When hardships occur, it is both the privileged and responsibility of the believer to find comfort in God. Daunting as this may seem at the time, there is great reward for the exercise. But it is important to remember that receiving comfort of God in adversity is not primarily an activity of the believer in which God is merely a passive, unsympathetic, and impersonal reality to be accepted. Rather, God himself takes it upon himself to aid the believer in this response, becoming the active, sympathetic, and personal entity to which the believer responds. Like unto his very nature, God acts toward the believer in trinitarian fashion: with each of the persons of the Godhead fulfilling their specific role to accomplish their shared purpose. The very God of heaven engages all his being to comfort a believer through suffering, stimulating worship and faith in the hearts of his people.
God the Father comforts a believer with suffering by being the primary cause and ordainer of all that occurs in the life of a believer. He does all things after the counsel of his own will, and no one stays his hand. Evil and good, natural laws and man-made schemes, joys and sorrows are all made to serve his over-arching purpose. As the familiar passage in Romans 8:28 teaches us, “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” Taken by itself, this can oft-times be less than comforting, at least when the trial is near and recent. But this is the basis for all the comfort that follows, though it seems distant and ephemeral. This trial was not random, nor did it come from the hand of one who means ill: it is the result of the predetermination of a good God, who loves you and wishes to do you good. From this loving predetermination springs the comforting activity of the Son and Spirit.
The Son comforts the believer in trouble by bearing their suffering himself, as only a God-Man could. As a man, he “in all points tempted like as we are.” He suffered all the hardships of mankind, but it is more personal than that. As Isaiah says, he bore OUR grief and carried OUR sorrow. In all THEIR affliction he was afflicted. This is a great mystery, but the Father did not simply allow the son to experience general human adversity to make him “like unto his brethren,” but purposed with the same wisdom, love, and power, to place upon his Son the very sorrows he brings to you. Literally, this very sorrow which you bear right now had been purposed for Christ before time began, and he bears it as you do; not a similar trial, not the same kind of adversity, but this very thing. And lest you forget, our Christ is not only man, but God. His sympathy is not a past tense fact which can encourage, it is a present reality. The all-knowing, all-seeing God-Man stands in heaven for you today. He knows every aspect of your sorrow, and bears your specific grief in the fullest possible sense, more than your feeble understanding allows you to bear. And yet, he bears it with perfect sympathy, knowing the anguish of soul it causes even more than you. The Father purposed this for your good, and ordained that the Son should bear it all as well. And these two, being one, perfectly commune with each other, that purpose and sympathy may be combined in a way we cannot ever fully comprehend.
Proceeding from the predetermination of the Father and the sympathetic ministry of the Son, the Spirit is the agent of present, real comfort for the believer in adversity. The Spirit is not like a pain pill, which one takes to find relief when the symptoms of his pain match the beneficial effects of the medicine, but he gives specific and calibrated comfort with all the sovereign knowledge and loving sympathy of the Godhead. He is the Spirit of the Father, he knows what God has ordained, what ends God will accomplish, and what is to follow. Who better to comfort you, and provide timely, situational grace to your situation? He is also the Spirit of Christ, he knows how to comfort men, for he comforted Christ in all his afflictions. Everything Christ did on earth was in the power of the Spirit, and now that very same Spirit rests upon you. Cannot the Spirit that comforted Christ in Gethsemane comfort you? When Christ bore your specific affliction, the Spirit was the agent of divine comfort in helping him bear it. When God ordained that you and Christ should bear it, the same wisdom ordained the Spirit to give precisely the comfort you need. Yea more, the Spirit is in you, and knows precisely what to request on your behalf. He knows your infirmities intimately, and pleads with the Father and the Son on your behalf with groanings that cannot be uttered.
This adversity you face is grievous, but it is pre-meditated by the triune God for your comfort and glory. He arranged all the circumstances in his sovereignty, bore all you now suffer himself to an even greater degree than you, and takes upon himself the task of meeting all your needs according to the riches of his grace. In who else could such sovereignty, sympathy, and comfort be wedded in such perfect union? Who is a God like our God? This was no mere whim, but part of a carefully orchestrated plan on the part of God to bless you by himself, with himself. You need not ransack the scriptures to find a reason for comfort. You need not work up a mask of positivity, you need not imagine purposes or good things that might be; rather simply wonder at the God who does not merely comfort you in adversity, but engages his whole being in a grand effort to bless you THROUGH adversity. And behold, oh man, what great blessing God has ordained to give you through this suffering: Himself. Nothing less would do for the darlings of heaven. Cling to him, you sufferer, run to him, you fearful. rest in him, you weary; for your suffering, fears, and weariness have been specifically crafted for just that purpose. “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen”
