Once
again, I slept in because of this miserable cold. However, instead of yesterday’s
God-limiting thoughts, I wondered how God would surprise me this morning. It is
rather fun to be surprised by God in a not-surprising kind of way.
It
began with the reminder, “Whoever abides
in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit.”[1] I realized that, if I abide in Christ about my own brokenness, he
will work through me to bear the fruit of healing in the lives of others. Yesterday’s
lessons of comfort to me are intended to turn into daily experiences of comfort
for others.
The
next reminder was that the church is made up of many different parts, with many
different functions.[2] Jesus gave many kinds of men to be many kinds of leaders, over a
church with many kinds of ministry, to many kinds of members.[3] The aim of the Christ-coordinated functioning of his body is that
the saints are equipped for “the work of
ministry.”[4] The work of ministry is “for
building up the body of Christ.”[5] The body of Christ will keep being built up “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of
the Son of God.”[6] This unity is qualified as the “mature
manhood”[7] of the “one new man,”[8] which is the church.
Jesus’
plan for his body, the church, is that we all work together in such ways that
it “makes the body grow so that it builds
itself up in love.”[9] Part of this body-life experience includes the way the church joins
God’s work in his ministry to the brokenhearted.[10] And, part of this church-wide fellowship of ministry must include
people bearing fruit in the very areas they have learned to abide in Christ. As
Paul stated things:
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father
of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 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. 5 For as we share
abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in
comfort too. 6 If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and
if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you
patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. 7 Our hope for you is
unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share
in our comfort.[11]
The
point right now is that, when God works to “comfort
us in all our affliction,” the aim of this work is, “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.”
This
is an incredible excuse remover! While our sark would be tempted to declare
bankruptcy in the comforting-others category, the new heart says that, if “we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings,”
it is not so that we can excuse ourselves from serving others in love, but
that, “through Christ we share more
abundantly in comfort too.” This means that, instead of acting like our
excessive suffering excuses us, it actually sets us up for even more comfort,
which means we are more “able to comfort”
other people in other afflictions, no excuses accepted.
This
means that, our expectation of God healing the brokenhearted and binding up our
wounds cannot end with us. We cannot picture a hospital ward in which all of us
are patients and Jesus the only Doctor. He is the Great Physician, yes, but the
very nature of his body, his church, this holy temple that is being built together as a dwelling place for God by
his Spirit,[12] is that he reproduces himself in all the rest of us so that all the
rest of us get healed and start doing the same things for others that he has
done for us.
To
be specific, Paul says that, “if we are
afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation.” The way I am to think of
all my afflictions, realizing that I fit the description of “those who are in any affliction,” as
much as anyone else, is that my afflictions set me up for God’s comfort and
salvation. This means that my experiences of God’s comfort and salvation is for
the comfort and salvation of any other believers God brings into my life.
When
I take this back to the lessons of yesterday, it includes these components:
·
God comforts me when I
am brokenhearted by being near to me, so that I can comfort others with the
nearness of Christ in me, the hope of glory. My ministry to others should leave
them feeling that Christ is near to them.[13]
·
God saves me when I am
crushed in spirit so that the way I am comforted with my salvation is for the
comfort and salvation of my brothers.[14]
·
The comfort I experience
when I know that God does not despise me in my broken-and-contrite-heart condition
becomes a comfort that others experience from me as my comfort causes them to
know that God does not despise them while their spirit and heart are broken.[15]
·
When I feel that my
brokenhearted condition is healed, and my wounds are bound up, I then pass this
comfort on to others as Jesus works through my part of the body of Christ to
heal other broken hearts, and bind up the wounds of my Christian family.[16]
·
When I experience God
dwelling with me in my contrite and lowly condition, and I feel him reviving my
spirit and heart, it will not be long before God connects me to other contrite
and lowly spirits in order to help them experience what it is like when God
dwells with us to revive our hearts and spirits together.[17]
·
Jesus brings good news
to my poverty, binds up my broken heart, proclaims liberty to my captivity,
opens my prison doors, proclaims the time of God’s favor, his promise of
vengeance against his enemies, comforts me when I mourn, granting me glory
instead of ashes, gladness instead of mourning, praise instead of a faint
spirit, rebuilt instead of ruined, and raised up instead of devastated, so that
“those who are in any affliction,”
receive the same comforts through me.[18]
While
a consideration of such things raises all kinds of questions of the
how-to-do-it variety, our putting-these-things-into-practice[19] does not begin with how, but who. When the “who” is the Father
speaking to us through his word, Jesus leading us as our head, and the Spirit
fellowshipping with us for our growth in Christ, then we say “Yes, Lord!”
before having any clue how to do it. As the disciples followed Jesus to Jerusalem,
still not understanding what he meant by his impending arrest, suffering, and
death by crucifixion, we can follow Jesus wherever he leads, and whatever his
voice tells us to do.[20] If we will follow, he will make apparent what to do next, and how
to both receive and share comfort in the body of Christ.
