Compassion and Comfort

 DEVOTION

THE 2^ND LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS

COMPASSION AND COMFORT

2 Cor 1:3-7

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. 5 For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. 6 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. 7 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.

NIV

The fact that God is a Father of compassion, and all comfort reminds us of the most recent sermon from Psalm 103 when we were told not to forget all his benefits and how that Hebrew word means treatment. We are not to forget how God treats us and here Paul reminds us that God treats us with compassion and comfort. God comforts us in all our troubles. This makes us think of how when we were a small child and hurt ourselves in some way, our mother would take us in her arms and comfort us. We have done the same for our children when they were hurting, comforting them in an effort to soothe their pain. This is our God at work in our lives, bringing us comfort because of his great compassion for us. However, we are not to simply sit and be comforted by God in self-indulgence, but rather we are to use His comfort as an example of how we should be comforting others when they are in trouble. This Greek word that is translated as comforts, as in the action of comfort is a form of the word used to define the comforter, the Holy Spirit. Still, it would not seem that we suffer anywhere close to the suffering that Paul endured. The early church was in many cases persecuted, but the messenger of the gospel, such as Paul was run out of town on a rail many times. He was beaten and battered and all while having that thorn in the flesh, whatever that was. We live, for the most part, in safety in our country. There are some situations where Christianity has been attacked, churches burned down, people gunned down in church, and certain movements trying to silence the church. But so far, we have not been suffering, however, in some sense, we share in the suffering of Christ because it was his suffering that gained our salvation. We still know that God will always comfort us no matter what our situation is, for that is who He is, that is what He does. We are His children, and He is our parent, picking us up and wrapping his arms around us soothing whatever pain we might have. But to know that we live in Christ, that we have eternal life, that death has no hold on us is really all the comfort we need. Whatever this life has to offer, it is only temporary and one day we will walk into eternity. In all reality when Jesus said his last words on the cross, “It is Finished” that was the greatest comfort of all time. Nothing more needed to be done for our salvation. However, it still behooves us to show that kind of comfort to others who are suffering from the pain of death. The greatest comfort we have to offer is Jesus. If we truly have compassion for people we would give them the comfort of knowing Jesus.