The Empathy of God

"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin." Hebrews 4:15

The Bible tells us that long ago Satan rebelled against God and was thrown out of Heaven; "How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations (Isaiah 14:12)!" A relatively short time later mankind, influenced by Satan, also rebelled against God and was thrown out of the Garden of Eden; "So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken (Genesis 3:23)." After God had rescued the Jews from their slavery in Egypt and delivered the Ten Commandments to Moses, the people were afraid of God, stayed at a distance from Him and only wanted to hear from God through Moses; "They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die (Exodus 20:18-19).” Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, was denied by His people, called names, schemed against, betrayed by His friends and had plots against His life; "He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem (Isaiah 53:5)." Despite his boasting to the contrary, Peter denied knowing Jesus; "Meanwhile, as Simon Peter was standing by the fire warming himself, they asked him again, “You’re not one of his disciples, are you?”He denied it, saying, “No, I am not (John 18:25)."" What you see in all of this is that God was rejected by people and, in many cases, those people that He loved.

How many people today ask things like, "Where is God when it hurts?" Others write articles with titles like, "How to live when God is silent."  Unbelievers mock God by saying things like, "If God is love then why do people suffer so much?" At the root of all this is the idea that God is some out of touch deity who is sitting on His thrown, far away from us, and disinterested in what goes on down here. It is often concluded that if God exists at all He can't possibly understand what I'm going through. However, everyone of us has been rejected by others, betrayed by our friends, schemed against by our enemies, pushed away, ignored, not believed and left feeling abandoned and alone. But, I am here to say we do have a God who understands what we are going through. To empathize means the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. As a Christian we have the privilege of having a God who understands what we go through and shares the feelings we experience. When Jesus Christ was born He was called Immanuel which means, "God with us." God was with us, but it is also safe to say that God became one of us. Not only does He know what it is like to be tempted to sin, He also knows what it is like to be sinned against. Nearly everything we go through He has gone through as well. We have a God who is in touch with us, has suffered like us, been hurt like us and knows what it is like to be alone. The key that makes relationships work is to have something in common with the other person. We have something in common with our God. He knows exactly what it is like be human and go through the trials and tribulations of life. Because of this we can be confident that when we come to Him with our needs He will say, "I understand what your are going through" and then lead us to a greater knowledge of who He is and who we are in Him through faith in Jesus Christ.