Chief
Chief of Sinners.
Paul's prison epistles present us with something that defies natural logic. A man sits in chains, facing probable execution, stripped of freedom and basic dignity. Yet from this position of apparent defeat, he writes letters that have encouraged billions across two millennia. Philippians, written from prison, is perhaps the most joy-filled book in the New Testament. Ephesians, also from confinement, soars with cosmic vision about Christ's supremacy. How does someone in a pit lift others out of theirs?
The answer lies in what suffering actually does to a person, provided they allow it to do its work rather than merely endure it.
Notice the progression. Suffering doesn't directly produce character. It produces perseverance first. Perseverance is what happens when you can't escape, can't fix it, can't make it stop, so you learn to continue anyway. You get up another day. You choose faith another hour. This grinding repetition builds something into you that comfort never could.
Character emerges from perseverance because character is simply what you become when you persist through difficulty without becoming bitter, without abandoning your values, without turning into someone you despise. It's the residue of a thousand small choices made under pressure.
This explains why Paul could say in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, after begging God three times to remove his "thorn in the flesh": "Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."
He had discovered that his suffering gave him something impossible to obtain otherwise: authentic authority to speak about God's sufficiency.
Paul's suffering gave him credentials. When he told the Philippian church to "rejoice in the Lord always" (Philippians 4:4), they knew he wasn't speaking from a beach house in Caesarea. He was chained to a Roman guard, writing by whatever light filtered into his cell. His joy wasn't circumstantial. It was substantial, rooted in something external circumstances couldn't touch.
This is why those who are suffering often end up encouraging those who are comfortable. The comfortable haven't been forced to find the bedrock. They're still relying on circumstances to hold them up. The sufferer who has maintained faith has found something deeper. They've tested whether God is real when nothing else is good, and they've found him sufficient. That discovery makes them wealthy in the only currency that matters in crisis.
Notice what suffering did: it destroyed his self-reliance. Paul was brilliant, educated, zealous, capable. Those traits could have become obstacles to complete dependence on God. His suffering didn't just happen to him; it had purpose. It forced him past the end of his own resources so he would discover God's.
When you have nothing left but God, you find out if God is enough. Paul found that he was. That discovery transformed him from a man with a testimony about God into a man who simply knew God intimately. The difference is everything.
This is why comfortable Christianity often feels hollow while tested Christianity rings true. Comfort allows us to maintain the illusion that we're doing fine on our own with just a little divine assistance. Suffering destroys that illusion. What remains after that destruction is either authentic faith or nothing at all.
His suffering made his encouragement powerful because it eliminated the gap between teacher and student. He wasn't instructing from above; he was reporting from the trenches. In 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, he writes: "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God."
The person who has been comforted by God in their devastation carries that comfort to others. It's transferable precisely because it's been tested. Untested theology is just theory. Tested theology is witness testimony.
The goal isn't suffering for its own sake. The goal is maturity. Suffering is simply the only road that gets you there. You can't become who God wants you to be without it.
Second, we must learn to be honest about our struggles while maintaining faith. Paul never pretended he wasn't suffering. He told the Corinthians he despaired of life. He told the Romans about his inner conflict in Romans 7. But his honesty never collapsed into hopelessness because it was always tethered to God's character and promises.
Modern Christian culture often pressures people to perform victory. We're expected to have triumphant testimonies where we briefly struggled and then God came through and everything got better. Paul's model is different. He often wrote from the middle of ongoing difficulty, not from the other side of resolved problems. His encouragement came not from "God fixed my situation" but from "God is sufficient in my situation."
Third, we must actively choose to encourage others even from our places of pain. This is counterintuitive. The natural instinct when hurting is to withdraw, to focus inward, to wait until we're "better" before we engage with others. Paul did the opposite. His prison epistles show him constantly thinking about the churches, praying for them, instructing them, comforting them.
There's something spiritually therapeutic about this. When you encourage others from your pain, you're declaring that your suffering hasn't made you useless. You're asserting that God can still work through you, perhaps even especially through you in this state. It prevents the self-pity that wants to make everything about your pain.
Fourth, we must let suffering do its intended work rather than anesthetizing ourselves against it. Our culture offers endless ways to numb pain: entertainment, substances, busyness, casual relationships that never go deep enough to hurt. Paul's approach was to feel the weight of his circumstances fully while simultaneously holding onto eternal perspective.
In 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 he writes: "Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."
He didn't minimize his troubles. He called them troubles. But he saw them in proper proportion to eternity. That perspective only comes from actually wrestling with suffering while maintaining faith, not from avoiding the wrestling match.
These people are treasures because they've proven something the rest of us only theoretically believe: that God is good even when life isn't, that faith works even when nothing else does, that joy can exist independent of circumstances.
