Sermon Bible Commentary
Hebrews 4:15
The Sympathy of Christ.
I. Few persons are aware of the extent to which the mind is influenced by sympathy. It may be doubted whether there was ever anything done in the world, greatly bad or greatly good, which did not owe itself, in part, to sympathy. When the ignorant multitude led in the meek and lowly man of Nazareth through the waving palms, with their unwearied "Hosannas!" till the excitement spread from street to street, and even children to the temple's gate cried back, "Hosanna!" no person can question but that the popular fervour owed its rise, in a great measure, to no higher principle than sympathy. And when, four days afterwards, the very same voices, with rival fury, shouted, "Crucify Him!" it was little else than the same principle in another dress. And we all know, in the smallest circle, if you took away sympathy how little would be the sum of joy or sorrow that would remain; while, if but two kindred minds are left to act and re-act upon each other, there is scarcely the height of moral happiness, or the depth of moral suffering, to which both will not unconsciously arrive. On all sides there is nothing insulated in man. Now the gospel comes in to take hold of this deep and all-pervading principle of our nature, and to give it a higher and nobler reach.
II. When our blessed Lord, in His sojourn here, had gathered round His own heart all the trials, and all the infirmities, and all the tendernesses of man, then did He ascend into heaven, that He might carry them with Him to the throne of God. His ascension severed none of His sympathies. Every cord of brotherhood remained perfect between the Church and Christ.
III. It is not without a particular emphasis that, in immediate connection with this mention of Christ in His sympathy as the High Priest of His people, it is added that He was "yet without sin." Two thoughts lie in these words. The one is the qualification for sympathy. And here we would observe, that sympathy can never be separated from virtue. So that for the perfect sympathy there must be entire innocence. But in the mention that our sympathising Saviour was "without sin," we are taught that there is not only a qualification, but also a limit to His sympathy. It is evident that in the highest sense of the word we can sympathise only in that of which we have had experience. Christ in the flesh had experience of the consequence of sin, but not of the acts of sin: He bore an imputed guilt, but a real punishment.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,1874, p. 63.
The Sympathy of Christ.
Christ's sympathy with penitents is perfect, because He is sinless; its perfection is the consequence of His perfect holiness. And for these reasons:
I. First, because we find, even among men, that sympathy is more or less perfect, as the holiness of the person is more or less so. There is no real sympathy in men of a sensual, worldly, unspiritual life, unless we are to call that inferior fellow-feeling which ranks with our natural instincts, and is to be found also in the lower animals, by the name of sympathy. Sin is essentially a selfish thing. We may almost measure our advance in the life of God by the tenderness of our feeling towards sinners. And if we may venture to dwell on thoughts beyond our probation, may we not believe that this law prevails to perfect the mutual sympathy of those who are in the higher state of separation from this evil world? Of all the members of Christ's mystical body, they must mutually sympathise most perfectly who are most free from the taint of evil.
II. And from this our thoughts ascend to Him who is all-perfect; who, being from everlasting very God, was for our sakes made very man, that He might unite us wholly to Himself. Above and beyond all sympathy is that of our High Priest. It stands alone in its incommunicable perfection. Let us see how we may draw comfort from this thought. Those who have sinned may go to Him in a perfect confidence that He is able to be touched with a feeling of their infirmities. We have something in Him to which we may appeal. (1) We may plead with Him on His own experience of the weakness of our humanity. (2) We may appeal to His experience of the sorrow and shame which come by sin upon mankind.
III. Lastly, let us so live as not to forfeit His sympathy. It is ours only so long as we strive and pray to be made like Him. Love of the world casts out the love of Christ.
H. E. Manning, Sermons,vol. ii., p. 179
I. The soul of man in this passage through the years of time, which is the preface, the ante-chamber, the school, the exercise-ground of an eternal existence, has to go through temptation. Man comes into life fitted and equipped to meet his trial, to meet temptation, as he comes fitted and equipped to provide for his bodily wants, to subdue the earth, to live in society, to develop and improve the marvellous endowments of his nature. The soul comes with reason, with conscience, with knowledge, with will, with grace; and as the day goes on the question is ever presenting itself, How shall it use that great gift of will? The beginning of the history of the first man, the prelude and figure of what was to follow, was the history of a trial, a temptation, a defeat. The first scene in the victory of the Second Man was a temptation, a victory, the type and firstfruit of what man might hope for. The Bible opens with man ensnared and vanquished; it closes with the great sevenfold promise to him that overcometh, and with the vision of the glory of those who overcame. And what is all that is written in it, between the first page and the last, but the record of how, to men and to nations, there came the day of opportunity, the day of visitation, the day of proof, and how that day was met, and how they bore themselves in it, and what were its issues?
II. What we see in the great lives in the Bible finds place in the most commonplace of our modern lives. He was "in all points tempted like as we are." We may turn the words round, and say with all reverence that like as He was tempted, so are we, even the humblest among us, tempted, tried, according to the measure of what we can bear, but as truly and with all depending on the issue. The hour is coming which must soon decide it betray, make manifest, what has been going on, not only in the great storms of adversity and passion, those great critical decisions of will for or against what is right, to which we often confine the name of temptations, but in those secret, undisclosed, prolonged workings of choice, of effort, of self-surrender, which prepare men for what they do in public, and which are as real and serious as what they do in public. We rise in the morning, and the day will try us, show what we are, touch some spring, some dormant motive deep down in our nature which reveals the truth about it to one who sees us; and as we go through each day's proof and trial, we are fitting ourselves for the event of the trial of tomorrow, and the current of our life and character is set by unperceived and insensible influences either towards that eternal life which God has prepared for man, or towards that eternal death from which, for the soul, there is no rising.
R. W. Church, Penny Pulpit,new series, No. 704.
References: Hebrews 4:15. S. Martin, Sermons,p. 157; J. R. Macduff, Communion Memories,p. 194; C. Stanford, Central Truths,p. 122; S. Rawson, Church of England Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 192; Ibid.,vol. x., p. 409; W. Landels, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iii., p. 321; Ibid.,vol. iv., p. 312; H. W. Beecher, Ibid.,vol. xii., p. 88; Ibid.,vol. xiv., p. 77; Ibid.,vol. xv., p. 67; Ibid.,vol. xxviii., p. 422; J. B. Heard, Ibid.,vol. xx., p. 120.