As Paul exhorts the Corinthians at the end of his letter, we are called to be people who comfort each other. What does that mean?
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
The following study questions and transcript are AI generated and may contain errors.
Good evening and welcome to Steadfast. I’m so glad that we get to be together again digging into God’s Word. Tonight we’re continuing the series Renewed, thinking about what Paul exhorts the Corinthians to at the end of the book of 2 Corinthians. As we come to that book and those challenges that apply not just to the Corinthians but to us, let’s go ahead and open in prayer and ask for God’s guidance. Would you please join me?
Father, thank you for your love, your love that comforts us. Your love that comforts us when things are going well and your love that comforts us when things are challenging. Your love that comforts us when we do what is right and also your love that comforts us even as you correct us. Lord, as we reflect tonight on what this passage has for us, would you help us to take comfort in your love? We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Can’t tell by my prayer, tonight’s theme is comfort. You see, Paul, as he calls the Corinthians to faithfulness, calls them to be those who comfort others. Let’s go ahead and go back to last week’s passage, the passage we’re expanding upon, and hear what Paul has to say at 2 Corinthians chapter 13, verses 11 to 12. He says, “Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration. Comfort one another. Agree with one another. Live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss.”
Paul calls the Corinthians, he calls them to restoration, to faithfulness. We looked at that last week. But then when he’s going to expand on that, what does he do first? He calls them to be those who comfort one another. I don’t think in our list of things to tell the people around us to do that we often think, well, what we need to do is tell them to be comforting, to be comforters. We often, probably if we made resolutions or just often are making lists of things that we’d like to improve in ourselves, I don’t think that we probably put be a comforter up on the top of the list, but Paul does here. He says this is really important. You need to do that before you’re going to do these other things I’m going to list after that. You need to be those who comfort each other. That’s not how we often work in this world.
I was struck by a really neat story I read not long ago referring to not this past Christmas, but previous Christmases. I think it was in 2018. In fact, a man decided to encourage his daughter in business by giving her the gift of a new small business for Christmas. And his daughter is 10 years old. You see, this man has wanted for years for his daughter to feel like she can start something on her own. And so he’s been encouraging her over the years to start a business with a little wagon where she could sell candy and various other ventures to show that she can be creative and can actually run her own business. And so for Christmas a few years ago, he bought his daughter a vending machine. I’ve never heard of anyone giving someone else a vending machine for Christmas, but he arranged that she could have it at a local institution and she could go and stock it and she could get the profits out of it. And so she could actually have her own business. And it’s such a neat idea. There’s pictures of her sitting next to her vending machine, counting out the different coins in the machine, seeing how much she’s made. And she is so excited about this. And her dad is so excited that she is excited.
It’s a comforting story, but then you go and you read the comments. And I remember one of the first comments I read as I read that story was someone complaining about how this dad was getting his daughter involved in childhood obesity, that he was encouraging her to sell junk food to people and encouraging bad public health. And I thought, but this was just such a neat story. Here’s a dad who’s allowing his little girl to learn what it’s like to run a business and giving her something that she’s going to remember the rest of her life. And immediately people are looking for a way to say there’s something wrong with it, that somehow it’s bad that he’s doing that. We live in a world that loves to stir the pot.
And I think if we look at our own hearts, a lot of times we like to stir the pot. It feels good when we get to stir it in a way that we can say something is wrong with what other people are doing. When we can find a way to criticize what’s been accomplished. It gives us a certain excitement, a joy, unfortunately. And so we feed that motive and we often are attracted to others who stir the pot. So much of our world right now seems to be just one giant pot being stirred. That’s one of the reasons I’m so thankful this week, as we go through this passage, we arrive on comfort. How many of us could use some comfort right now? Because it feels like that pot is just being stirred and stirred and stirred.
What we see here, as Paul calls the Corinthians to faithfulness, is that the mission of the church, in part, is to be the comforter of the world. We’re meant to be different than the world. We’re not meant to be those who stir the pot, but those who offer comfort to those who are hurting, to those who are afflicted, to those who are suffering, and yes, even to those who are wrong.
And that’s what we see here. And we see this theme actually throughout Paul’s letters. It’s one that for years I passed over. It didn’t necessarily jump out at me as the most obvious theme in Paul’s letters. And maybe you’ve had this same experience. But for example, take a look at 1 Thessalonians 5:11. Paul says, “Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you were doing.” And this comes after Paul has been correcting them and helping them to better understand what they should believe. And he says, but encourage one another. The same word that we see here translated as comfort. Comfort one another.
And we see that call over and over again, as Paul even corrects and exhorts and points out sin in the lives of the people that he writes to. He calls them to be people who comfort. Why don’t we do that? Why don’t I do that oftentimes? Why would I often rather stir the pot than be comforting to people? And I think as we examine our hearts on that, we see several different motives, motives that were very present in the Corinthian church that lead into our inclination to be pot stirrers rather than comforters.
