What happened to you was not your fault. You are not to blame. You did not deserve it. You did not ask for this. You should not be silenced. You are not worthless. You do not have to pretend like nothing happened. Nobody had the right to violate you. You are not responsible for what happened to you. You are not damaged goods. You were supposed to be treated with dignity and respect. You were the victim of assault and it was wrong. You were sinned against. Despite all the pain, healing can happen and there is hope.

While you may cognitively agree that hope is out there, you may still feel a major effect of the abuse — disgrace, a deep sense of filthy defilement encumbered with shame.

Disgrace is the opposite of grace. Grace is love that seeks you out even if you have nothing to give in return. Grace is being loved when you are, or feel, unlovable. Grace has the power to turn despair into hope. Grace listens, lifts up, cures, transforms, and heals.

Disgrace destroys, causes pain, deforms, and wounds. It alienates and isolates. Disgrace makes you feel worthless, rejected, unwanted, and repulsive — like a persona non grata (a “person without grace”). Disgrace silences and shuns. Your suffering of disgrace is only increased when others force your silence. The refusals of others to speak about abuse and listen to survivors tell the truth is a refusal to offer grace and healing.

To your sense of disgrace, God restores, heals, and re-creates through grace. A good short definition of grace is “one-way love.”¹ This is the opposite of your experience of assault, which was “one-way violence.” To your experience of one-way violence, God brings one-way love. The contrast between the two is staggering.

One-way love does not avoid you, but comes near; not because of personal merit, but because of your need. It is the lasting transformation that takes place in human experience. One-way love is the change agent you need for the pain you are experiencing.

Unfortunately, the message you hear most often is self-heal, self-love, and self-help. Abuse survivors are frequently told some version of the following: “One can will one’s well-being”² or “If you are willing to work hard and find good support, you can not only heal but thrive.”³ This sentiment is reflected in the remark that “No one can disgrace us but ourselves.”⁴

This is all horrible news. The reason this is bad news is that victims of abuse are rightfully, and understandably, broken over how they’ve been violated. But those in pain simply may not have the wherewithal to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” On a superficial level, self-esteem techniques and a tough “refusal to allow others to hurt me” tactic may work for the short term. But what happens for the abused person on a bad day, a bad month, or a bad year? Sin and its effects are similar to the laws of inertia: a person (or object) in motion will continue on that trajectory until acted upon by an outside force. If one is devastated by sin, a personal failure to rise above the effects of sin will simply create a snowball effect of shame. Hurting people need something from the outside to stop the downward spiral. Fortunately, grace floods in from the outside at the point when hope to change oneself is lost. Grace declares and promises that you will be healed. One-way love does not command “Heal thyself!” but declares “You will be healed!” Jeremiah 17:14 promises:

Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed;
save me, and I shall be saved,
for you are my praise.

God’s one-way love replaces self-love and is the true path to healing. This is amazingly good news and it highlights the contrast between disgrace and grace, or one-way violence and one-way love. God heals our wounds. Can you receive grace and be rid of your disgrace? With the gospel of Jesus Christ, the answer is yes. Between the Bible’s bookends of creation and restored creation is the unfolding story of redemption. Biblical creation begins in harmony, unity, and peace (shalom), but redemption was needed because, tragically, humanity rebelled and the result was disgrace and destruction — the vandalism of shalom. But because God is faithful and compassionate, he restores his fallen creation and responds with grace and redemption. This good news is fully expressed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and its scope is as “far as the curse is found.”⁵ Jesus is the redemptive work of God in our history, in our human flesh.

Martin Luther describes this good news: “God receives none but those who are forsaken, restores health to none but those who are sick, gives sight to none but the blind, and life to none but the dead. … He has mercy on none but the wretched and gives grace to none but those who are in disgrace.”⁶ This message of the gospel is for all but is particularly relevant to survivors of abuse because you know too well the depths of suffering and the overwhelming sense of disgrace. God applies grace to disgrace and redeems what is destroyed.

In the gospel of Jesus Christ, God demonstrates that he is for us and not against us. Everything we have as believers has been granted to us because of what Jesus has already done for us. God’s blessings are freely yours in Jesus Christ. Now and forever. All by grace. Grace is available because Jesus went through the valley of the shadow of death and rose from death. The gospel engages our life with all its pain, shame, rejection, lostness, sin, and death.

