BaptistWay Series for Sept. 5: When you suffer, remember, you always have a prayer_82304

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Posted: 8/20/04

BaptistWay Series for Sept. 5

When you suffer, remember, you always have a prayer

2 Corinthians 1:1-11

By Todd Still

Truett Theological Seminary, Waco

Arthur John Gossip (1873-1954), a Scottish minister of an earlier generation, posed and responded to the following question in the sermon he preached the Sunday after the sudden death of his wife: When life tumbles in, what then?

This week's lesson, the first in a 13-week study of 2 Corinthians, causes us to contemplate life's tumults and troubles. Most prefer not to think about suffering, much less experience it. Be that as it may, the text we are treating requires us to wrangle with this inevitability and to embrace our own mortality.

Sooner or later, we, like Gossip, will face the spiritual struggle that accompanies personal loss. We, too, will cry out: How can I pick up the pieces of my fragmented, blighted existence?

A benediction the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians following a perilous experience of affliction in Asia is our entrée to this sobering subject. Before turning our attention to Paul's theological reflection upon his suffering, our first order of interpretive business is to place this penetrating, personal passage in its historical and literary context.

The letter we know as 2 Corinthians is only a part of Paul's written correspondence to the church in Corinth, for not all of what the apostle wrote to his Corinthian converts has been preserved (1 Corinthians 5:9 and 2 Corinthians 2:3-4; 7:8). Furthermore, a number of Pauline scholars have posited that canonical 2 Corinthians is best construed as a composite document comprised of two or more originally distinct letters.

Throughout this series of lessons, I will presuppose the unity of 2 Corinthians, if for no other reason than the sake of simplicity! Having said that, it is helpful to see at the outset of our study that the letter naturally falls into three uneven chapter divisions, namely, 1-7, 8-9 and 10-13. The three units into which our 13 lessons have been divided reflect this broad, three-fold letter outline.

Second Corinthians is not always easy to read. Interpre-tive difficulties are created by our incomplete knowledge of Paul's interaction with the church in Corinth, not to mention the abrupt transitions and unexpected digressions that lace the letter. Challenges of understanding not withstanding, patient believers who have lingered long over this letter have found priceless spiritual treasures in its often disputed and sometimes disjointed lines.

Whatever exegetical confusion might ensue, 2 Corinthians commences in a straightforward fashion. At the outset of a succinct salutation (1:1-2), Paul describes himself as a divinely commissioned messenger of Christ. He also speaks of Timothy, the letter's co-sender, as a “brother,” that is, a fellow believer in Christ and a colleague in ministry (1:1). The apostle continues in verse 1 by specifying the letter's recipients as “the church of God which is in Corinth with (including) all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia.”

According to a more traditional dating of Paul's life and ministry, he engaged in missionary activity in southern Greece (or Achaia) in the early 50s A.D. Although it appears the apostle expended the majority of his time and energy in the capital city of Corinth (Acts 18:18), he also ministered with some measurable results in other Achaian locales (Acts 17:34). Therefore, as he writes yet another letter to the Corinthians in the mid 50s A.D., he includes other Achaian Christians in the address anticipating they, too, would be made privy to the epistle.

If verses 1-2 are conventional, verses 3-11 are exceptional. Instead of offering God thanks for the letter's recipients as he usually does (1 Corinthians 1:4-9), Paul launches into a benediction of the God who offers consolation in the face of affliction (Ephesians 1:3-14).

When writing 1 Corinthians at an earlier time, Paul referred to unspecified conflicts he had encountered and continued to experience in Ephesus (15:32; 16:8-9). The apostle's afflictions in Asia had not subsided; on the contrary, they had increased in intensity. In fact, he informs his audience he had been “so utterly, unbearably crushed that (he) had despaired of life itself” (1:8).

Paul does not satiate our curiosities by chronicling the details of his troubles. What he does write, however, is valuable counsel for those who find themselves in the throes of affliction. Not only does Paul encourage the downcast to direct their gaze to a merciful God and a comforting Christ (1:3, 5), he also contends divine consolation is a grace to be showered upon others who share in the sufferings of Christ (1:4-6). Moreover, the apostle suggests his “deadly ordeal” increased his dependence upon and heightened his hope in God (1:7, 9-10). Paul was no masochist. His reflection on Christ's death as well as his own life in Christ (2 Corinthians 4:10; 6:9; Galatians 2:20), however, convinced him that suffering was both a human reality and the Christian's destiny (1 Thessalonians 3:3; Romans 8:17-18; Colossians 1:24). Even if a gracious God allows and allots suffering, Paul affirms that the Lord also answers the prayers (on behalf) of the afflicted (1:11).

When the bottom falls out of a person's life, it is sometimes quipped, “You haven't got a prayer.” Whatever else is true about the (Christian) person who suffers, this isn't.

Question for discussion

bluebull Does it make you uncomfortable to admit the suffering and trials are and will be a part of your life?

bluebull What trial do you need to stop and pray about right now?

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