God of All Comfort

2 Corinthians 1:3-7 is among the most important and encouraging passages in Paul’s writings. It speaks of the comfort that God provides those who are afflicted and suffering. It provides the promise that God will comfort His children. It also explains the reason for their suffering.

“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 will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4). Our God is described as the Father of all “mercies” which may also be translated as “compassion.”

Many times in the Gospels we are told that Jesus performed miracles out of the compassion He had for the people. “When He went ashore, He saw a large crowd and felt compassion for them and healed their sick” (Matthew 14:14).

Ultimately it was Jesus’ compassion that led Him to the cross “Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36). “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep” (John 10-11).

Out of His compassion, God provides comfort to those who are afflicted. His compassion is in part provided by His children. We can be agents of God’s compassion because we have suffered and received compassion from God ourselves.

“In the world you have affliction but take courage; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Part of the reason God permits suffering in our lives is to experience His comfort and then share that comfort with others. Who can console a woman that suffered a miscarriage better than another woman who had also suffered one?

“But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer” (2 Corinthians 1:6).

Jesus is the primary source of comfort to the suffering. He suffered for us so we could receive the greatest comfort – the comfort of salvation and becoming the children of God. Isaiah prophesied that that Messiah would, “comfort all who mourn” (Isaiah 61:2). In the Beatitudes Jesus taught, “blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4). He comforts us when we mourn over and repent of our sins.

Christians share the scriptures with the suffering to show them God’s compassion and the comfort that is available to them. Paul said of scriptures that is “was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the comfort of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Romans 15:4).

“Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us eternal comfort and good hope by grace, comfort and strengthen your hearts in every good work and word” (2 Thessalonians 2:16-17).