For example, in 1 Corinthians 14, as Paul seeks to correct the Corinthian church and call them away from their pridefulness and their boastfulness and their own abilities, he mentions the different people who are prophesying in the church. And you see, the people that were prophesying in the church in 1 Corinthians were people who wanted to look important. They wanted to be those who had the most important spiritual gifts, who were respected the most in the church. So what did they do? They talked over one another. One person would be prophesying and another would come in and start prophesying right on top of the first person because their goal was to be seen as important.
What does Paul say? Prophesy one at a time so that the people who hear can be encouraged, can be comforted. To not be worried about elevating themselves over the others, but to be worried about the rest of the body of Christ and to see that body encouraged in what God was doing. As God works in our lives, we should pour out that work that he’s doing in our lives in the form of comfort for others. To not be quick to simply seek to make ourselves important.
That’s one of the motives. I think another one that often arises that causes us to go in the opposite direction of comfort is when we’re angry or we’re offended. Oftentimes someone does something to us and the last thing we think is, I want that person to feel comforted. We think, “I want that person to feel the pain I’m feeling. I want that person to be put in his or her rightful place. I want to bring a little of the wrath of God on that person.”
I’ll confess, I usually don’t think first and foremost, I want that person to feel comfort. How do we comfort those who do wrong to us or how do we comfort those who are in sin? Well, Paul provides the example to the Corinthians because as he’s writing this letter of 2 Corinthians, he’s writing to a church that’s been in rebellion to his teaching. They followed false teachers that have come in and said that they’re more important than Paul.
These people have done great wrong to Paul. Paul has felt great anguish over what these people have done and how they’ve led the people that Paul loves away from him. What is Paul concerned about? Well, first off, he makes it clear throughout the letter, he’s concerned that the Corinthians feel his love and his comfort, his care for them.
And then he says something remarkable in chapter two, because you see the process of correcting this rebellion that had been going on had already been underway before Paul writes this letter. Many of the people had already rejected the false leaders and turned back to Paul. So then Paul addresses specifically those who had risen up against him. He says, “For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough. So you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excess of sorrow. So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him.”
What does Paul do when he’s addressing the circumstances of his opponent? He says you need to love him. Yes, there was a time to correct him, but don’t go too far. Don’t leave him in despair. Show him that he’s still a part of the body of Christ. Show him that you care about him. Because just because I have felt pain, I don’t want to bring just utter despair upon those who brought pain to me. I want them to feel the forgiveness that we receive in Jesus.
We are those who are meant to do that, those who offer comfort, even to those who have hurt us. Why would we do that? Well, what have we done to God? We have time and again strayed from him. We have time and again done the opposite of what’s pleasing to God. What does Jesus do for us? He offers us comfort. And likewise, we’re called to be those who offer comfort to those around us, even those that have done wrong towards us.
It’s not that there isn’t a time for correction. Much of this letter of 2 Corinthians is about Paul correcting the people and calling them to faithfulness. But even as he does, he does so with a desire to comfort. And all of us need to ask ourselves when we seek to come to someone with a way that they’ve hurt us or to set someone on the right path that they’ve strayed. We should ask, is our motive to bring true comfort to them? Because if we’re calling them back to faithfulness, we’re doing it out of love. We’re doing it to see them actually be a part of the body of Christ. We’re concerned that where they’re headed is going to hurt them.
That’s not our natural impulse. Our natural impulse is to correct them, to rebuke them, to show that they’re wrong, but not to be concerned with their comfort. But that is what we’re called to do in Jesus. And that’s what we need. I think all of us need that comfort, even when we’re wrong.
And when the body of Christ does that for each other, it starts to show a picture of who we are as Christians that looks dramatically different than anything else in the world. When we’re busy just trying to bring whatever pain we’ve experienced to those who have caused it, or even just to elevate ourselves above people that we think we’re more important than, we look just like the world. We don’t look like those who have been comforted by God and therefore comfort others. We just look like fellow sinful human beings, and that’s true. But as we seek to be more like Jesus, we’re called to more and more be focused on comforting even those who oppose us.
There are so many times in life when we’re thinking about what we’re going to eat that we might want to try something interesting and different. I have lots of friends who like to go to unusual restaurants and try unusual menu items, and sometimes I’ll go along with it, and sometimes I even enjoy it. There are items that I wouldn’t necessarily put in the comfort food category that I do enjoy, but what do I want when I’ve had a really hard day? What do I want when I’ve just either been working really hard or it’s been a painful day or a stressful day?
