The sympathy of Christ is
associated with His priesthood on high. He sympathizes not with sin, nor with
sinners as such, but with the suffering saints of God. When Christ was on earth
He was tempted, but the temptation was not in any way from within. There was in
Him no propensity to evil that answered to the trial of Satan. On the contrary,
all that the enemy found was dependence on God, simple unwavering faith in His
Word. There was in Christ the total absence of self-will inwardly; He in every
respect hated and rejected evil. He "knew no sin" (2 Cor. 5:21).
Christ was on earth, as He will
soon appear in glory, wholly without sin (Hebrews 4:15; 9:28). Indeed, had
there been an infinitesimal particle of fallen humanity in Christ, how could He
be a meet sacrifice to God for sin? Even the typical animals must needs be
unblemished. No offerings, it is remarkable, were so stamped with holiness as
the meat offering and the sin and trespass offerings. They emphatically were
"most holy" (Lev. 6:17), and they speak of Christ in His human
activity and Christ made sin for us. Had Christ been, as born of woman, under
the yoke of fallen manhood in any sense or degree, even without question of a
single failure in His ways, He never could have been an adequate sacrifice for
us, because there must have been thus the gravest possible defect in His humanity.
For what is so serious in such an offering as the signs of the fall, no matter
how suppressed or attenuated? Thus, atonement would be made impossible, unless
God can accept a fall-stained victim.
If Christ could not sin, how
then is He able to help and sympathize with those who are tempted? First of
all, in Hebrews 2:18 we read, "For in that He Himself hath suffered being
tempted, He is able to succor them that are tempted." It does not say that
He suffered after being tempted, for this a man may do who yields and
repents. There was not, there could not be, distress of conscience in the Lord
Jesus, any more than the workings of unbelief, such as we may feel. He suffered
in the entire moral being the sufferings of holiness and grace; He loathed and
rejected all that the enemy presented to His holy nature. Hence He, who in
human nature knew trial and suffering beyond all, is able to comfort the tried
saint. This is the real idea and application of temptation here. It does not
mean inward susceptibility or proclivity to evil, as it does in James 1:14
where it is expressly connected with lust. But James, in the same chapter
(verses 2 and 12) uses the word in its more ordinary scriptural application to
trials. The confusion arises from not heeding the difference between such an
inward working of fallen nature as is described in James 1:14, and the being
tried by Satan without.
Let us now look at 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." There is a notion too prevalent among theologians and their
followers that the blessed Lord Himself was compassed with infirmities. If they
call it infirmity for a man here below to eat, drink, sleep, or feel the lack
of these things, then in this sense the Lord surely was compassed with
infirmities. But it is feared that all too many go farther than this and
associate an inward moral infirmity with the Lord.
Christ could be touched with the
feeling of our infirmities; He was in all points tempted as we are, sin
excepted. He was tempted in all things in a way similar to the manner in which
we are tempted; but in this He differed essentially from us in that He had
absolutely no sin in His nature. Consequently we have inward
temptations connected with sin in us, such as James speaks of, which Christ never
had. He had nothing to do with sin in temptation, though He had all to do with
it in suffering on the cross. He had not the smallest tendency to sin in His
humanity. Though a partaker of blood and flesh, He had not what the apostle
Paul calls "the flesh." There was no liability to sin in Him who was
perfect man. There was such a propensity in the first man Adam, and he
accordingly fell. But the second man, the last Adam, had no such infirmity,
though He did have the capacity to suffer in body and soul and to die on the
cross for our sins. Of inward moral infirmity He had none.
It is argued that Christ could
not sympathize without personal consciousness of fallen humanity. But if this
argument is carried to its logical conclusion, it requires actual failure (and
to what amount?) in the Mediator in order fully to sympathize with us! The
sympathy of Jesus is in Scripture based on wholly different grounds. Never
having known sin (which, if known, narrows and blunts the heart), but having
suffered infinitely, His affections are large and free to go out to us in our
sore distresses as saints, who have not only the same outward enemy to try us,
but also a treacherous nature within.
The truth is that the believer,
resting by faith on redemption as a work already and perfectly accomplished for
him, does not want Christ to sympathize with His indwelling sin, any more than
with his sins. Christ bore our sins in His own body on the tree. Sin and the
flesh are condemned in Christ crucified. The sympathy of Christ with sin (or
even with sinners as such) would be an opiate for sin, to us most perilous, to
Him most dishonoring. On the contrary, His sympathy is with the regenerate in
their great weakness, who hate sin, who have to endure the contradiction of
sinners, and who are opposed by Satan acting on the flesh and in the world.
This therefore is the needed and the spiritual consolation:"We have not a
high priest not able to sympathize with our infirmities, but tempted in all
things in like manner, sin apart. Let us approach therefore with boldness to
the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and find grace for seasonable
help" (Heb. 4:15, 16 JND).
(Extracted from "Christ
Tempted and Sympathizing" in Bible Treasury, Volume 20.)
FRAGMENT. The gospels display
the One in whom was no selfishness. They tell out the heart that was ready for
everybody. No matter how deep his own sorrow, He always cared for others. He
could warn Peter in Gethsemane, and comfort the dying thief on the cross. His
heart was above circumstances, never acting under them, but ever according to
God in them. J. N.D.