How Is Jesus Able to “Sympathize with Our Weaknesses”?
Jesus Is Still Approachable
The Puritans were a group of English pastors in the 1600s. Their writing and preaching had special force because they blended soaring theological insight with childlike hearts of love for God. And their minds and hearts were soaked with Scripture. A typical book written by a Puritan would take a single verse of the Bible, wring it dry for all the comfort and hope to be found in it, and then, several hundred pages later, be sent off to a publisher.
One such Puritan was a man named Thomas Goodwin. In 1651 he wrote a book called The Heart of Christ in Heaven towards Sinners on Earth. The single verse he was reflecting on and wringing dry was Hebrews 4:15:
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.
The purpose of Goodwin’s book is to help Christians of all ages who are discouraged understand something very important about Jesus. This truth is hard to believe because it is so wonderful. Goodwin’s goal is to convince us that even though Jesus is now in heaven and we can’t see him anymore, Jesus is just as open and tender in his embrace of sinners and sufferers as when he was on earth. In other words, Jesus is just as approachable and compassionate now, from heaven, as he ever was when he walked the earth.
The Heart of Jesus
Dane Ortlund
Featuring short, easy-to-read chapters and helpful explanations, this simplified edition of Gentle and Lowly takes readers into the depths of Christ’s tender heart for sinners and sufferers.
Solidarity with Jesus
Imagine a friend taking your hand and placing it on your father’s chest to feel his beating heart. Goodwin says that Hebrews 4:15 is like that friend. This verse takes our hand and places it on Jesus Christ’s own heart. He says this verse “lets us feel how his heart beats and his affections yearn toward us.”1
But what exactly is Hebrews 4:15 saying? It’s a deeply surprising verse. Notice the word “weaknesses”: “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” We tend to think that Jesus is with us and helping us when life is going well. That is surely true. But this text adds another truth. In a special way, it is in “our weaknesses” that Jesus sympathizes with us. In all our weakness—our fear, our anxiety, our loneliness, everything that makes us feel weak—Jesus “sympathizes” with us.
Now what does that mean? The Greek word for sympathize here means to “suffer with” or to “co-suffer.” In other words: When we are weak, he feels that with us.
[God’s] love is a kind of special love that cannot be held back when he sees his people in pain.
The theological word for this is solidarity, which just means “with-ness.” He’s right there with us. In our pain, Jesus is pained. In our suffering, he feels the suffering as his own even though it isn’t. This doesn’t mean his invincible divinity (the fact that he is God) is threatened. It means that his heart is drawn into our sadness and weakness. His love is a kind of special love that cannot be held back when he sees his people in pain.
But how do we know that Jesus really understands the discouragement we’re facing? The text tells us: He has been “tempted” (or tested) just “as we are.” Not only that, but “in every respect” as we are. The reason that Jesus is in such close solidarity with us is that the difficult path we are on is not unique to us. He has journeyed on it himself. It is not only that Jesus can relieve us from our troubles, like a doctor prescribing medicine; it is also that, before any relief comes, he is with us in our troubles,like a doctor who has endured the same disease.
Jesus is not a Marvel superhero, too strong and mighty to identify with the weak. He was sinless man, not a sinless Superman. He woke up with bed head. He probably had pimples at thirteen.He never would have appeared on the cover of a magazine (he had “no beauty that we should desire him,” Isa. 53:2). He came as a normal man to us normal men and women, boys and girls. He knows what it is to be thirsty, hungry, hated, rejected, ridiculed, excluded, embarrassed, abandoned, and misunderstood. He knows what it is to be lonely. His friends abandoned him when he needed them most; had he lived today, every last Facebook friend would have unfriended him when he turned thirty-three and was crucified.
The key to understanding the significance of Hebrews 4:15 is to push equally hard on the two phrases “in every respect” and “yet without sin.” All our weakness—indeed, all of our life—is tainted with sin. If sin were the color blue, we do not occasionally say or do something blue; all that we say, do, and think has some taint of blue. Not so with Jesus. He had no sin. No blue at all. He was “holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners” (7:26). But we must ponder the phrase “in every respect” (4:15) in a way that maintains Jesus’s sinlessness without diluting what that phrase means. That enticing temptation, that sore trial, that bewildering perplexity—he has been there. Indeed, because he is perfect, he has felt these pains more acutely than we sinners ever could.
Consider your own life. When it feels like everyone is against you, maybe even your own parents . . . when you don’t understand your feelings or emotions . . . when your best friend lets you down . . . when you feel deeply misunderstood . . . when you are laughed at . . . here is what you must know: there, right there, you have a Friend who knows exactly what such sadness feels like. He feels it himself. You belong to him. And though your friends may unfriend you, Jesus will never do that to you.
Our tendency is to feel that the more difficult life gets, the more alone we are. As we sink further into pain, we sink further into isolation. The Bible corrects us. He is in us, and he bears our pain with us. We are never alone. The sorrow that feels so unique to us was endured by him in the past and is now shouldered by him in the present.
If you are in Christ, you have a Friend who, in your sorrow, will never lob down a pep talk from heaven. He cannot bear to hold himself at a distance. Nothing can hold him back. His heart is too bound up with yours.
Notes:
- Thomas Goodwin, The Heart of Christ (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2011), 48.
This article is adapted from The Heart of Jesus: How He Really Feels about You by Dane Ortlund.
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