In
practical terms, I see this as in a mixed-up-only-God-could-do-it kind of way. Since
the body of Christ is made up of many parts,[21] and we know that these parts will be in all kinds of different
stages of freedom and maturity in Jesus Christ, we can expect there to be a
whole range of experiences of people receiving and giving comfort to one
another. We can expect the unexpected. We can expect people who appear the most
broken to receive healing in such a way that it immediately returns blessing
and comfort on those who participated in that work of God. We can expect to
come together in the limitations of what we know, only to find that God had
much more planned for a particular time of fellowship than what anyone could
have imagined.
After
all, we are dealing with, “the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We
know by faith that he is, “the Father of
mercies and God of all comfort.” This means that he “comforts us in all our affliction.” Therefore, what we expect these
realities to do to us, and through us, is based on the limitless perfections of
God, not the limitations of our brokenhearted condition.
Once
we see our brokenheartedness in relation to God’s glory, we can no longer think
that he would comfort us for our benefit alone. That is excessively small for
the infinite and eternal immensity of the Triune. When he comforts us, it makes
us like him. He “comforts us in all our
affliction,” which means that, for us to be like him, we would have to “comfort those who are in any affliction,
with the comfort which we ourselves are comforted by God.”
If
we will walk by faith that God is working for our comfort, and for the comfort
of others through us, and ask God to save us from limiting our expectations to
ourselves and our sarkiness, he will work “comfort
and salvation” into whole gatherings of believers so that many expressions
of the body of Christ will feel the togetherness of God returning us to joy.[22]
Paul
gives us an example he clearly expects us to follow. When he said, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ,”[23] he surely expected us to keep that in mind whenever he showed ways
he was imitating Christ. Since he was imitating Christ by comforting others in
the same way he had experienced Christ’s comforts, we can take to heart that
both ourselves individually within the body of Christ, and our particular
gathering of the body of Christ fellowshipping together, can imitate Paul in
his imitation of our Savior. Jesus tells us how it is done, and Paul shows us
how it is done, so we have everything we need to do it.[24]
With
that in mind, when Paul says, “Our hope
for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will
also share in our comfort,”[25] we can have the same hope; even when we can’t imagine how our own
sufferings could ever feel like comfort. Tell God you’re “in” for the kind of
body-life that receives and gives comfort the way God has determined and
designed, and something will happen to show you the next step in that experience.
© 2014 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
[1]
John 15:5
[2]
I Corinthians 12 and 14 give a clear picture of what this looks like.
[3]
Ephesians 4:11-12, with Ephesians 4:11-16 as the context.
[4]
Ephesians 4:12
[5]
Ephesians 4:12
[6]
Ephesians 4:13
[7]
Ephesians 4:13
[8]
Ephesians 2:14-16
[9]
Ephesians 4:16
[10]
God’s ministry to the brokenhearted was my focus in my previous blog post: http://in2freedom.blogspot.ca/2014/09/pastoral-ponderings-genuine-blessing.html
[11]
II Corinthians 1:1-7
[12]
Ephesians 2:19-22
[13]
Psalm 34:18; Colossians 1:27
[14]
Psalm 34:18; II Corinthians 1:6
[15]
Psalm 51:17
[16]
Psalm 147:3
[17]
Isaiah 57:15
[18]
Isaiah 61:1-4. While I am looking at this from the personal viewpoint of how
God ministered these things to my heart, I keep it all in the context that I am
just one part of the body of Christ doing these things in fellowship with all
the rest of the body of Christ. Within Jesus’ body, there will be many degrees
of experience of God’s healing for the brokenhearted, and passing on the
comforts we have received to others within the body.
[19]
Matthew 7:24-27
[20]
John 10:27
[21]
I Corinthians 12:20
[22]
John 15:11 is one of man passages revealing God’s desires for our joy in Jesus Christ.
[23]
I Corinthians 11:1
[24]
II Peter 1:3-11 gives a glorious description of ways God enables us to be like
him in the way we comfort one another.
[25]
II Corinthians 1:7
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