So now, to your pain God says, “You will be healed.” To your shame God says, “You can now come to me in confidence.” To your rejection God says, “You are accepted!” To your lostness God says, “You are found and I won’t ever let you go.” To your sin God says, “You are forgiven and I declare you pure and righteous.” To your death the gospel says, “You once were dead, but now you are alive.”

Because of his finished work, anyone who trusts in Jesus Christ can have this comfort in life and in death:

That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven: in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.⁷

The gospel of Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of God’s steadfast love that endures forever. Despite all the pain, healing can happen and there is hope.

In Christ,
Justin and Lindsey Holcomb

Notes:

1. Paul F.M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 64.
2. Marjorie Suchocki, The Fall to Violence: Original Sin in Relational Theology (New York: Continuum, 1994), 149.
3. Ellen Bass and Laura Davis, Beginning to Heal: A First Book for Men and Women Who Were Sexually Abused as Children (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 5.
4. This remark is attributed to Josh Billings, Henry Wheeler Shaw, and J.G. Holland.
5. Isaac Watts, Joy to the World! The Lord is come! (1719). This hymn reminds us that the gospel is good news to a world in which every aspect of the cosmos and our existence in it is twisted away from the intention of the Creator’s design by the powers of sin and death.
6. Martin Luther, The Seven Penitential Psalms, 1517, as quoted in Day by Day We Magnify Thee: Daily Readings (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1982), 321.
7. The Heidelberg Catechism, Question and Answer 1. ccel.org/creeds/heidelberg-cat.html.

Through these first few weeks of Lent, we have studied the four Comfortable Words, found in our Book of Common Prayer and designed to be delivered by the priest after the confession of sin.

We conclude the series with this post, but before we do, let’s take time for a quick review. The first Comfortable Word, Matthew 11:28, gives us God’s invitation to true rest. The second, John 3:16, presents God’s divine disposition to us as lost sheep in need of a good shepherd. The third, 1 Timothy 1:15, offers us an objective diagnosis for our sin problem.

The fourth Comfortable Word wraps everything up by bringing us God’s remedy for that problem: “But if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for our sins only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:1b-2, ESV).

Perfect Sacrifice

As we think about sin, many of us have an image of Jesus watching us like a hawk, ever ready to swoop down and punish us every time we sin. But the Comfortable Words present to us a patient Savior who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, forgiving sin. We learn from these Comfortable Words, which are summaries of major passages in Scripture, that Jesus is the good shepherd, alluring back his lost sheep by the power of his self-sacrificing love.

This fourth Comfortable Word tells us that we have a remedy for our sin problem. “Propitiation” means that Jesus Christ was the perfect sacrifice that has removed God’s wrath from us by directing it to himself. The cross is the pouring out of God’s judgment for our sins onto Christ, so we receive divine blessing instead. Because of his sacrifice, the “no” and curse of our breaking of the law goes to Jesus, so all of Jesus’ righteousness — the blessing of obeying the law, the merit, the “yes” — is attributed to us.

Jesus is now your advocate. He is the one who stands by your side. He is the one who answers for you when you are accused of being a sinner. And this is the fourth gift of the Comfortable Words: for believers, Jesus is not our judge, but our defense attorney.

The theological term for this is “justification.” People often say it’s “just as if I’d never sinned,” just as if I had always done God’s will and lived in perfect righteousness. “Justification” is a legal term that means being declared righteous, used specifically for what a judge does in a courtroom, acquitting defendants of charges by declaring them not guilty. But the Bible goes even further than this, declaring not only that you are not guilty, but also that your sins are forgiven and you are declared righteous.

Our sins are forgiven because of Jesus’ death; he took the consequences we deserved. We are declared righteous because Jesus obeyed the law perfectly, and his righteousness has been imputed or accounted to us as if we did the same thing. Romans 8:1 tells us that for those who are in Christ, there is now no condemnation. This means that final judgment has happened for those who trust in Christ. Your sin has already been judged on Christ, and there is now no more judgment left for you.

