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Tribulation must needs be. It is impossible for a child of light and
truth to go through the world of darkness and of evil without, at some time
or another, coming into collision with its principles. Practically every
writer in the New Testament testifies to this close relationship of
discipleship and endurance:
'We should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us
not, because it knew Him not ... marvel not, my brethren, if the world
hate you' (1 John 3:1,13)
'If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you.
If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye
are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore
the world hateth you' (John 15:18,19 also 17:14).
Such is the testimony of John. Peter has much to say about the
close relationship of discipleship and sufferings in his epistles. He
says among other things:
'Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to
try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you' (1 Pet. 4:12),
and goes on to speak of these trials as the partaking of Christ's sufferings,
being reproached for the name of Christ, suffering as a Christian, and
suffering according to the will of God (1 Pet. 4:13 -19).
James stresses the fact of divers temptations in relation to the
perfecting of the believer (James 1:2 -4,12). The testimony of Paul is
varied and full, as has been under our notice during this study. In 2
Corinthians he realizes that his apostleship involves much more than teaching
and preaching; it involves sympathy in its fullest sense. Sympathy at times
is conventional, and there is no call to condemn this lighter mode of
expression, for if we had to enter into the griefs and sorrows of all our
acquaintances, life here below would soon become impossible. There is a
sympathy however that fulfils the literal meaning of the word.
Sympathy comes into English from sumpatheo. Sum meaning 'together
with', patheo 'to suffer'. In Hebrews 4:15 we read of Christ, as the High
Priest, Who is not One that cannot be touched with the feeling of our
infirmities, literally, 'unable to sympathize with our infirmities'. The
word occurs again in Hebrews 10:34, 'Ye had compassion of me in my bonds',
and while the present usage of 'compassion' makes it rather a synonym for
'pity', the origin of the word is plainly the same as sympathy, com being the
Latin form of sum 'with', and 'passion' the Latin form of pascho, 'suffer'.
To truly sympathize with anyone necessitates that one has passed through
similar experiences. So, it is written of Christ, in Hebrews 4:15 that He
had been in all points tempted as we are. He knew by experience as a man and
in the flesh, not merely as God Who knows all things without the necessity of
experience.
Paul was able to comfort those who were in trouble by the very comfort
he had received from God. In further explanation of this he continued:
'For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also
aboundeth by Christ' (2 Cor. 1:5).
It will help us to see this verse more literally rendered: