The Christian is not exempt from the sorrows and sufferings that are the common lot of mankind because of the entry of sin into the world, but in his trials the Christian has a resource of which the man of this world knows nothing, even in our God and Father and in His dear Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Faith brings God in between the heart and its sorrow, resting in what God has spoken, having the assurance that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28). We may not be able to understand God’s ways with us, for they are past finding out, but we know that God’s ways are perfect, and therefore turn to Him, and to His dear Son, to find true solace and sympathy in sorrow, and comfort that is beyond anything man can give.
The God of All Comfort
Paul, in his service for the Lord Jesus, has many grievous trials, but in them had experienced in a very full and blessed way the comfort of God. In thinking of this, the Apostle, in 2 Corinthians 1, breaks forth in praise, saying, “Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort; who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God” (2 Cor. 1:3-4).
God’s comfort can meet us in whatever trial we may be found, for He is the God of all comfort, ministering to the troubled heart a divine solace that dispels anxious care, and brings into the soul the sense of His great love, and the realisation that He knows all about what is happening, not a disinterested spectator, but One who is ordering all for His own glory and our greatest good. He can comfort directly as we go to Him, and pour into His listening ear what afflicts us. Every feeling of the heart is known to Him as is every circumstance in which we find ourselves. Perfect love and perfect skill blend in the circumstances directly ordered of Him, and all that He may allow the enemy to bring against us is controlled by Him, for the enemy is not free to do as he pleases with us.
If we understand that God is working with us for His glory and our rich blessing, it is surely not difficult to submit to His will yea, we would not desire to be in any other circumstances than those He has chosen for us, so that we might gain from the trial, learning in a fresh way His great love in comfort, and knowing it is part of His training and preparation for what may lie ahead in our path of testimony for Him, and for our place with Christ in the coming glory.
The Apostle tells us that one of the reasons of our passing through trials in which we learn the blessedness of divine comfort is that we may be able to comfort others with the comfort with which we ourselves have been comforted of God. From this we apprehend that divine comfort not only comes directly from God, but also comes through His saints who have been through trials in which the comfort of God has been experienced.
The Comfort of Christ
In Philippians 2:1, Paul appeals to the “consolation in Christ” that is known to the saints of God. How blessedly was divine comfort ministered by Jesus upon earth to those in sorrow and trouble. To the broken-hearted widowed mother of Nain He said, “Weep not,” having the power to dispel the cold hand of death, and a heart to enter into our deepest sorrows. On the way to the house of Jairus, Jesus said to the woman who was trembling when she came before Him, “Daughter, be of good comfort: thy faith has made thee whole; go in peace” (Luke 8:48); and when Jairus was told that his daughter had died, Jesus said to him, “Fear not” (verse 50). The comfort of Christ dries our tears, and removes fear from the heart.
Poor indeed was the consolation of the Jews who came to comfort Martha and Mary when their brother had died (John 11:19, 31); it was all that human sympathy could bring; but how wonderfully rich was the comfort of Jesus as He wept with the sorrowing sisters before the manifestation of His power wiped every tear away. And Jesus is still the same, having a heart that is touched with our weaknesses and with our sorrows, and ministering His own grace and comfort, while we wait for the day when He, as the Resurrection and the Life, will wipe our every tear away.
The Comfort of the Spirit
How much the church of God passed through in its early days. The Apostles were imprisoned and beaten by the rulers of Israel for their faithful testimony to Christ, who had been crucified and slain, but whom God had raised from the dead, and glorified at His right hand. Stephen had been martyred, and Saul had been “breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord,” and things were looking very dark indeed; but it was just when the roaring lion was roaring at his loudest that Jesus intervened, arresting the arch-persecutor with a revelation of His glory, and making the ravaging Benjamite a captive of His grace and love.
Saul, having been converted, and having escaped from the hands of those who would have slain him, it is recorded, “Then had the churches rest throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria, and were edified; and walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied” (Acts 9:31).