The legal declaration doesn’t make this abstract or impersonal, quite the opposite. This is deeply personal and life-giving. The God of the Bible wants justice because his law was broken. Wrath is God’s response to sin, and Jesus substitutes himself on our behalf to divert the wrath of God from us to himself. Jesus willingly becomes the recipient of God’s judgment in our place. He lays down his life.

Romans 3:21-25 and Hebrews 2:17 repeat this: We shall be saved from God’s wrath because Jesus is the propitiation for the sins of the people. “Propitiation” is also used elsewhere in Scripture. We see it in 1 John 4:10: “This is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

God happily diverts his wrath to Jesus because of his love for you. And how do you know that God loves you? Because Jesus was the sacrifice for your sins. Romans 5:8 says, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Unconditional Love

This love of God is not sentimental or weak. This love of God is efficacious. It redeems, embraces, and renews. It is a courageous love, restoring love, transforming love.

We can compare God’s love for us to a parent’s instinct for their child. If you’ve flown, you’ve heard the safety routine because they say it all the time: “If an oxygen mask drops out of the ceiling and you’re traveling with a child, make sure you put the mask on yourself first and then take care of your child.”

The airlines know parents’ instinct is to sacrifice themselves to protect their child. But airlines need the parents to take care of themselves first, against their instinct, so they can truly protect their child.

Our Comfortable Word is telling us that God sent his Son to redeem you. If you have faith in Christ, you are a child of God. And you need to know that God’s instinct for his children is just like that of other parents. In Christ, God is so for you as your defender that he’s protecting you from his own judgment. God is not looking for excuses to turn his back on you, because nothing separates you from the love of God.

Jesus is our advocate. And Jesus advocates before the Father so that you are forgiven of your sins and declared righteous. As an advocate, Jesus stands between you and the Father’s judgment. This is important because God judges justly; we really are guilty of sins against God and others, but Jesus took it all.

That’s what the cross is about: the outpouring of God’s judgment for you on Jesus. He took our place so the guilty could go free. That’s why 1 John 2 is so powerful: in the face of fear, anxiety, or condemnation, the presence of the advocate brings Jesus to mind. And the first advocate is the Holy Spirit. The presence of the advocate, the Holy Spirit, brings Jesus to mind. And it is Jesus the advocate who is the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus and his cross and resurrection are proofs of God’s love for you.

The unconditional love expressed in these four Comfortable Words reminds me of a Bible translator working with a people group in Cameroon. He knew vowels in their language ended in a, i, and u. But in looking at the word for love, he only found dva and dvi, but not dvu.

The local men told him dvu did not exist between humans because it referred to a love that would persist no matter what. He asked: “Can God dvu?”

Tears ran down their faces. “That would mean that God has committed to love us, even though we have sinned more than any other people,” they said.

One simple vowel beautifully captured radical grace. And that’s the meaning of all four of the Comfortable Words. Let us commend ourselves to Jesus our advocate, to his unconditional love and radical grace.

Note: A small part of the material for this post was influenced by “Divine Allurement: Cranmer’s Comfortable Words” by Ashley Null (The Latimer Trust, 2014).

In this installment of our Lenten survey of the Comfortable Words, a key part of our Anglican liturgy, let us examine the one that comes third, according to the order in which Archbishop Thomas Cranmer placed them in the Book of Common Prayer. As we have said, he placed them in a specific order and right after the confession of sin for a reason: He wanted us to know that Christ was the good shepherd, alluring back his lost sheep by the power of his self-sacrificing love.

The first Comfortable Word, Matthew 11:28, brings us God’s invitation to rest. The second, John 3:16, reveals God’s disposition to those who have come to him because they feel weary. And the third Comfortable Word provides an objective diagnosis for our problem: “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost” (1 Tim. 1:15, ESV).

Telling the Truth

This Comfortable Word shows us that humanity’s situation is not just the subjective feeling of burden but also the objective consequence of violating God’s law. It reveals that we humans are rebels against divine order, cut off from God’s peace, and under threat of divine wrath to come. Humanity’s refreshment can only come by addressing humanity’s sin, and dealing with our sin problem is clearly beyond our capability. Having been so weakened by sin’s power, we cannot cooperate with grace to achieve our salvation.

