2 Corinthians 1:3-4 Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort;… We are all engaged in the great conflict between right and wrong. To the Christian, often, and not unnaturally, either from the weariness of the struggle or the depressing sense of failure, there comes an overwhelming weight of sorrow. How is the soul to be supported? By "the comfort of God." It is that blessed truth which haunts the heart of St. Paul throughout the whole of this Epistle. Examine this question of comfort. I. CHRIST IS THE ONE MEDIATOR. IT IS THROUGH HIM THE COMFORT COMES. How? 1. From His loyalty to truth. There are those who attempt to soothe the conscience by making light of sin. Such cannot comfort. Sin is, in its essence, uneasy disturbance. "The wicked are like a troubled sea, they cannot rest." Man is too near God to find comfort in a lie. Our Master knew it. And how unflinchingly, minutely true His life was! How awful are His warnings of the consequences of persistent sin! And, therefore, how sweet His consolations! How severe His rebukes to the self-righteous, and therefore restless! Yet Mary Magdalene, with all her loads of guilt, lay down before Him and kissed His sacred feet, and felt the kindness of His comfort. As the Master, so the servant; as Christ, so His Church. Why do men so often hate her? Because she makes no compromises. She refuses to "daub with untempered mortar." Sin, she says, is always disastrous. Moral laws, she says, are constant. "As a man sows, so shall he reap." As real as sin, so real must be penitence. No short cuts; this is the one path to pardon. Truth is the path to comfort. Sin does matter. Turn from it — to the light of His countenance, to the sweetness of the comfort of God. 2. By infusing hope. Hope rests upon a promise and a fact. The fact is, that entire drama of tenderness and power which is summed up in the Passion of Christ. Dark and sad enough is the journey of life, but this is like the after-glow along the battlements of evening clouds, which promises, when night is passed, a brilliant morning; like the first note of the bird in winter that warbles of a coming spring, this lifts the immortal spirit above the pressure of the things of time, and enables the soul to appropriate to itself the good gifts of God. "Loved me, gave Himself for me" — there is supernatural hope. This invigorates the failing nature; it is "the comfort of God." 3. From the genuine living sympathy of Christ. The reality of that sympathy depends, of course, upon the perfection of His human nature, the power of it upon the truth of His Godhead. In several experiences our blessed Master has gained the necessary acquaintance with our needs. (1) None like Himself has known the exceeding horror of sin. Sooner or later every child of Adam knows that. But in the agony at Gethsemane, and in the dereliction on the Cross, pure human nature felt the whole force and fierceness of the assaults of evil. (2) He knows the reality and pain of temptation. "He suffered being tempted."(3) .None more acutely than He felt the transitoriness of human happiness and human life. By all the quiet hours at Nazareth, at Bethany, etc., He knew the contrasting sadness of scattered friends and darkened days, and the keenness of the Cross. (4) He underwent the darkness and horror of the grave. Struggling soul, assaulted by fierce temptation; sin-laden soul, bowed down and fainting under a sense of failure; sorrowing soul, bewildered with a paralysis of trouble; dying soul, shrinking from the separation and the gloom of the grave, look up; He feels for thine anguish: look up; in that sympathy is comfort. II. HOW DOES THIS COMFORT, WHICH SPRINGS FROM HIS MIGHTY MEDIATION, COME HOME TO US? 1. From the sweetness of the grace of penitence. Sin — your sin — was rebellion. His love has penetrated thy soul; the tears of penitence have come. Sin was all self, penitence is all God. But at first, how sharp the sense of shame I Then He came — "God in the face of Jesus Christ." What was the cry? "Wash me throughly from my iniquity," etc. It was pain, this penitence — searching, piercing; but what is this inner sense of joy? The presence of Jesus, the comfort of God. 2. From the consecration of sorrow. Sorrow is the fact of facts. Strange mystery; Christ has consecrated sorrow. He has made it the path to victory. "The Valley of Achor" becomes a "door of hope." 3. By the blessedness of prayer. To persevere in prayer is surely and at last to know the comfort of God. (Canon Knox-Little.) Parallel Verses KJV: Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; |
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