Comfort for Suffering

Suffering takes several forms. I’m now on Face Book and notice the various complaints made by my friends. Some of them suffer with common human problems, such as stress at the workplace, difficulties with family, or physical issues like headaches and head colds. Some are brokenhearted over relationships that have gone sour. A few struggle with things that happen to them. Some struggle with consequences from their own poor choices.

While it is possible, I’ve not heard anyone connect their suffering to their spiritual life. The Bible speaks of “suffering for Christ” but in this part of the world, this seldom happens or is not very obvious. Persecution is common in other countries, far away, but not here.

The classic passage on comfort is found in 2 Corinthians 1. It says,

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer; and our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort. (2 Corinthians 1:3-7)

Comfort here means “exhortation,” “encouragement,” “cheer.” This word is also translated “consolation” and it is for those who experience tribulation, distress or affliction. It says God comforts His people in “all affliction” and the purpose of God’s comfort is that I can comfort others with the same comfort He gives me.

“All affliction” has to mean what it says. I first thought not, that God doesn’t offer comfort when I do something stupid in disobedience to Him and suffer for it. But He does. He comforts by first showing me whatever I have done to cause my own suffering. Then, as I agree with Him (confess it), He forgives me. That is a comfort. The suffering may stay, but the guilt goes.

The implication is that when someone moans about the consequences of their sin, I’m supposed to offer them the same comfort that God offers me, and in the same gentle and loving way. God points out my sin, but when He does it, I am glad to admit it and turn my back on it. Doing that for someone else takes a great deal of Holy Spirit help. Think of bringing someone with a hangover to a place where they not only agree that they caused their own problem, but also decide to stop drinking!

Verse five stands out as an almost totally opposite type of suffering. “For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ” (2 Corinthians 1:5).

“All affliction” covers our own foolishness, but this passage seems more about people who are afflicted in the same way or for the same reasons that Christ suffered. Jesus never did anything wrong; He suffered for being godly. People were enraged because of His claims and His holiness and responded with violence. This does not often happen to even the most devout of His followers, at least not in North America, yet God offers comfort for that too and it is the same comfort that Jesus experienced.

Jesus’ suffering was never a “poor me” kind of moaning. He loved people so much that His mind was always occupied with others, not Himself. When nailed to the cross, He called out asking His Father to “forgive them; they know not what they are doing.”

Yet Jesus was also comforted in all this. Hebrews 12:2-4 says that when I suffer, I must fix my eyes on Jesus, “the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin.”

His comfort was in knowing the outcome. Jesus knew that His suffering would bring salvation for sinners, eternal life to those condemned to perish. Because He loved sinners so much, He was willing to suffer unjustly that humanity could have forgiveness and eternal life. He was aware that each person needs to accept this offer, but for Him that was not a risk; He knew that it would be worth it. Doing this for us was all that mattered.

Maybe most of us only suffer for lesser reasons because we are not as convinced of our rewards. Maybe we don’t suffer as Christ suffered because we do not love sinners as He did. I’m not sure about the reasons. I only know that whatever tribulation, distress or affliction that I experience, I can count on Him to come alongside and give me what is needed.

From reading this today, I know that I can also count on Him to give me opportunities to share that comfort, in whatever shape it comes, with others who suffer the same way.