One of the great questions that people have when it comes to God is how to do we understand God and suffering. Why do bad things happen to seemingly good people? We have explored this question in our recent Sunday night sermon series in the books of Ruth and Job. We also explored this in John 9 and John 11. Reconciling suffering and God is hard for Christians to grapple with. To the Corinthian Christians, suffering is a big issue. For them, they cannot understand how a true apostle of Jesus could suffer to the degree that the apostle Paul has suffered. This has caused Paul’s critics to consider Paul an inferior apostle. Rather than deflect his sufferings, Paul has magnified his sufferings. Thus Paul proclaimed, “If I must boast, I will boast in the things that show my weakness” (2 Corinthians 11:30). The apostle Paul is now going to lay the trump card of his suffering. Yet again Paul does not do this to promote or elevate himself but to express why suffering should never be considered a reason to dismiss a person as a true servant of Jesus.
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