NOTES for Co2 1:3-4
Paul's words about consolation in the midst of sorrow can sound strange. The point, of course, is not that sorrows (for example, hardships or persecutions connected with ministry) are meaningless; no one convinced of the rightness of his faith or views and actively preaching them would say that. But in this case the issue is plainly not only a readiness to sacrifice something, or even oneself, for one's faith. If that were all, Christianity in this respect would differ in no essential way from any of the many religions and teachings that exist and have existed in the world: all religions and all teachings in every age have had adherents ready to sacrifice not only well-being but even life for their convictions. But the apostle has more than such readiness in mind.
His words recall the words of Jesus Himself, who regarded persecution for faithfulness to Him and for righteousness as an inseparable part of the Christian path (and more broadly, of the path of every righteous person). Of course, such persecutions are not an end in themselves, but they are a good indicator. This is especially true when Christians are concerned. If a Christian is fully acceptable to the world, if in this world that lies in evil he is at home, and the world counts him entirely and completely its own, then something is wrong with his Christianity.
If a Christian wants to make his Christianity so acceptable to this world that this world is satisfied with it and regards it as organic to itself, then something very serious has happened to his spiritual life. This is not because Christians seek to shock people, but because there can be no organic unity between the Kingdom and this world that lies in evil. At least not until the world is completely transformed.
And the process by which the Kingdom enters the untransformed world cannot be natural and organic; it is always a conflict. Since the Kingdom enters the world through Christians, conflict with the world becomes an inseparable part of their own lives, and it becomes clearer the more actively they are involved in this process.
Paul understands this perfectly from his own experience, for he lived the life of the Kingdom in a fullness that was open to few in his time. He knew what he was talking about. But the breath of the Kingdom for him, as for every genuine Christian, was more real than everything connected with the untransformed world. And in it, in this breath, the apostle found the consolation about which he wrote. Not in fidelity to convictions or to faith, but in the new life that had opened to him in the Kingdom. The very life to which he bore witness to the end of his earthly path.