Well, I want comfort food. I have a picture of homemade soup and a nice baked potato. I know it’s a bit of an unusual combination, but this speaks great comfort to me. You see, I love baked potatoes and I love homemade soup. It’s broccoli soup in the picture if you’re wondering. I mean, these are things of great comfort to me. And so if the day has been hard, I don’t want some kind of unusual item I’ve never had before. I want comfort food. That’s why we call it comfort food. It brings us comfort. It warms our hearts and it nourishes us. We know how it tastes. We know how it feels. It just often brings back wonderful memories.
That’s what we should be to each other. As the church, we’re called to be comfort food to one another. That when we go into the presence of believers, we should feel like we’re going into just a beautiful table of whatever we love to eat. That when we go, we’re refreshed. When we go and we’re weary, we come out with energy. When we go and we’re hurting, the pain feels like it’s not just welling up inside of us, but there are those who will share it with us. And even when we’re wrong and we’re working through the things we’re wrong on, we feel like there are those who care about us. And likewise for everyone else, our calling is to be a part of that for the others who come into the body of Christ too. To look at what Jesus has done to comfort us and then to offer that to others.
And that’s the linchpin of how this works because we’re not going into some kind of wild frontier. Paul isn’t saying to the Corinthians, I know you’ve been hurting, but here, order from this exotic menu of foods you have no idea what they taste like and just try to somehow enjoy them even though you’re stressed out. No, he says, you know, the comfort that you need, show it to each other. Be each other’s comfort food. Be what Jesus is to you. As Jesus has comforted you and as Paul, as Jesus’ apostle has comforted them, so too they are called to comfort each other.
Jesus offers us the perfect example of this. Think back to the upper room as he’s preparing the last supper as he’s about to be betrayed by Judas. Yes, but really essentially all of his disciples, they’re all going to run away from him. He knows that they’re not going to be who they should be to him. What does he do in John chapter 14? He comforts them. He says, “But the Helper,” sometimes we see that word translated the Comforter, “the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”
That’s what Jesus does as his closest friends are about to run away. He comforts them. He offers them comfort. He offers them forgiveness ultimately. But in the whole process, even before they’ve done it, even though he knows where they’re going and they’re not even sorry for it yet, because they haven’t even done it yet, what does he do? He offers them comfort.
Paul reflects on this in his letter to the Corinthians. If we go back to the very first chapter of 2 Corinthians, he 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 may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s suffering, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.”
That’s what we’re offered as the church. As anyone who believes, if you’re hurting tonight and you haven’t trusted in Jesus and you think it’s just going to be a bunch of condemnation upon you as you see the areas where your life needs to be conformed to Jesus, know that he offers comfort. He offers comfort as each and every one of us goes on that journey through life to be more like him. He doesn’t just say, be like me and I’m going to condemn you until you are. No, Jesus offers us comfort just as he did to the disciples. And then he calls us to offer comfort to others.
You see, when the church is focused on everything else right, but forgets to show that love and that comfort that Jesus has shown to us, it has all the right doctrine. It reads the Bible. It has every single detail. No one actually does this, but let’s say it has every single detail of the Bible right, other than that it isn’t comforting others. It isn’t loving others. And it’s missing an essential part of what it means to be followers of Jesus.
Have you ever driven up, you’re at an intersection and you’re at the stoplight and another car comes up and all of a sudden you hear boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and it’s the subwoofer of that car. It must have one that fills the entire trunk and your windows are just rattling away as you’re sitting there and it’s not because your car is malfunctioning, it’s because this car next to you has this massive, massive subwoofer just letting out all this bass.
For most of us, that probably doesn’t do anything for us. It doesn’t make us think, wow, what beautiful music. It often makes us think, when’s this light going to change so I can move on because all I can hear is boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It just sounds all the same. It doesn’t matter what’s playing. It doesn’t seem interesting at all because all we can hear is that thud of the bass. It’s dull. It’s annoying. It’s grating to us.
And when we have the right doctrine in the church, but we’re missing the call to be comforters, it often sounds to those both in the church and outside in the world like we’re just that dull subwoofer boom, boom, boom, just grating because yes, that’s an essential part of the music, but by itself, it doesn’t do anything.
But what happens when we start to actually show Jesus’s love to the world? What happens when we show God’s comfort to the world? Well, then we don’t just have that subwoofer. We have the beautiful symphony, the orchestra playing the wonders of God’s love. And as the rest of the instruments are allowed to be heard, if you were invited into that car and you could listen to the music, suddenly it would sound so much better because you weren’t just hearing a part of it, but how it was all meant to fit together.
How we’re meant to fit together as Christians is those who care about each other, who lift each other up, who comfort each other as God comforts us. And when we do, we see something beautiful created, something restorative created, something that gives a foretaste of when Jesus returns.
Notice, again, what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, 11. “Finally, brothers, rejoice, aim for restoration, comfort one another.” And then he goes on to the other things they need to do. Agree with one another. We’ll talk about that next week. Live in peace, but comfort one another. And why? Because the God of love and peace will be with you.
