Elections are coming up in both Canada and the United States. Some of the candidates are making an effort to show how they know and identify with voters. For instance, Sarah Palin has a child with Down’s Syndrome and tells voters if any of them have children with special needs, she understands their situation and will hear their voice.
In the political realm, reaching voters can be out of genuine concern, or it can be out of that desire for power which is only possible if people vote for you. In the spiritual realm, God calls me to serve people with His compassion and love for them, and in Christ He demonstrates to me that identification with the people I serve is important.
I’ve learned this from experience. One Bible class that I teach was attended by a woman with fetal alcohol syndrome. At mid-life, she has the problems of a young child in knowing her boundaries. I’ve never had that and not worked with anyone who has it. Yet I have been a self-centered child and understand the human tendency to make everything about me, so can relate to her at that level. God has shown me how to help her even thought I have not suffered from the same condition. However, if I had suffered from FAS and overcame those same problems, my input into her life would likely be stronger.
As for Jesus, Hebrews 2:10-11 says, “In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering. Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers.”
All three members of the Godhead are perfect, complete. They have not known the guilt of sin, the agonies of regret, or the pain of being human in a sinful world. These verses say that it was fitting or consistent with His sovereign creative power to put Jesus into this world in a human body that He might suffer the same things as we do. God deliberately chose to identify with us, to know our struggles and pain. While Jesus never sinned, He does know about temptation and pain, humiliation and sorrow. He was acquainted with grief, hungry, shed tears, and became angry.
Does that make a difference in my response to Him? I think so. If Bill Gates saw a person in poverty and gave them a healthy financial donation, it could be out of guilt, for personal reward, or perhaps pity. The recipient might be thankful but Bill would not be accessible. He would not likely feel much kinship with that poor person.
However, if Bill abandoned all his riches and lived a few years by the skin of his teeth in poverty and genuine struggle, then made that donation, the recipient would be drawn to him and Bill would also feel as if they were brothers of a kind because they both knew what it was like to be poor.
In a similar fashion, the Bible says, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.”
It also says that because of Jesus’ sacrifice for me, I am an heir of all things and what Jesus has becomes mine. That means I know His poverty and suffering, His grief over sin and pain, and His humiliation and sorrow, but I also experience God supplying “all my need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19). Scripture also says that everything that is the Lord’s is mine and that His riches are far greater than anything this world offers.
As for this matter of identification with others, I can do this in the same way that Jesus did it. He allowed God to put Him through the unimaginable suffering of leaving perfection to live in this world and experience what ordinary people experience. I also must surrender my life to whatever God has in mind for me. The things that I suffer ought to bring me closer to others and help me realize that it is by suffering God equips me to serve others.
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