When We Despaired of Life Itself (2 Corinthians 1:8-11)
Today’s Word
[The Trouble We Experienced in Asia] (NIV)
8 We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself.
9 Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.
[The God Who Delivers]
10 He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us,
11 as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many.
Background
In yesterday’s passage Paul praised “the God of all comfort.” Today’s passage is where he tells us what that praise is built on. Why he speaks of comfort the way he does, and what had just happened to him — he finally says it out loud.
He calls it “the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia.” Asia was the name of a Roman province, and its principal city was Ephesus, where Paul had stayed and worked for nearly three years. What exactly happened to him there is hard to pin down. Some connect it with the riot stirred up by Demetrius in Acts 19 — the silversmiths who saw their income from the shrines of Artemis drying up and turned the whole city over. Others link it to 1 Corinthians 15:32, where Paul says he “fought wild beasts in Ephesus.” Others suggest a severe illness, or an imprisonment.
Scripture does not say which it was. What Scripture does record, clearly, is how Paul remembers it: far beyond his ability to endure, hope of life gone, a death sentence pronounced in his own heart.
One thing is worth noticing here. The man writing these sentences has already been rescued from the thing he is describing. He is writing after the fact, and still there is no varnish on it. Not “looking back, it was not so bad,” but “I thought I was going to die.” And from there his conclusion moves toward God. The wider background of this letter is laid out in Introduction to 2 Corinthians — My Grace Is Sufficient for You.
Key Terms Made Simple
- Far beyond our ability: The Greek stacks two phrases on top of each other — “excessively” and “beyond our strength.” The first word, hyperbolē, is where the English word hyperbole comes from. Paul is not describing a load slightly past his limit; he is describing the place where the idea of a limit stops meaning anything.
- The sentence of death: The Greek apokrima appears only here in the entire New Testament. It is a legal term for an official verdict or ruling. This is not emotional despair so much as a formal judgment Paul passed on his own situation: this is over.
- God, who raises the dead: This title for God stood in the prayer Jewish people prayed daily. Paul did not invent a new phrase for the occasion. He reached, in the place of death, for a sentence he had recited since childhood.
- Deliver: The Greek rhyomai means to drag someone out of danger. In verse 10 alone the word appears three times: he delivered, he will deliver, he will go on delivering.
- We have set our hope: The Greek is a perfect tense. Not a feeling that just arrived, but a stance taken earlier and still standing. Hope here is closer to a posture than to an emotion.
- As you help us: This word (synypourgeō) is another that occurs only once in the New Testament. It joins “together with” and “to work underneath” — not standing nearby offering encouragement, but getting under the same weight and carrying it with him.
Key Expressions to Notice
- “We do not want you to be uninformed” (verse 8)
- Paul goes out of his way to tell them about the time he fell apart — in a letter written while his authority as an apostle was under attack.
- He knew that pretending to be strong would not help anyone. Comfort does not travel from the person who won; it travels from the person who has been through the same ground.
- “But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves” (verse 9)
- He does not look for the reason inside the event; he looks for it in where the event delivered him. Not “why did this happen to me,” but “where has this taken me.”
- This is not a claim that the suffering was good. It is a confession that being made unable to rely on himself turned out not to be pure loss.
- “He has delivered … he will deliver … he will continue to deliver” (verse 10)
- Three times in a single verse. He has already delivered, he will deliver, and after that he will deliver again. What Paul knows God to be is carried in that repetition. Deliverance is not something God did once; it belongs to who God is.
- The first two are statements about God. Then, at the third, the sentence changes shape — it moves inside the words “on him we have set our hope.” Because we know what God is like, that knowledge becomes our posture now.
- So the verse reads like this: if he delivered us in the past and will deliver us in the future, then what those of us in the middle of trouble have to do is hope that he will deliver us again. And “we have set our hope” is a perfect tense — not a feeling picked up and put down, but a stance taken and still held.