First Timothy makes plain that this is the reason Christ came into the world: to rescue, to save sinners. And if Christ came to save sinners, then other forms of salvation are futile. This is the gift of the third Comfortable Word: It tells us the truth about our situation. It diagnoses our sin-sickness with accuracy. And this is more important than most people realize.

The premise of the television show Family Feud is that you have two families feuding. At the very end of the show, the winning family gets to play “Fast Money,” in which two family members are each asked to guess the responses to five questions posed to 100 surveyed people. In one episode, the first question in the “Fast Money” round, posed to sisters Lauren and Lindsey, was “How many of the Ten Commandments have you broken this month?”

When the first contestant, Lindsey, replied, “Three,” host Steve Harvey and the audience chuckled. Then, when Lauren answered, “Seven,” Harvey was shocked into silence, rolling his eyes while the audience laughed again.

Later, the producers prepared to reveal the number of people who agreed with the answer “seven,” and Harvey again expressed his disbelief. “You said, ‘Seven’ — who does that?’”

Of course, the implied answer was “Well, nobody.” And as it turned out, the most frequent answer by 100 surveyed people to “How many of the Ten Commandments have you broken this month?” was almost as low: “One.”

That’s telling. People are okay admitting that they sin — but just a little. We’re sinners, but not huge sinners. And some people may not see themselves as sinners at all. I’m curious about how many of those 100 people would have answered “Zero.”

Growing in Humility

Regardless, this view of ourselves and our sin is far removed from a scriptural understanding of sin. The Bible expresses this in James 2:10: “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.” Imagine the shock if either of the contestants had answered “Ten” and, when the host responded in shock, she backed her answer by citing this verse of Scripture.

First Timothy 1:15 tells us about the breadth and depth of our feud with God. As Martin Luther explained, the recognition of sin is the beginning of salvation. The apostle Paul, who wrote 1 Timothy, said in the verses right before this Comfortable Word that he was a “blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent” of the church but that he had “received mercy” (v. 13). The grace of God overflowed toward him, he said in verse 14, and this led him to cite the faithful saying of 1 Timothy 1:15.

Paul’s testimony shows the truth of the verse “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” and he made it personal by saying, “I am the chief of those sinners, the foremost of those sinners.”

What’s amazing is that early on in the apostle’s ministry, he referred to himself as “the least of the apostles” (1 Cor. 15:9). That’s pretty humble; he’s the least of 11 or 12 other people. Then in the middle of his ministry, he calls himself “the very least of all the saints” (Eph. 3:8).

It’s as though he’s growing in humility: The more mercy he receives, the humbler he becomes. And now, at the end of his ministry, he calls himself the chief of sinners. The more he grows in being a recipient of mercy, the deeper his awareness of his sin.

In the face of such honestly about sinful guilt before God and humanity’s powerlessness to counter its corrupting influence, the only answer lies in divine action. That’s why this Comfortable Word focuses not so much on us and our sin but on Christ who came to save.

He delights in us. His love and adoration drive him to rescue us. Jesus willingly paid the ransom with his life. And he’s willing to free you from the prison you created. After all, he sacrificed himself for you.

This is the good news of the gospel. Christ died for you, for me, to pay the penalty of sin. Christ died for sins, once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous. The cross is substitution and sacrifice. The cross is God’s love for us.

Even as we recognize our sinfulness, may we too grow in humility as we realize Christ’s abiding love and enduring mercy toward us.

Note: A small part of the material for this post was influenced by “Divine Allurement: Cranmer’s Comfortable Words” by Ashley Null (The Latimer Trust, 2014).

We are continuing a Lenten study of the Comfortable Words, a vital part of our Anglican liturgy. These are four Scripture passages arranged in a specific order and meant to be read by the priest after the confession of sin. Last week, we studied the first Comfortable Word: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28, ESV).

Today, we’ll focus on the second Comfortable Word, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Somehow, we hold onto the idea that Jesus is annoyed with us and ticked that we keep coming back to him for forgiveness, because if we were really serious, we’d get it together. But the Comfortable Words present just the opposite: a patient Savior who is merciful, gracious, abounding in love and faithfulness, eager to forgive sin because he has paid the price. They cause us to focus on the heart of the gospel, that the Good Shepherd is bringing back his lost sheep by his self-sacrificing love. This second Comfortable Word captures that well.