Paul was one of these treasures. His life was objectively difficult. By his own accounting in 2 Corinthians 11:23-28, he was imprisoned repeatedly, flogged, beaten with rods, stoned, shipwrecked, constantly in danger, cold, naked, hungry, and burdened with concern for all the churches. Any one of these experiences could have justified bitterness or resignation. Instead, they produced a man who could write about joy, peace, contentment, and the surpassing worth of knowing Christ.
You are likely walking through something difficult right now, or you will be soon. Life guarantees it. The question isn't whether suffering will come but what you'll let it produce in you. Will you let it make you bitter or better? Will you waste it by only enduring it, or will you cooperate with what God wants to build through it?
Your suffering, if you'll allow it, can become your greatest qualification to encourage others. Not because you'll have easy answers, but because you'll have tested ones. Not because you'll tell people to cheer up, but because you'll be able to sit with them in their darkness while pointing to a light that doesn't go out.
More challengingly: Where are you right now in the process Paul described? Are you in the suffering stage, feeling the pressure? In the perseverance stage, just trying to continue? Beginning to see character formed in you that wasn't there before? Or perhaps you're at the place where you can comfort others with the comfort you received?
And most practically: How can we actively encourage others even from our places of pain? What keeps us from doing this? Is it fear of being vulnerable? Pride that says we should have it all together first? Exhaustion that says we have nothing left to give?
The Christian life isn't about having all the answers or being perpetually victorious. It's about knowing God intimately enough that when everything else is stripped away, he's sufficient. Paul knew this from experience. His life invites us not to pity him but to follow him as he followed Christ, into the strange paradox where weakness becomes strength and suffering becomes the doorway to comfort.
What's your experience with this paradox? Where have you found God sufficient when nothing else was good? And how can you carry that discovery to someone else who needs to know it's true?
The answer lies in what suffering actually does to a person, provided they allow it to do its work rather than merely endure it.
The Refiner's Fire
Paul himself articulates the mechanism in Romans 5:3-5: "We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us."Notice the progression. Suffering doesn't directly produce character. It produces perseverance first. Perseverance is what happens when you can't escape, can't fix it, can't make it stop, so you learn to continue anyway. You get up another day. You choose faith another hour. This grinding repetition builds something into you that comfort never could.
Character emerges from perseverance because character is simply what you become when you persist through difficulty without becoming bitter, without abandoning your values, without turning into someone you despise. It's the residue of a thousand small choices made under pressure.
This explains why Paul could say in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, after begging God three times to remove his "thorn in the flesh": "Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."
He had discovered that his suffering gave him something impossible to obtain otherwise: authentic authority to speak about God's sufficiency.
The Credibility of Wounds
Consider who you actually trust when you're in pain. If you're going through a divorce, do you want counsel from someone who's never faced marital difficulty, or from someone who has walked through fire and come out with their integrity and faith intact? When you're battling depression, whose words carry more weight: the perpetually cheerful person who tells you to "just be positive," or the person who has stared into the abyss and learned how to choose light even when they can't feel it?Paul's suffering gave him credentials. When he told the Philippian church to "rejoice in the Lord always" (Philippians 4:4), they knew he wasn't speaking from a beach house in Caesarea. He was chained to a Roman guard, writing by whatever light filtered into his cell. His joy wasn't circumstantial. It was substantial, rooted in something external circumstances couldn't touch.
This is why those who are suffering often end up encouraging those who are comfortable. The comfortable haven't been forced to find the bedrock. They're still relying on circumstances to hold them up. The sufferer who has maintained faith has found something deeper. They've tested whether God is real when nothing else is good, and they've found him sufficient. That discovery makes them wealthy in the only currency that matters in crisis.
Stripping Away of Pretense
Paul's second letter to the Corinthians is almost uncomfortably honest. He writes in 2 Corinthians 1:8-9: "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. 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."Notice what suffering did: it destroyed his self-reliance. Paul was brilliant, educated, zealous, capable. Those traits could have become obstacles to complete dependence on God. His suffering didn't just happen to him; it had purpose. It forced him past the end of his own resources so he would discover God's.
When you have nothing left but God, you find out if God is enough. Paul found that he was. That discovery transformed him from a man with a testimony about God into a man who simply knew God intimately. The difference is everything.
This is why comfortable Christianity often feels hollow while tested Christianity rings true. Comfort allows us to maintain the illusion that we're doing fine on our own with just a little divine assistance. Suffering destroys that illusion. What remains after that destruction is either authentic faith or nothing at all.
The Contagion of Tested Faith
Paul's authority to encourage came from having skin in the game. When he told the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 to "Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances," he wasn't offering tips for better living. He was sharing what he'd learned to be true under conditions that should have destroyed him.His suffering made his encouragement powerful because it eliminated the gap between teacher and student. He wasn't instructing from above; he was reporting from the trenches. In 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, he writes: "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God."
