“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

We’ve all been there before: hurting and in need of comfort. That’s never a fun place to be. In fact, we’ll often do just about anything we can to avoid it. And, when it comes to us anyway, we are often equally committed to getting out of it. Where do you go when you are in need of comfort? The season of Advent is a time when hurts from our past can feel a bit heavier than usual. Fortunately, it is also the season when God’s comfort became real in a way no one has ever experienced before. Let’s talk about finding comfort and the purpose of God’s comfort.

There’s a chance the first couple of posts this week have been hard for you. While we have landed in a good and encouraging place each day (at least that has been my aim), the process of getting there has not been particularly easy. We have been talking about the bitter fruits of living in a world that is still broken by sin. We have been talking about the kinds of hard times we experience in life and how God offers us comfort.

His word offers us the comfort of truth; specifically the truth that we are not alone in our hardships and pain. It offers us the comfort that hope is a real thing we can really enjoy because we serve a God who has promised us a future that is better beyond imaging than our present. And, given the season we are still walking through together, the fullest expression of this comfort is found in the birth of Jesus who was called Immanuel – God with us. God Himself comes to us in the midst of our brokenness to bring us the comfort of His kingdom.

Why does He do this? Have you ever wondered why God is like this? Why He cares about someone like you or me? Why He would take time out of running the universe in order to give us the assurance that our present does not have to define our future, thus unlocking the potential for genuine hope?

The apostle Paul offers two answers to this question in the opening words of his second letter to the believers in ancient Corinth. Both of them are important, and one leads rather directly to the other.

The first reason God offers and brings us comfort in our sufferings is because that’s simply who He is. “Blessed be the God of Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort.” Don’t miss that. Paul identifies God as the “Father of mercies” and “the God of all comfort.” Giving comfort to those who are hurting is part of God’s nature. This is because He is fundamentally a God of love. More than that, as the apostle John would write about 30 years later, He is love. His nature is love. Love is part of what makes Him ontologically who He is. He can’t not love. If there is a loving thing to do, He is going to always do that thing.

Because of all of this, God naturally brings mercy and comfort and compassion and hope and help to those who are hurting and struggling under the weight of the brokenness of sin. Sin, of course, is the ultimate source of all the troubles we face in this life. God’s justice leads Him to be filled with wrath and to execute judgment against sin and all of its fruits. But His love leads Him to be tender and merciful with those who have been wounded by it. He brings them the comfort of His presence and the hope of His kingdom. That’s simply who God is.

This, however, leads us to the second reason God offers comfort to us when we are hurting. That’s in v. 4. “He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” Just like His love – because it is a product of His love – God’s comfort is always directional. It is for us, but it is never intended to stay with only us. He gives us comfort so that we can give it to others.

If you have received comfort from the Lord in whatever troubles you have faced, the purpose of that comfort was always twofold. It was for you simply because God loves you. It was also given to you to be able to share with someone else who is hurting and in need of comfort around you. I don’t think I can overemphasize the “so that” Paul drops in the middle of the first part of v. 4. It is a fundamental part of God’s character. He is always about the other. Everything He does is about advancing the goodness of His kingdom into the life of another person. If He does something for you, it is about advancing the goodness of His kingdom into the life of a person in your life either now or in the future.

But the comfort you give to another person because of the comfort you have received from the Lord is not something you have to come up with on your own. You don’t have to make up a reassuring tale to make them feel better. You don’t have to search through your own library of experiences in order to find just the right one that will hopefully make a difference in their situation. You simply need to give them the comfort you have received from God.

This pattern on God’s part really shouldn’t come as a surprise either. This is because you probably receive God’s comfort through another person. You may not have even recognized it at first as comfort from God. It was just another person offering you hope and reassurance when you were in a hard spot that really helped to draw you out of it. That was from the Lord. Through them. Because they had received it from Him. Likely from another person. And now that you have received it, you get to pass it on to yet another person who is in need of it; maybe lots of other people who are in need of it. God comforts us so that we can comfort others.

And what is the comfort? It is that hope we talked about the other day. The pain we are experiencing will not last forever. It can’t. Pain won’t be part of God’s final and eternal kingdom. If we are ourselves set to be a part of that kingdom, then the pain we are facing now will not define our lives forever. It’s literally impossible for that to be the case. We can endure. We can endure, though, not simply because of some promise about the future, but also because God comes to us in the midst of our pain and suffering to be able to experience peace and even joy through His love for us. And there is no better expression of this peace and joy through love than the birth of Jesus.

This, my friends, is what the Advent season is all about. It is about preparing us to celebrate and receive the gifts of the child who was born for us, the son who was given for us. He will rule the world with truth and grace, making the nations prove the glories of His righteousness and the wonders of His love (and here you thought that was just a fun song to sing at this time each year). He is the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace. He is the God of all comfort who took on human flesh in order to enter fully into our broken and messy lives with us in order to redeem them – to redeem us – from the inside out. And because He has done all of this for us, we can do it for others.

May you receive the wonderful comfort of Christ this season, and may you take that very comfort and extend it to someone around you who needs it in their own life. That’s what it was for in the first place.