God So Loved the World

While the first Comfortable Word focuses on the depth of human longing for good news, this one focuses on the depths of God’s longing to respond to our need, showing us that his disposition toward us is love. The divine desire and initiative to save his people lies at the very heart of this passage.

John 3:16 makes it clear that God the Father, moved by love, which is his very being, sent God the Son into the world to become the visible embodiment of the divine Good Shepherd. Jesus came to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10), gently freeing his lambs caught in the thicket of sin. He laid down his life so that in the end, he could bear his wandering creatures safely back home on his wounded shoulders.

Let’s examine this. Certain parts of this passage stand out. The first is “God so loved.” When the Bible talks about the love of God, it frequently compares it to parental love. John Calvin described this love as “lavish, fatherly liberality.”

One of Calvin’s favorite words about God’s love and disposition toward us is gratuitous — overabundance, too much: gratuitous mercy, gratuitous promise, gratuitous love, gratuitous favor and goodness. The depiction of God the Father is as an indulgent father, one who gives an overabundance of love, an overflow, over the top, more than we need. It’s not like God is scraping the bottom of a barrel of love and giving us the scraps he can find; rather, there is more than we need.

You may be thinking, “What if I don’t deserve it? What if there are things in my life that make it inappropriate that I should receive this love?”

In that is both the scandal and the point of Jesus saying, “God so loved the world.” This isn’t the first time John’s Gospel mentions “the world.” John 1:9-10 says Jesus was coming to the world, but the world did not know him and rejected him. So when we see that God so loved the world, the primary point should echo in our memory: He loved the world that was determined to rebel.

God’s heart is so determined that he still loves the very world that rejected him. He loved the world, and he still came to be a gift of the Father. This shows how expansive, how vast, this love actually is.

That He Gave His Only Son

Still another scandal is not just that God so loved the world, but that the Father gave the Son: the innocent to save the guilty. The innocent, only Son of God is given over to death so we can have life. “The only Son” means one of a kind, unique, which highlights the costliness of the price paid for us. First Peter 1:19 calls it “the precious blood of Christ.”

And why was this price paid? “So that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” We’re called to believe that Jesus was sent for us. His very purpose was to die upon the cross so that when we face the cross and all the images of how awful it is — the thorns on the brow, the nails in his hands and feet, the blood pooled beneath him — we believe that it’s the penalty for our sin that is on him, and it is the expression of his glory.

Jesus came to be a curse so that we might look to him and live, to believe that our sin is on him, and any barrier between us and God is gone. If we look at him and see our sin on him, God looks at him and pardons us. So now, we can look back at Jesus Christ as a double-take, focusing on him and not ourselves. We can see his glory and worship him for his kindness and love toward us.

Not Perish but Have Eternal Life

What does all this mean for you and me? It means at least one thing: No matter what we’ve done, God’s love for us in Christ is secure. All our failures, stumbling, sin and willful disobedience don’t change the fact that he loves us to the end. And if we have faith in his Son, Jesus Christ, his love is ours for eternity. We’re now free to live without the burden of sin because it’s been taken care of. Instead of some sort of morbid introspection, we can look to him who is our pardon. The game is no longer scorekeeping but worship.

One of my favorite hymns about the secure love of God, “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go,” was written by George Matheson. But there’s a sad story behind it. As a young man, Matheson had only partial vision, and he was engaged to marry the love of his life. All was going well with the engagement until he told his fiancée what he had just learned: He would soon be totally blind. Unwilling to be married to a blind man, she broke off their engagement, returned the ring, and left him. George’s spirit collapsed.

In the pain of that experience, he consoled himself by thinking of God’s love that is never limited, never conditional, never withdrawn, never uncertain, and never forsakes. And out of his heartache came the words to the hymn: “O love that wilt not let me go / I rest my weary soul in thee / I give thee back the life I owe / That in thine ocean depths its flow / May richer, fuller be.”

With Matheson’s fiancée, it was a love that quickly let him go. With God, it was a love that wouldn’t. And because of the love with which God loves us, there is nothing in all creation that will be able to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ (Rom. 8:38-39).

