Friday, September 25, 2015

Christ's Sympathy

Jesus took flesh, not only that He might save, but also sympathize with, His people. It behooved Him in all things to be made like unto His brethren; like unto them as a partaker of flesh and blood; like them in being a Man of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief; like them in all the infirmities and troubles of life, sin only excepted. As God, the eternal Word, He might have pitied; it was only as God manifested in the flesh, that He could have a fellow feeling with His afflicted people. As Christ "was, in all points, tempted like as we are," so was He, in all points, afflicted like as we are. And thus the expression, "In all their afflictions, He was afflicted," may have a double meaning, namely that He personally tasted all their sorrows, as well as sympathized with them.


Human sympathy is sweet, but it is necessarily an imperfect thing. Sympathy, whether with sorrow or temptation, in order to be perfect, must proceed from One who has infinite power of sympathizing, and infinite good will to exercise it. What a difference we find between man and man! Some men will throw their whole heart and mind into the sorrows or the perplexities of others while some, either from deficient sensibility, or unwillingness to put it forth, have little or no sympathy to bestow.


It is far otherwise with Jesus. He possesses a human heart, and human mind, endowed with the infinite perceptions and sensibilities of the Godhead. When Jesus sorrowed, His grief was as infinite; when He rejoiced, His joy was as immeasurable as the divine nature, which was His from everlasting. A mind expanding with the endless elasticity, a heart swelling with the boundless emotions, of deity; divine in power, in feeling, in comprehension, but human in all the necessities; divine, yet man; human, yet God such was, such is, the Man Christ Jesus.


[George Mylne]

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Exodus 3:7 ...  And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows;


Isaiah 63:9 ...  In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old.



Hebrews 4:15 ...For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.❤