We’re called to be that beautiful symphony, to see the welling up of all the instruments playing the beautiful music of God’s love. And when we do that, then we can go on to the other things we’re going to talk about. And we can do them well because people can actually hear the most important notes, the notes of Jesus’s love.
How do we do that? How do we actually do that practically in our lives? I think we need to ask ourselves this question. How can I contribute to the symphony of God’s grace? And by that, I don’t mean we can add grace. We can’t do that. Jesus is the only one that can ultimately provide grace. But as Jesus places us into his orchestra, as those who play the joy of the truth of what he has done, we can allow people to see God’s grace through our lives.
So how can we, in that sense, contribute? How, in that sense, can we be faithful followers of Jesus? I think, first off, we need to be sincere. When we sincerely care about those around us, we don’t just say that we care about them, but we genuinely practice it. That changes so much to begin with. That saying that, as Christians, we love one another, if that isn’t just a motto, if it isn’t just a cliche, but it’s something that we live, that’s dramatic in what it changes.
And that leads into the other things that we do. For example, even as the church corrects, it should be constantly worried, as Paul says over and over again in 2 Corinthians, worried about what it’s going to do to those who need to be corrected. Paul is going to speak strong words, but he says that it pains him to do it. Does it pain us when someone needs to be corrected? When we go and say, “You’ve done this to me,” or “This isn’t really what scripture says.” Because we don’t want people to be in anguish. We want them to experience God’s restoring grace.
Do we pray that we, in our lives, are more concerned with others rather than ourselves? That we don’t see ourselves as all that important, but we see the importance of each person that God has called into that symphony, so we’re not pushing out a whole section of the orchestra, but we’re calling more and more people into it. Are we willing to genuinely be unimportant in the scheme of things? To simply be there playing our part in the joyful music of God?
When we do these things, then we can contribute to that symphony of God’s grace because people can see Jesus rather than us. You see, we’re meant to be real soul food, so to speak. We’re meant to be those who, as we offer that comfort food, restore the souls of those around us, not through our own power, but as instruments of God’s grace, as those the Holy Spirit is working through.
When we do that, when we have that secret ingredient right in the midst of that comfort food of Jesus and his love, and then we share that with those around us, it truly is restoring, and it gives us the strength to do the other things that Jesus calls us to do.
Let’s pray right now, that as we go into this week and into this year, that we can be that soul food, we can be that comfort food, we can be that beautiful symphony in the world in which God places us. Let’s pray.
Lord, so often it’s easy to get caught up in what we want and what we think is important, to want to be important, to want to watch out for ourselves, to want to make sure that others who hurt us know what it means to hurt. And yet, when we look at what you have done, when we look at what you have done, you would take on sin that is ours and bear it, and even as you were preparing to do that, you offered comfort to those who follow you. Lord, would you help us to follow that example? Would you help us to do what you have done, through your power, that others might know you, that no one would despair, but instead we would see the restoration that comes when we care for one another, when we love one another, and we comfort one another.
Lord, would you comfort our hearts tonight, and remind us of that comfort as we go out and we interact with others this week. As you have comforted us, we might comfort others. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
As we continue this series next week, we are going to think of the next phrase that Paul uses, to be of one mind, to have unity. And it’s so important that it follows comfort, because if the people care about one another, it’s a whole lot easier than to care about having a unified purpose, a unified understanding of the gospel together. Comfort is the starting place, and on that then can be built the truths of scripture that are essential for the church to function.
So I hope you’ll join me again next week at 7 p.m., and we’ll pick back up and we’ll consider what it means to be a comforted people that then goes and has a single unifying purpose, to be of one mind as we follow Jesus.
Also, I’d like to mention if you haven’t already heard me talk about this, please put on your calendar that in a little less than two weeks now, Thursday, the 21st of January, we’re going to have our next online community prayer walk, and it’s going to gather believers from all around the world that we can pray for our community and communities of other believers around the world. We can pray for our world, we can pray for our nation, we can pray for our churches, for students going back to school, for teachers, for just all sorts of things, and we can lift up each other’s prayer requests as well.
It’s a perfect example of how we live lives of those who offer comfort. I hope that you’ll join me on that day. Join the others who will be sharing devotionals. It’ll be a wonderful time. You only need a moment. Just come on any time during the day. It’ll be looping all day, and you can take part in a wonderful adventure through prayer.
Speaking of prayer, if there’s any way I can be praying for you this week, feel free to shoot me an email at the email address on screen, or leave a comment below, and we can pray for each other and comfort each other. If you have a question, feel free to do the same. And would you please consider sharing this video? This is a world that needs comfort, and would you consider helping get the word out that our God is a God of comfort, and that Christians are called to be a people who comfort?
I hope you have a wonderful and blessed week, and I hope to see you again next week. Thank you for joining me.