For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. 

When Saul of Tarsus had his encounter with Jesus on the Damascus road, the Lord said to him: ”Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4). So he learned early on that there is a solidarity between Christ and His people. What is done to them is done to Him (see e.g. Matt.25:45). The Christians were being persecuted, but it was Christ who was being persecuted.

This was a lesson he came to understand so deeply that he could express his ambition like this in his letter to the Philippians:

 ”I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.” (3:10,11).

The persecution sufferings of believers are a ‘participation’ (fellowship) in Christ’s own sufferings. He is continuing to suffer in and with His people. We are the body of Christ – one with our Head. The hatred of the world for the church is actually its hatred of Christ.

This hatred is irrational.

“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 19 If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. 20 Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. 21 They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me. 22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. 23 Whoever hates me hates my Father as well. 24 If I had not done among them the works no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. As it is, they have seen, and yet they have hated both me and my Father. 25 But this is to fulfill what is written in their Law: ‘They hated me without reason.’

Of course Paul’s point is that if share in Christ’s sufferings, we will also be the beneficiaries of God’s very real comfort. If we suffer with Christ we will also experience comfort through Christ.

But God’s comfort is ‘not to terminate with the one who receives it.’ (Paul Barnett). This point will be further emphasised as we move on through the paragraph next time.