Empathy and Unity: Rejoicing and Weeping Together

Rejoice with them that do rejoice and weep with them that weep. Yeah, again you see it is a reaction. They are either rejoicing or weeping, other people, and what he's concerned about is our reaction to that. What happens to us when we see this and experience this in our contact with other people? [00:02:39]

To weep with those who weep is something that is more or less natural. It is most exceptional person who isn't touched at all by the sight of someone else weeping. By nature, by constitution, the natural man, however bad he may be, he feels some kind of response in him when someone is to be seen weeping. [00:03:48]

The ultimate problem with all of us, without a single exception, the ultimate problem with every human being is the problem of self, the problem of pride, and involved in pride, of course, is jealousy and envy. And that is why I'm trying to show you that the first of these two injunctions is easily the more difficult of the two. [00:05:30]

The Apostle, I suggest, puts this first in order to emphasize it and to challenge us with the more difficult before he puts the less difficult. Now it is something that one takes for granted, of course, that the Apostle in both cases, in both the joy and the sorrow, he's assuming that the cause of the joy and the sorrow must be something that is legitimate. [00:07:51]

The Apostle is very positive, and he says you must take positive pleasure in the rejoicing of your fellow Christian. You must really enter into it and be pleased with his success or whatever it is that is leading to his rejoicing. The negative is not enough. [00:10:38]

There is only one way whereby this becomes possible, and that is the work of the Holy Spirit in us. Nothing else can produce this at all. And how does he do it? Well, you see, this is the glory of the Christian salvation. It is the one thing that deals with the problem of self. [00:14:04]

We are not only delivered from self, we are also identified with the others. That's the marvelous thing. We become members of the same family. We belong to the same head. We belong to the same body. Now that's a vital part of this teaching. [00:15:14]

According to this teaching, nothing can happen to them without it's affecting you, both negatively and positively, both as regards the weeping and the rejoicing. You remember how Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 12, where he deals with this idea of the church as the body of Christ in greatest detail. [00:16:55]

There is no more thorough test of a profession of the Christian faith than just this. Oh, it's very much easier to be orthodox than it is to rejoice with them that do rejoice. It's very much easier for me to be right about every dot and common title of the faith to which I adhere. [00:21:15]

Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Now this is a little bit unfortunate as regards translation. The word condescend carries overtones, doesn't it? And it has become an objectionable word with us, and rightly so. So it would be better not to translate as condescend. [00:34:20]

There is a way of mixing with humble people which is sure patronage, patronizing, and it's despicable. It's thoroughly bad. That's why this word condescend must be taken right out. Your great people who deign to visit some lonely person, that's the antithesis of Christianity. [00:38:08]

The lack of this kind of thing that is accounting for the state of the church and for the fact that the masses are outside the church. You remember it was a t h at the early Christians, but it was a great compliment to see how these Christians love one another, and it is that kind of thing that still impresses the world. [00:44:47]