📖WEB · 2 Corinthians 1:5
What does 2 Corinthians 1:5 mean?
"For as the sufferings of Christ abound to us, even so our comfort also abounds through Christ."
— 2 Corinthians 1:5 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
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, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, through the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
For as the sufferings of Christ abound to us, even so our comfort also abounds through Christ.
But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer.
Our hope for you is steadfast, knowing that, since you are partakers of the sufferings, so also are you of the comfort.
For we don’t desire to have you uninformed, brothers, concerning our affliction which happened to us in Asia, that we were weighed down exceedingly, beyond our power, so much that we despaired even of life.
Explanation
2 Corinthians 1:5 says, in plain terms, that the more a believer shares in the kind of suffering Christ experienced, the more comfort and encouragement that believer receives through Christ. Paul is describing a proportional relationship: suffering and comfort rise together for those who belong to Christ. It's not that suffering earns comfort like a wage, but that wherever hardship for Christ's sake abounds, God's comforting presence meets it in equal or greater measure.
This verse comes at the opening of 2 Corinthians, a deeply personal letter Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, a congregation with whom he had a strained and complicated relationship. Paul had recently endured severe affliction—likely referring to persecution, physical danger, or emotional distress connected to his ministry (he mentions in verse 8 that he was "weighed down exceedingly, beyond our power" and even despaired of life). Rather than opening with a defense of his ministry or addressing the conflicts in Corinth right away, Paul begins by reflecting on how God had comforted him in his affliction, and he wants the Corinthians to understand that his sufferings were not meaningless—they were bound up with Christ's own sufferings and met by Christ's own comfort.
Theologically, this verse teaches that suffering experienced for the sake of the gospel is a participation in the sufferings of Christ himself—not that Christians add to Christ's atoning work, but that following Christ faithfully in a hostile world inevitably involves hardship similar in kind to what he endured
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