It says of our Lord, “He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up” (Luke 4:16). Then it says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised” (Luke 4:18). All of these sad conditions were found in the place where our Lord had been brought up.
How He must have felt those things through His childhood days—to see all of the suffering around Him and yet not to heal or relieve them, it not being yet the time for the Father to have Him do so.
He groaned in spirit at graves and wept with those that wept. He felt all of this and then went into death that in a coming day these things might be forever put away. All of these experiences during the lifetime of our Lord perfected Him for His present service—that of a sympathizing High Priest (Heb. 2:17-18; 4:15-16).
Now it is the privilege of those who love Him to pass through those experiences of groaning and sorrow, too, as we await the redemption of these bodies of humiliation (Rom. 8:23). In trials we experience the comfort of God and gain an experience by which we are enabled to comfort others. “Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God” (2 Cor. 1:4). “Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion [sympathizing] one of another” (1 Peter 3:8).
H. Short