Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Does Jesus Christ worry? Is He concerned about what happens on earth, and does He care about the enormous human suffering that wars bring to so many people?
The Bible reveals Him as being fully human as well as divine, for His name is "Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us" (Matt. 1:23). Isaiah pictures Him as concerned, for "in all their [our] affliction He was [is] afflicted" (63:9). He complains of us, "Thou hast made Me to serve with thy sins, thou hast wearied Me with thine iniquities" (43:24).
When He ministered among us in person, "Jesus wept" (John 11:35) in sympathy with a family who mourned the death of a loved one (Lazarus), but also obviously in heart sympathy with that generation who were doomed to suffer the horrors of the Roman war that brought national ruin four decades later. There was nothing that Jesus could do to avert it because His own people were rejecting Him, and in a matter of days would expel Him from the world through crucifixion. But how can a rejected Savior function effectively as Prince of Peace?
When Jesus wept, it was in heart sympathy with all who suffer on earth. For sure, He is not happy for the agonies of many thousands.
Galatians 4:4 reveals Christ as intimately involved with us: "God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law." He was "made" to be something that He was not; He had to be "made under" the same sense of suffering, of yearning, of longing, that all of us are "under." This is because He was "sent" to "redeem them that [are] under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons" (vs. 5).
But is He helpless, as we are? No, in a world of intrigue and cruelty, He has organized an "underground" (as C. S. Lewis put it). Those who believe in Him are a part of this "great controversy between Christ and Satan."
For now we are to appreciate His intimate involvement with humanity, so we can grow in our intimate involvement with Him. We can know no comfort greater than that.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: February 16, 2003.
Copyright © 2013 by "Dial Daily Bread."
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