Hebrews 13:3 Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body. There are, as we think, two very different, but both highly important principles here asserted: the principle of fellowship, and the principle of forethought. That of fellowship, for we are to feel as though bound with them in bonds: that of forethought, for we are to remember that we ourselves are also in the body, and therefore exposed to the adversities which claim our sympathy in others. Or to expound our text by the motive rather than the principle it puts forth, there are here two reasons or inducements suggested by the apostle, why Christians should be earnest in works of Christian love; the one is derived from their intimate connection with the suffering, the other from their own liability to similar visitations. I. St. Paul may here be said to go even beyond what he has laid down in Romans 12:15. He requires something more than sympathy as commonly understood. One man is said to sympathise with another, who is pained when and because theft other is pained: and sympathy, as thus understood, is little more than pity or commiseration. But to suffer with another, which is actually to sympathise, goes much beyond the weeping with another; it is making the griefs of that other mine own, so that the wound is in my heart as well as in his. The members of one family actually sympathise and suffer themselves, when death has come in and snatched away one from their circle; the loss is a common loss, attecting all equally, and the sorrow of each is literally the sorrow of every other. According to the Scriptural idea Christians constitute but one body, the mystical body of Christ; and if this be the application of the acknowledged principle, that "if one member suffer all the members suffer with it," it follows that every Christian, in the measure which he has attained towards perfection, would seem to bear in his own person the very sufferings, and to receive in his own person the very blessings allotted to those who have like precious faith with himself. And when we think how deficient we are even in such sympathy as is generally understood by the world, and which would result from universal brotherhood, we may well be staggered at finding, that the Christian standard is yet vastly higher, and that universal brotherhood would be but a stage towards universal membership. But what an image does it give us of the condition of the world, to suppose all men actuated by the consciousness of being members one of another. Beyond nature, we confess it, but not beyond grace; and the Christian is not to be content, until in relieving the distressed lie can feel that he acts on the great principle of membership. He must see to it, that he has part in the bearing, as well as in the relieving the calamity. His relieving is to be the result of his bearing; he is to relieve, that is, as one who is relieving himself, with all that activity and all that perseverance which our own personal interests are sure to elicit. II. St. Paul descends to a lower and yet not wholly different ground: he descends from Christian membership, and takes his position on that of our own exposure to misfortunes. "As being yourselves also in the body!" What an amount of motive is gathered into these simple words! It has been one of the natural, and, we might almost say, necessary consequences on the combination of men into societies, presenting almost every possible variety of condition and circumstances, that there has been a comparative losing sight of the equal liability of all, to the several ills to which flesh is heir. It is very difficult not to fancy that the man of large ancestral revenues has an exemption from the contingencies and changes of want, which beset the poor peasant that tills one of its fields. It might sound to him as a threat, whether of ignorance or insult, that it should thus be implied, that notwithstanding all his state, and all his abundance, he might come to want the morsel which we ask him to bestow. And, of course, it does need a very thorough and practical recognition of the truth, that "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof," to be able to put aside all the appearances of security and independence, which hoarded wealth furnishes, and to view in every man, whatsoever his circumstances, a pensioner on the bounty of that omnipotent Parent, who "openeth His hand, and satisfieth the desire of every living thing." I would rather have the security against want, which the meanest of our villagers enjoys, whose daily bread is the subject of daily prayer and daily toil, than that of the foremost of our capitalists, who in any way gives indulgence to the sentiment of the rich man in the parable; "Soul, thou hast goods laid up for many years." The one, indeed, has a security — the security of a prayerful dependence on God; whereas the other has no security whatever, but lies exposed to the peril of being punished for presumption. And it matters not to us, what may be the worhtly circumstances of any, nor how far they may seem to remove him from liability to poverty. If he be a man, he may come to be a starving man; and that, too, without any of those explicable occurrences and reverses, which seem to mark God's special interference to bring round an unlooked-for catastrophe. There ought, therefore, to be to him as much cogency as to the man whose property seems jeopardised, in the motive of being himself in the body, when it is for the relief of the actually destitute that we appeal to his bounty. And this is, perhaps, the only case in which there is even the appearance of exemption from liability to the misfortunes with which we see others oppressed. It cannot be said that any one form of sorrow is appropriated to this class of men, and. warded off from that; all are accessible through the same channels, and all are capable of the same ills. And is there not in consequence the greatest cogency, whosoever be the party addressed and whatsoever the affliction which asks to be remembered, in the motive of being in the body? It is the enlisting of selfishness on the side of the afflicted, and calling on us to be merciful if we would have mercy ourselves. Inexpressibly bitter would it be if living to be oppressed and deserted ourselves and to ask in vain for succour and for sympathy, we should have to remember how in our own sunshine we had cared nothing for those over whom darkness had gathered, and to feel that we were but reaping the harvest of which our own want of charity had sown all the seeds. (H. Melvill, B. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body. |
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