- “as you help us by your prayers” (verse 11)
- The man who has just said he relies on God alone asks people, in the very next breath, to pray for him.
- Relying on God and asking for human help are not opposites. Asking someone to pray is an invitation to stand with you in the work of relying on God.
Main Points of the Text
- Paul came to the edge of death (verse 8) — and it happened during a season when the ministry was going well. Doing God’s work does not guarantee a load that stays under your limit.
- The suffering changed the direction of his reliance (verse 9) — apparently it took weight of this size to strip “reliance on myself” out of a man as capable and as certain as Paul.
- Deliverance does not end with one rescue (verse 10) — he has delivered and he will deliver. Salvation is not a past event but a continuing character. What holds up the day in between is hope.
- Prayer is shared weight (verse 11) — and the result does not stop at one person’s relief. It flows out into thanksgiving from many. When one person is rescued, a crowd ends up praising God.
Standing Before This Word Today
Today I stood for a long while in front of the word “trouble.” The passage says God is the one who delivers us out of trouble, so hope in his deliverance. Which meant I had to ask first: what is the trouble I am actually walking through right now?
I had pictures in my head — plans I had thought through, arrangements that seemed workable. How to carry study and work forward from here, where I might serve next. I prayed about them, I believed they were God’s will, and I came this far in a spirit of obedience. And along the way I met closed doors. And I shrank back. Worry, impatience, anxiety, and that blank feeling of “how do I start over, where do I even begin” — these are in me, and it would be dishonest to say otherwise. It feels like being lost.
And yet today’s passage says there is no need for that worry. There is a reason God lets us come to the point of death: so that we will not rely on ourselves but on him.
So I looked at my own situation and asked: what am I relying on? Was it people and connections? Was it being relatively young, and my own competence? Or was it the plan I built?
The answer was not hard. If my hope collapsed when my plan collapsed, then what I was holding onto was the plan. If I had been relying fully on God, a plan going sideways would not have shaken me that far. I would still have trusted him, still believed he would deliver me and lead me on.
What God has been pressing on me through this passage is something like this:
Do not rely on people, and do not rely on your plans. Rely on me. I will deliver you and I will use you. To use you I will train you and send you where you need to go. So do not be afraid, and do not worry. When I hand you the work, I will also give you what it takes to carry it, and I will train you for it. I will deliver you.
Amen. I trust him, and I expect him to work exactly that way.
So what do I do now? Relying on the Lord means not collapsing when my plan fails. It was only a closed door, and his hand is still leading me. So there is nothing to despair over in front of a closed door, and nothing to fear about meeting one. You cannot know whether the door in front of you is open or shut until you actually knock.
And if it turns out to be shut, that simply means there is one fewer door left to check. Stand in front of a hundred doors weighing them up and you will never learn which of them opens. I intend to knock, relying on God. He will lead.
Applying to My Life
- Write down, in one line, what you are relying on — how far you were shaken when a plan fell through will tell you the answer. If the plan collapsed and your hope collapsed with it, the plan was what you were holding. As we saw in Here by the Will of God (2 Corinthians 1:1-7), the ground of your place is the calling, not your plan for it.
- Write down one memory of being delivered — Paul hoped for the future on the basis of a past rescue. If something is hard today, set beside it one thing you have already come through. Back then it also felt like hope was gone, and here you are. That record becomes the ground you stand on at the next crisis.
- Choose one person to ask for prayer — like Paul in verse 11, name one thing you are carrying and hand it to someone. Enduring alone is not the more faithful posture. Asking for prayer is an invitation to get under the weight with you, and later that person gives thanks along with you.
Think About It
- How far am I shaken when a plan falls through? Does that shaking tell me something about what I was relying on?
- Has there been a time when it felt like hope of life was gone? How do I remember the God who delivered me then?
- Is there a door I am standing in front of, weighing it up, without having knocked? Which one door could I knock on today?
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