Berean Standard Bible
Blessed be 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 have received from God.
King James Version
Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; 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.
About this verse
The sentence has a purpose clause, and the purpose clause is the point. God "comforts us in all our troubles" — full stop? No: "so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received." Comfort, in Paul's economy, arrives with a forwarding address. It is given to be given. Notice too the title he coins: "the God of all comfort" — all of it, whatever the trouble.
Paul opens 2 Corinthians — his most personal, most bruised letter — with this doxology, and he writes it fresh from the wound. Four verses later he describes an affliction in the province of Asia so crushing that he despaired of life itself. This is not a man theorizing about comfort from a comfortable distance; it is a man recently comforted, explaining what the comfort was for.
Here is the verse's quiet reframe of your hardest season: it may become your qualification. The logic of every good support group runs on it — the person who has been through the thing can reach the person in the thing in ways no expert can. Nothing suffered has to be wasted. The comfort you received is inventory, and someone downstream is waiting for it.
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