Paul's Affliction, God's Comfort, and the Yea of Christ

The letter that became known as Second Corinthians opens with a man who has just been crushed. Paul names himself an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, and he includes Timothy as a co-sender, but the first thing he does after the greeting is to bless the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ as the Father of mercies and God of all comfort. That is not a ceremonial opening. It is a man reaching for the only anchor he has left.

Paul tells the Corinthians directly that he does not want them ignorant of the affliction that befell him in Asia. He says they were weighed down exceedingly, beyond their power, so that they despaired even of life. He uses the language of a death sentence passed within themselves. The pressure was not metaphorical. It was the kind that makes a man stop planning and start praying that the end would come quickly.

But Paul does not leave the story there. He says that God delivered them out of so great a death, and that he has set his hope on God to deliver them again. The deliverance is not a single event. It is a pattern. And the pattern has a purpose: that they would not trust in themselves, but in God who raises the dead. The affliction was a classroom, and the lesson was the resurrection.

Paul then pivots to the Corinthians themselves. He says that the comfort he has received from God is not for his own sake alone. It is so that he can comfort others in any affliction with the same comfort. The logic is tight: the sufferings of Christ abound toward Paul, and therefore comfort also abounds through Christ. The affliction is for their comfort and salvation. The comfort is for their patient endurance of the same sufferings. The whole thing is a chain, and the Corinthians are links in it.

Paul insists that his behavior toward them has been straightforward. He says his conscience testifies that he has acted in holiness and sincerity of God, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God. He writes nothing other than what they read and acknowledge. He hopes they will acknowledge it to the end, because they are his glorying and he is theirs on the day of the Lord Jesus. The relationship is mutual, and it is eschatological.

Then Paul addresses a specific tension. He had planned to visit Corinth on his way to Macedonia and again on his way back, so that they might have a second benefit. But he changed his plans. Some in Corinth apparently read that change as fickleness, as a man who says yes and no at the same time. Paul answers directly: as God is faithful, his word toward them is not yes and no. The Son of God, Jesus Christ, preached among them by Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, was not yes and no. In him it is always yes.

Paul drives the point home. However many promises God has made, in Christ they are all yes. And through Christ comes the Amen, to the glory of God. The yes of God is not a human yes that flips to no when circumstances shift. It is a yes that holds. Paul's change of travel plans does not change the gospel. The Corinthians are not to confuse a man's itinerary with the faithfulness of God.

Paul then reveals the real reason he did not come. He calls God as a witness on his soul: he forbore to come to Corinth in order to spare them. He does not want to come with a rod. He says plainly that he does not have lordship over their faith, but that he is a helper of their joy. They stand fast in faith. He is not their master. He is their fellow worker.

God is the one who establishes both Paul and the Corinthians in Christ. God anointed them, sealed them, and gave them the earnest of the Spirit in their hearts. The Spirit is the down payment, the first installment of a promise that will not be revoked. Paul's affliction, his change of plans, his comfort, his bluntness—all of it is held together by that seal. The letter begins with a man who nearly died and ends with a God who does not say no.