure like what I felt on the bottom of that dog pile, or it can mean more psychological or emotional pressure.
But here’s the thing… Paul says that our heavenly Father and the Lord Jesus Christ comfort us in all our troubles, all our pressures.
And what does God’s comfort produce when applied to our troubles?
I know what we all want when we are in trouble, when we are under pressure, when we are experiencing pain and suffering of whatever kind. What do we want? We want the trouble, we want the pressure, we want the pain, we want the suffering… to go away! Isn’t that what we most often desire and pray for?
Well, God does not promise that he will always take away our troubles, our pressures, our pains, our sufferings. And we are in good company, because God didn’t take away Jesus’ trouble, pressure, pain, or suffering.
Endurance
But what does God do? God, through the application of comfort to our troubles produces endurance. Here again is a wonderful Greek word. It is the word ὑπομονῇ. I love what William Barclay says about this beautiful little word…
The answer to this suffering lies in endurance. The Greek word for this endurance is hupomone. The keynote of hupomone is not grim, bleak acceptance of trouble but triumph. It describes the spirit which can not only accept suffering but triumph over it. Someone once said to a sufferer, “Suffering colours life, doesn’t it?” The sufferer replied, “Yes, but I propose to choose the colour.” As the silver comes purer from the fire, so the Christian can emerge finer and stronger from hard days. The Christian is the athlete of God whose spiritual muscles become stronger from the discipline of difficulties.
And you say, “But how does that work?” It works only through Jesus Christ, the one who has already been to the cross for us. Paul says, “For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.”
It was Paul’s conviction that every Christian is a little copy of Christ, and that as little copies of Christ we all share in Christ’s personality. C. S. Lewis called it “the Christ life”.
If you have put your faith in Jesus Christ, if you are trusting in him for forgiveness of your sin, and if you have invited him to live in your life, then he is doing just that. He is literally living his life in you.
And that means at least two things, according to Paul. It means that we share in the sufferings of Christ, but we also share in his comfort.
George Macdonald said, “The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His.”
God does not promise to take away our suffering in this life. But he does promise to make our sufferings like Christ. In Romans 8 Paul says…
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.
Comfort Others
So, comfort applied to troubles produces endurance. But that is not the end of the process. Comfort applied to troubles produces endurance which in turn enables us to comfort others.
Paul says that God “comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”
That is part of the end goal, that we might share with others the comfort we have received from God.
The Experience of Paul
Now, it would be really easy to get irritated with Paul, to treat him like some sugary sweet Pollyanna, if it wasn’t for the fact that Paul spoke from experience. He himself went through tremendous suffering. He tells us beginning in verse 9…
We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.
We don’t know what these troubles were that Paul went through in Asia Minor. He may be referring to the riot in Ephesus in Acts 19. Or he may be talking about an imprisonment he experienced in Ephesus. Or he may be talking about some serious health problem that he had. Whatever it was, it was bad. Paul says that he and his companions in the Gospel work, were under great pressure (there is that word again) far beyond our ability to endure.
Do you get that? Paul is saying that in and of himself he did not have the ability to endure. Paul was not a stoic. He was not saying, “Oh this endurance stuff is just a matter of mind over matter.” No way! Whatever he went through in Asia pushed him, pressed him, beyond his ability to endure. So much so that he despaired of life itself. In other words, he wanted that to be the end. He wanted to die. And in fact, he thought he was going to die. But he didn’t. God delivered him and taught him through that whole experience to rely not on himself but on God who raises the dead.
If your God is the God of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, if your God is the God who raises the dead, then nothing, I mean nothing, need ever defeat you again. Paul says that God delivered him and that he trusts him, he has full, confident hope, that God will continue to deliver him in the future.
How? Paul says, “as you help us by your prayers.” Trouble, pressure, pain, suffering, gives us tremendous opportunities to pray for one another. And as we pray for one another, our hearts are knit together in Christ. And then as we see answers to our prayers, our thanksgiving overflows to the glory of God.
Our God is the God of all comfort. And when his comfort is applied to our troubles it produces endurance which in turn enables us to comfort others.
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