The Comfortable Need No Comfort

Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. -- Hebrews 5:8

Yesterday we talked about recognizing and accepting God’s “higher definition” of us as His children while refusing to allow ourselves to be limited, constrained and condemned by the accuser and his agents.  This verse today is the other side of that reality.  Sonship was the rightful position of the Lord Jesus, but it was necessary, for our sakes, that He discover experientially the suffering of humanity in order that He might be an effective and eternal High Priest on our behalf. 

We confess the vicarious and substitutionary suffering and death of Christ atoning for the sin of humanity.  Hebrews reveals a deeper truth.   God Himself, though knowing all things, could not fully understand and identify with us until He, too, took on flesh, walked among us, felt the pain of loss, and faced the black abyss of death for Himself. 

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).  When Jesus was preparing His disciples for what was to come as He went to the Cross, He said, And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever … (John 14:16).  The Holy Spirit is that Helper, the Paracletos, the One called alongside, the Comforter. 

As strange as it sounds, suffering introduces us to comfort.  The Comforter is revealed to us most expressly in the pains and losses of life.  Why do we think it strange that we must suffer as Christ Himself suffered?  How can one who has never been comforted possess the power to comfort another?  When was God ever comforted?  When He suffered and died in separation from His Father.   

During the Feast of Tabernacles, on the last day of the Feast, Jesus stood up and invited everyone who was thirsty to come to Him and drink.  He said from the innermost being of those who would believe on Him there would flow rivers of living water.  John adds this:  Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified (John 7:39). 

Jesus could not yet give the Comforter for He Himself had not yet experienced the need for comfort that His ultimate suffering brought Him into. 

Every loss is an emptying.  Every pain is a wound into which the balm of the Holy Spirit may be poured.  We will never suffer the full measure of loss and pain which Jesus endured, but what we do experience opens us to receive more of the Comforter’s presence and power.  The more that is poured into us, filling the void that suffering has created, relieving the agony of thirst we experience for meaning in the midst of our pain, the more we will have to pour out to those around us as they hurt and need an advocate and a helper. 

Malignant Comfort

And at that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps and punish the men who settle down comfortably, who say to themselves: The LORD will not do good or evil.

Their wealth will become plunder and their houses a ruin. They will build houses but never live in them, plant vineyards but never drink their wine. – Zephaniah 1:12,13

The well-known quote from Psalm 119:105 says that God’s word is a lamp. Psalm 105:19 tells us that the word he had received tested Joseph. When Jerusalem was in apostasy, the prophetic word came through men like Zephaniah, Isaiah, and Micah.

I am sometimes like those comfortable men. I hear the word and I know God is speaking, but I settle back. I talk about grace, faith, and mercy, forgiveness and love. The prophetic word does not sting or stir but sounds, instead, like a pleasant song lulling me to passivity and ease.

So My people come to you in crowds, sit in front of you, and hear your words, but they don’t obey them. Although they express love with their mouths, their hearts pursue unjust gain. Yes, to them you are like a singer of love songs who has a beautiful voice and plays skillfully on an instrument. They hear your words, but they don’t obey them. Yet when it comes – and it will definitely come – then they will know that a prophet has been among them. -- Ezekiel 33:31-33

I gather with my friends and I sing along about loving God, being humble, and exalting Him. I listen to the word and admire the speaker’s eloquence and erudition. I put some money in the plate, walk out of the building, and say I have been to church and done my Christian duty.

But I never believe that God will really intervene or that He will call in the markers -- let alone kick the door in.

I’m not talking about politics or nations. This is Jerusalem, the City of God. These are God’s people laid back in the shade, counting their money, and idly watching American Idol.

He called to the man clothed in linen with writing equipment at his side. “Pass throughout the city of Jerusalem,” the LORD said to him, “and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations committed in it.”

To the others He said in my hearing, “Pass through the city after him and start killing; do not show pity or spare them. Slaughter the old men, the young men and women and little children, but do not come near anyone who has the mark. Now begin at My sanctuary.” So they began with the elders who were in front of the temple. -- Ezekiel 9:3-6

The Apostle Peter put it this way, “For the time has come for judgment to begin with God’s household; and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who disobey the gospel of God?” (1 Peter 4:17)

Inevitably, complacency will bring judgment. It will fall first upon the Church which should of all people be the least apathetic and the least comfortable. As a sort of professional outsider, I see congregation after congregation where the talk is about “winning souls” and “bringing in the harvest”. Sometimes the Church seems more like a multi-level marketing scheme than the Body of Christ. If we have superfluous cells in the human body that are multiplying, we consider it a pathological condition and call it cancer. “Winning souls” to what? -- to help fund a bigger building?

If I am not fully integrated into Christ, if I am not fully drawing my life from Him, then I am merely making myself more subject to judgment on a personal level. I am being blessed, as we said about Jacob yesterday, but to whom much is given of him much is required. Those unbelievers who serve God’s purposes in ignorance will be judged less harshly than the informed rebels, and we will, like the one-talent servant, think the Lord a hard Master.

Peter understood because he had asked Jesus the ultimately stupid Christian question, as the King James translates John 21:21, “Lord, and what shall this man do?” Peter had just been told -- not only his mission -- “Feed My sheep”, but his destiny and death as well, “Follow Me.”

Peter turns, sees John, and says, “What about him?”

Jesus replied to all of us who think it’s about somebody else, or think it’s about what we do instead of who we are: “What is that to you? As for you, follow Me.”