The person who has been comforted by God in their devastation carries that comfort to others. It's transferable precisely because it's been tested. Untested theology is just theory. Tested theology is witness testimony.
Emulating Paul's Character
First, we must stop treating suffering as an interruption to the Christian life and start seeing it as integral to Christian formation. James 1:2-4 says: "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."The goal isn't suffering for its own sake. The goal is maturity. Suffering is simply the only road that gets you there. You can't become who God wants you to be without it.
Second, we must learn to be honest about our struggles while maintaining faith. Paul never pretended he wasn't suffering. He told the Corinthians he despaired of life. He told the Romans about his inner conflict in Romans 7. But his honesty never collapsed into hopelessness because it was always tethered to God's character and promises.
Modern Christian culture often pressures people to perform victory. We're expected to have triumphant testimonies where we briefly struggled and then God came through and everything got better. Paul's model is different. He often wrote from the middle of ongoing difficulty, not from the other side of resolved problems. His encouragement came not from "God fixed my situation" but from "God is sufficient in my situation."
Third, we must actively choose to encourage others even from our places of pain. This is counterintuitive. The natural instinct when hurting is to withdraw, to focus inward, to wait until we're "better" before we engage with others. Paul did the opposite. His prison epistles show him constantly thinking about the churches, praying for them, instructing them, comforting them.
There's something spiritually therapeutic about this. When you encourage others from your pain, you're declaring that your suffering hasn't made you useless. You're asserting that God can still work through you, perhaps even especially through you in this state. It prevents the self-pity that wants to make everything about your pain.
Fourth, we must let suffering do its intended work rather than anesthetizing ourselves against it. Our culture offers endless ways to numb pain: entertainment, substances, busyness, casual relationships that never go deep enough to hurt. Paul's approach was to feel the weight of his circumstances fully while simultaneously holding onto eternal perspective.
In 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 he writes: "Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."
He didn't minimize his troubles. He called them troubles. But he saw them in proper proportion to eternity. That perspective only comes from actually wrestling with suffering while maintaining faith, not from avoiding the wrestling match.
Take a Moment to Reflect
Think about the people who have most impacted your faith. Chances are they're not the ones who had easy lives and preached about God's blessings. They're the ones who walked through hell and came out still worshiping. They're the cancer patient who prayed for others from their hospital bed. The widower who chose gratitude. The person battling mental illness who showed up to church even when it cost them everything they had that day.These people are treasures because they've proven something the rest of us only theoretically believe: that God is good even when life isn't, that faith works even when nothing else does, that joy can exist independent of circumstances.
Paul was one of these treasures. His life was objectively difficult. By his own accounting in 2 Corinthians 11:23-28, he was imprisoned repeatedly, flogged, beaten with rods, stoned, shipwrecked, constantly in danger, cold, naked, hungry, and burdened with concern for all the churches. Any one of these experiences could have justified bitterness or resignation. Instead, they produced a man who could write about joy, peace, contentment, and the surpassing worth of knowing Christ.
You are likely walking through something difficult right now, or you will be soon. Life guarantees it. The question isn't whether suffering will come but what you'll let it produce in you. Will you let it make you bitter or better? Will you waste it by only enduring it, or will you cooperate with what God wants to build through it?
Your suffering, if you'll allow it, can become your greatest qualification to encourage others. Not because you'll have easy answers, but because you'll have tested ones. Not because you'll tell people to cheer up, but because you'll be able to sit with them in their darkness while pointing to a light that doesn't go out.
Let's Have a Conversation
I want to invite you to reflect and share: Where have you seen suffering produce character that encouraged you? Who in your life has been a wounded healer, someone whose pain qualified them to speak into yours?More challengingly: Where are you right now in the process Paul described? Are you in the suffering stage, feeling the pressure? In the perseverance stage, just trying to continue? Beginning to see character formed in you that wasn't there before? Or perhaps you're at the place where you can comfort others with the comfort you received?
And most practically: How can we actively encourage others even from our places of pain? What keeps us from doing this? Is it fear of being vulnerable? Pride that says we should have it all together first? Exhaustion that says we have nothing left to give?
The Christian life isn't about having all the answers or being perpetually victorious. It's about knowing God intimately enough that when everything else is stripped away, he's sufficient. Paul knew this from experience. His life invites us not to pity him but to follow him as he followed Christ, into the strange paradox where weakness becomes strength and suffering becomes the doorway to comfort.
What's your experience with this paradox? Where have you found God sufficient when nothing else was good? And how can you carry that discovery to someone else who needs to know it's true?