The interplay between internal and external experience, is perhaps nowhere in Scripture brought out as clearly as in this passage from Paul's very personal and poignant Second Letter to the Corinthians. His external experience seems to be unremittingly dark and bleak: afflicted in every way possible, full of doubts, persecuted, struck down. However, his internal experience is one of grace and God's unfailing presence and love. Paul is not crushed because God is his strength. Paul is never driven to despair, because his hope is not an emotion but the very person of Jesus, risen from the dead. Paul knows he is not abandoned even in the midst of persecutions, because Jesus was persecuted and rose triumphant from the grave.

This interplay of interior and exterior experiences becomes a veritable opposition between the appearance of death and the reality of life, the death of Jesus coexisted with the life of Jesus. Paul needed a great spirit of faith to see the truth which he affirms in his contradictory experiences, that "spirit of faith of which Scripture speaks." That spirit of faith allowed him to see the truth and to affirm it.