To walk in the comfort of the Holy Spirit surely means that they walked in the good of what the Holy Spirit ministered to them, a ministry of comfort that took away all fear, and gave them a deep sense of God’s love and care for them. The truth of God would be ministered in divine power among them, the Holy Spirit being ungrieved and unquenched, and what was ministered by the Spirit would be received into their hearts by the power of the Spirit who indwelt them. We can still have the comfort of the Holy Spirit, if we allow the Spirit to bring home to our hearts the wonderful legacy of divine truth that God has given to us in His word.
The Comfort of the Scriptures
All that has been written in the Old Testament is for the saints of God in this day, even as it is recorded, “For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope” (Rom. 15:4). Having a real living hope in the soul is therefore one of the things that brings divine comfort to the saints of God, and this hope comes from the Scriptures. To Israel in bondage in Egypt, God sent through Moses a message of hope; and when they were across the Red Sea, they were able to sing of what God had in prospect for them in the earthly inheritance. Indeed, in all God’s ways with His people of old, wherein we learn His long-suffering, His compassion, His mercy, His goodness, His forgiveness, His power and His love, what consolation there is for the hearts of His people in all their weakness and sorrows.
In the New Testament Scriptures there are more wonderful revelations, which bring yet more wonderful comfort to the saints of God in their trials. God Himself has been revealed as Father in the Person of the Son; and we have learned of the nearness of the relationships into which God, in His grace, has brought us to Himself as His children and His sons; and what we are to Christ as His body and His bride. All these relationships tell of the affections that are towards us, and of the care that God and His Christ have for those who have been so richly blessed.
There are many special revelations, the divine mysteries into which the saints of God have been initiated, secrets of the heart of God that, when known in power in the soul, lift the spirit above the trials through which divine love causes us to pass. There are the revelations of 1 Corinthians 15 and 2 Corinthians 5, concerning the resurrection of the dead in Christ, and the changing of the living saints, and what is so blessedly made known to the saints of Thessalonica concerning the rapture of the saints to heaven, a revelation that concludes with these words, “Wherefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thess. 4:18).
The Comfort of Love
How deep and real is the comfort of love. The knowledge in the heart that we are loved brings true comfort in any time of trial and sorrow. There is the sovereign and compassionate love of God that we have believed and known by His Spirit, and the complacent love that a Father has for His sons and His children; and how richly have we been brought to know God’s love, first in its manifestations towards us as sinners, then in all His ways with us. It is a love that knows no change, and that can never cease. Our names are written upon the breast of Christ – as also on His shoulders – and we have learned that He loves us individually, collectively and corporately, and that His present ministry for us on high is directed by His great love that was manifested in giving Himself for us.
The comfort of love is also realised in the Christian circle, for all saints belong to the family of God, and all have been united in the assembly of God, and “whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it” (1 Cor. 12:26). Writing of this the Apostle John tells us, “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren” (1 John 3:14), and it is sustaining to be in the good of this when despised and reproached by the world that knows not of this divine love.
When the Apostle Paul wrote of the “comfort of love” in Philippians 2:1, he was no doubt thinking of the comfort he had just experienced through the manifestation of the love of the saints of Philippi towards him. He was suffering for Christ’s sake, a prisoner at Rome, and the saints had sent a gift to meet his needs, and his heart was greatly comforted in this expression of divine love for him as a servant of the Lord. It was not the gift itself that moved his heart, and comforted Paul, but the love that prompted the gift, so that he wrote, “I have all, and abound: I am full, having received of Epaphroditus the things which were sent from you, an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to God” (Phil. 4:18).
How wonderful then is the divine comfort that comes to us in days of trial and sorrow, that which comes from God directly, that which is ministered through Christ ascended in heaven, that which is brought in power to our hearts by the Holy Spirit, that which, through the Scriptures, gives hope and the revelation of all that God is and of all His thoughts, and that which is known in divine love, made known in Jesus, and also brought to us by those that are His.
R. 20.1.68