EB 5:8{If we have some dear one gone before, who "suffered many things," there is neither comfort nor help to be had by dwelling on them. He would be a poor comforter who reminded you of them, and brought them back in detail to your scarred memory. One would rather do one's utmost to turn your thoughts away from them, leading you to dwell only on the present bliss, and one would fain blot out your painful remembrance of a past which it does no good to recall. Not so does our Divine Comforter work. When He takes of the things of Christ and shows them to us, we feel that the things which He suffered are precious exceedingly, and the Spirit-wrought remembrance of them powerful beyond all else.
This pathetic plural is full of suggestion. How much may be hidden under the supposition of the Jews that He was nearly fifty years of age, when so little beyond thirty! How sharp must have been the experiences which graved such lines upon the visage so marred more than any man! Think of all that must have gone on under the surface of His home life, where "neither did His brethren believe in Him." Consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself. Think what temptation must have been to the Holy One, and what the concentration of malice and great rage when the prince of darkness went forth to do his worst against the lonely Son of Man, whom he knew to be the Son of God. Think of Jesus alone with Satan! Oh, what things He suffered before He came to the agony and bloody sweat, the cross and passion, which filled up the cup which His Father gave Him to drink for us men and for our salvation!
All this, that He might be made a perfect Savior, having learned by personal experience the suffering from which He saves as well as the suffering in which He supports and with which He sympathizes; having learned by personal experience the obedience by which "many shall be made righteous," and which is at once our justification and our example. All this, that He might be a perfect Captain of our salvation, knowing all and far more than all the hardships of the rank and file. All this, that He might be the Author of eternal salvation to them that obey Him, to you and me!
When thou passest through the waters,
I will be with thee!
Sure and sweet and all-sufficient
Shall His presence be.
All God's billows overwhelmed Him
In the great Atoning Day;
Now He only leads thee through them,
With thee all the way.