THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST
THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST
I think the Lord is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and He sympathises with them. Will is sin. Infirmity is not sin, though it might lead to sin; as Sarah, when from fear she told a lie (Genesis 18: 15). Fear is not a sin in itself; I may have a timid nature. The Lord had more sensibility than any man, but He never gave way to it unduly. He could say, “The floods of ungodly men made me afraid” (2 Samuel 22: 5). If I am weak or in pain, He feels with me as to my suffering, but the gain to me is when I know how He feels, and how His grace would lead me apart from will, to feel in the suffering. If He did not feel with me, He could not help me. He feels with me, but He meets it divinely. I meet it, as a rule, selfishly. He could say under great trial, “I thank thee, O Father”. He says to me, as it were, I feel it as much as you do, or a great deal more. He felt the storms, the indifference of the Pharisee, etc., but He was not swayed by feeling. He ever went through it divinely. What I have to seek is that God should be more before me than my own feelings; that I do not deprive God of the tithes - of His due in my sorrow. My very suffering, which the Lord enters into, leads me, when enjoying His sympathy, to learn His way in them, and then I have advanced in the knowledge of Himself in the trial. Relief from the trial makes me rejoice, but His sympathy increases and enhances my knowledge of Him.
There is one thing which one learns when in company with the Lord, that could not be learnt any other way, and that is sensibility. I see how He feels every incongruity, but I see also how He regards it, not as it affects [p. 391] Himself, but as it affects God. This is the way Paul was brought to regard the thorn. You may be sure that the more you feel your trial, the more there is grace for you to bear it. Feeling is nothing without the grace. Feeling in our Lord drew out the grace, because there was nothing but good in Him. In me, feeling tends to draw out temper; but when I know His sympathy, I am sure to have His divine way of answering to the feeling.