Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.
The apostle Paul wrote this letter to Christians in Corinth, a major Greek city, while he himself was going through serious personal suffering. He describes God as the one who comforts us in all our troubles — not occasionally, and not only in certain kinds of pain, but in all of it. The Greek word for 'comfort' here carries the idea of coming alongside someone in their distress. Then Paul adds a remarkable dimension: the comfort God gives us is not just for our own benefit. It equips us to offer that same comfort to others in pain. Paul's insight is that our own experience of being helped by God in suffering becomes our specific qualification to help someone else through similar darkness.
God of all comfort, thank You for not leaving me alone in the hard places. Help me receive Your comfort fully — and then give me the courage to pass it on to someone else. Don't let my pain be wasted. Use it for something I cannot yet see. Amen.
You know the difference between advice from someone who read about grief and comfort from someone who has actually lost someone. You feel it immediately. One sounds correct; the other lands. Paul is describing how God's comfort works exactly this way — it passes through lived experience before it reaches the next person. Your darkest chapter, the thing you wish had never happened, becomes the precise credential that makes your presence in someone else's dark chapter matter in a way that nothing else can. This is not an invitation to be grateful for pain, and it doesn't mean suffering was somehow good or necessary. It means God wastes nothing. The 3 AM you spent shaking, the diagnosis that changed everything, the loss that left a gap you still feel on quiet evenings — those were real, and they cost you something real. But Paul is asking: who might be waiting for exactly what you learned in that place? Your suffering was never only about you. Someone is carrying something right now that only your particular experience can speak to. The comfort you received was always meant to travel further.
Paul says God comforts us 'in' our troubles, not necessarily by removing them. What is the difference between those two things, and does that distinction matter to you personally?
Think of a time when someone comforted you in a way that genuinely helped. What made it effective — and do you think their own experience of pain played a role in it?
Is it possible to misuse this verse — to push someone toward helping others before they have had space to grieve or heal? Where is the line between processing pain and being rushed past it?
Who in your life is going through something that you have actually been through yourself? What is holding you back from reaching out to them?
What would it look like, specifically and concretely, to turn something you have suffered through into a way of serving someone else in the next month?
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
Matthew 5:4
As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem.
Isaiah 66:13
Nevertheless God, that comforteth those that are cast down, comforted us by the coming of Titus;
2 Corinthians 7:6
Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do.
1 Thessalonians 5:11
In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soul.
Psalms 94:19
Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.
Isaiah 40:1
I, even I, am he that comforteth you: who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die, and of the son of man which shall be made as grass;
Isaiah 51:12
Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. Selah.
Psalms 32:7
who comforts and encourages us in every trouble so that we will be able to comfort and encourage those who are in any kind of trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
AMP
who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
ESV
who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
NASB
who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.
NIV
who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
NKJV
He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.
NLT
He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us.
MSG