The sympathy of Christ
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"For we don't have a high priest who can't be touched with the feeling of our infirmities." Hebrews 4:15
All who fear God have now a High Priest who is touched with a feeling of our infirmities—and so can sympathize with us in our temptations and afflictions. Jesus has a personal acquaintance with every trial, temptation, and form of suffering which any one of His people might go through—that He might sympathize feelingly with them—through Himself having personally experienced them.
And thus He sits in heavenly bliss with a human heart—tender, affectionate, feeling—and sympathizing, as having Himself passed through every phase of suffering—known every trial—been exposed to every temptation—and having had a personal experience of everything that shall befall any of His living family.
This is a mysterious subject. I do not profess to understand or explain it—but I receive it upon the testimony of God's word, and as such, I see in it a great blessedness—mines of grace—treasures of encouragement—a rich source of divine consolation! If you and I are in a trial, there is a sympathizing High Priest for us at the right hand of the Father. The widow, the orphan, the poor, the needy, the distressed, and the exercised—whatever be their affliction, there is a merciful and faithful High Priest, who can feel for and with them—whose tender, loving, and affectionate heart is melted with a sympathizing sense of what they are suffering here below.
Now to believe this—and in trial, suffering, and exercise to go to a tender, sympathizing, affectionate, and loving High Priest, and thus realize His pity toward us—what strength and support it gives. Do we feel the burden of sin? He felt it. Are we crying under a sense of guilt? He felt it. He had indeed no personal guilt—but He felt all the guilt we can feel—by imputation. Does the world frown? It frowned upon Him. Do men persecute you?
They persecuted Him. Are you oppressed? He was oppressed also. Are you scoffed at, mocked, jeered, insulted? He also endured all these things. Does God hide His face? Is your soul in darkness? Are you full of fear? He passed through all these things. This made Him sympathizing, tender-hearted, loving, kind, and affectionate.
But O what a sympathizing High Priest there is in the courts above—for poor sinners here below! We may tell Him all our cares. The secret sins that you are obliged to keep locked up in your own bosom—the painful temptations you are exercised with—the various things that cut deep into your conscience, which you cannot breathe into any one's ear—all are open to this sympathizing High Priest—all may be spread before that throne of grace, on which He ever sits!
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