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Offering Up Someone Else’s Suffering?

Question:

Can you offer up someone else’s suffering other than your own?

Answer:

No, but you can offer up your own suffering for someone else. Jesus is the infinitely perfect example in this regard through his one redemptive Sacrifice of Calvary. Similarly, we can offer our sufferings for the salvific benefit of others:

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 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. 5 For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.[a]6 If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. 7 Our hope for you is unshaken; for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3-7; see Col. 1:24).

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