When Paul talks about boasting, he has in mind the idea of expressing where our confidence is. If you’re boasting in your wisdom, your intelligence, your strength, your beauty, your boasting is in something wrong. It’s prideful arrogance. But if your confidence is in the Lord, then your boasting is in that which is true. In Galatians, Paul says, God […]

In this chapter of 2 Corinthians, Paul confronts trusting in things other than God, and especially trusting in ourselves. The very first portion of this passage describes a deep despair that Paul was facing. He probably has in mind here what happens in Acts chapter 19. Paul spent over two years laboring among the Ephesians, and there was great fruit […]

God comforts us that we may in turn comfort others. First of all, God comforts us. Paul says that we are suffering the sufferings of Christ. Later in his letter, Paul will relate what some of those sufferings have been in his own life. Paul identifies these sufferings as the sufferings of Christ. Paul is identifying us with our Redeemer. […]