My quiet time reading this morning included 2 Corinthians 1. Two words seem to dominate Paul’s mind in 2 Corinthians 1: suffering and comfort. Paul ties the two together. He is speaking of Christians facing suffering and because of that suffering being enabled by God to bring comfort to other Christians who are suffering. He is deliberately connecting suffering with comfort. He is clearly arguing that it is our suffering that provides the fodder for our feeding others who are suffering with the comfort that they need. Isn’t that wonderful? But there is a “kicker” in verse 5. Paul qualifies for us the kind of suffering about which he is speaking: “for as we share abundantly in Christ’s suffering, so through Christ, we share abundantly in comfort too.” Paul is clear: to be a Christian is to enter into the sufferings of Christ as those who suffer with Him and thus enter into the kind of living that causes us to suffer for Him. And it is those who have suffered with Him in dying with Him that thus are living in ways that enable us to suffer for Him, and thus to comfort our brothers and sisters who are with us, suffering for Him.
This verse in its context hit me in two ways. First, it reminded me that I live in a culture where a huge number of professing Christians work overtime at avoiding suffering. Their version of God and who is to us in Christ is to either keep us from suffering or to deliver us from it when it comes SO THAT we can live in the world the kinds of lives that we want to live. And the kinds of lives such folks want to live simply by watching how they live are lives that satisfy the need for pleasure producing pursuits. For example, it does not take a lot of Bible reading to learn what the Lord’s Day is and why it exists. It is not a day for us and our doing what we want to do. This means that if we abide by Scripture in the use of the Lord’s Day at least in the part of the world in which I live, we may be laughed at or at least excluded from the popular crowd. Parents may be told in subtle ways “to get with the program” when their child is chosen for a travel ball team that plays on Sunday but they choose to obey God rather than men. Suffering in some form could come and often does. Or the family that chooses to silence phones at night and hush the noise of all media so they can pray together and spend time not only finishing homework but reading and learning the Bible together. A family who does this kind of of godly parenting and is vocal about it could be seen by fellow church members as boasting or prideful. They will face suffering. This passage in 2 Corinthians hit me in a second way too. It sent me to Peter and his writing about suffering.
Peter reminds us that there are two kinds of suffering. One comes to all. We get sick. We face deadly diagnoses. We lose our jobs for reasons unrelated to our being believers. And other kinds of suffering that are simply a part of life in the world. But the kind of suffering that Peter addresses and Paul is addressing here comes in direct connection with our being Christians. This kind of suffering is happening all over the world. It is coming our way sooner than we think. It is here now for those who are faithful who understand that the mark of a true Christian is not whether we are laughing or crying but whether we are faithful or unfaithful to the full counsel of God. Solomon reminds us in Ecclesiastes, doesn’t he, that is far better to go to a funeral parlor where there is weeping than to a wedding banquet where there is laughter. The goal for every believer is not a life that is marked by laughing or cyring, but a ilfe that is lived in faithfulness to the Word of God whether it brings us laughter or tears. It will bring both along the way, but such a way of living will bring us peace and joy every day. I’ll take that with tears of laughter in my heart and in my eyes every day. Because don’t you with me want to come to the end having been as faithful in all things to God as we could be, no matter what kind of suffering it costs us?