Let us trust in the one who loves us abundantly and gave his only Son over to death that we might live.

Note: A small part of the material for this post was influenced by “Divine Allurement: Cranmer’s Comfortable Words” by Ashley Null (The Latimer Trust, 2014).

Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who compiled the Book of Common Prayer, organized the Comfortable Words as he did because he wanted people to understand that Christ is the good shepherd, alluring back his lost sheep by the power of his self-sacrificing love.

This month, we’ll focus on the first Comfortable Word, found in Matthew 11:28: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (ESV).

Gentle Invitation

Included in this is a gentle invitation to weary humans because human misery comes from the captivity and destructive power of sin. We all carry this curse, although the particular sins and exhaustions may take different forms. And that’s why the invitation from Jesus is to all.

We feel weary and burdened by the guilt of sins that we commit. But that’s not the only burden we carry. We’re also weary because of the sins done against us and the effects of sin in the world around us: sickness, suffering, and death.

This first Comfortable Word acknowledges the depth of human longing for good news and our need for rest. We suffer from spiritual fatigue, the most readily apparent fruit of human sinfulness, but there is good news. God favors the weak, not the spiritually proud or arrogant, but the broken. Jesus embraces the meek and the broken, the humble ones who feel swamped with heavy burdens.

Martin Luther captured this in these words:

God receives none but those who are forsaken, restores health to none but those who are sick, gives sight to none but the blind and life to none but the dead. … He has mercy on none but the wretched and gives grace to none but those who are in disgrace.

This message of the gospel is for all because we are all weary and heavy-laden. It’s no small thing that Jesus spent so much time with tax collectors, lepers, outcasts, and other “sinners,” which is how they are referred to in the Gospels, just a catch-all phrase. In fact, he got the reputation of being a glutton and a drunkard because he hung out with people who would have been considered the spiritual losers of his day.

And this same message is all over the Bible: “A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Ps. 51:17b, NRSV). “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:3). “‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble’” (James 4:6b).

There’s an incredible moment at the beginning of Ernest Hemingway’s short story “The Capital of the World.” A father comes to Madrid searching for his estranged son, Paco, but turns up empty. In an act of desperation, the bereft man places a short ad in the city paper, and it says, “Paco, meet me at Hotel Montana, 12 noon, Tuesday. All will be well, and all is forgiven, Papa.”

When the man arrives at the hotel at the appointed time, he can’t believe his eyes. A crowd of 800 young men, all named Paco, await his arrival, all anxious for restoration and reconciliation with their father. This image captures the hope and desire of the broken-hearted and crushed in spirit, who need to hear from God, “All will be well, and all is forgiven. Come and rest.”

Present and Future Gift

One way God gives us rest in this life is in the forgiveness of our sin. As Romans 8:1 tells us, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

Another way God gives us rest is that he cares about the sins done to us. As others harm and mistreat us, God offers us healing and hope that one day, all will be well. Being his people establishes our identity and worth. In Zechariah 2:8, there’s a promise that says, “Truly, one who touches you touches the apple of my eye.”

“Touching” here refers to the harmful touching or plundering of God’s people, and this passage says that is tantamount to injuring God. “The apple of my eye” is a remarkable expression, describing something precious, easily injured, and vulnerable. To strike a blow at God’s people is to strike at God, wounding him in a most sensitive area.

We will be marked by one of three things in life: what we have done, which feels like guilt and condemnation; what’s been done to us, which is usually expressed in shame; or what Christ has done for us in his ministry of reconciliation, which brings to us forgiveness, hope, and rest.

And that is why this first Comfortable Word is so important. Whether we are weary from sin we’ve done or sin done to us, we will have eternal rest when God wipes every tear from our eyes. One day there will be no more mourning, death, crying, pain, weariness, or even burdens — but that is the rest to come.

There is also rest now. We are invited to cast all our anxieties and cares on God because he cares for us (1 Pet. 5:7). The peace of God that passes all understanding keeps our hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God (Phil. 4:7). And sometimes God takes some of the future rest, of eternal life in heaven with him, when everything is made right, and breaks into the right-now experience of our exhaustion by the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus invites us to himself. He’s not pointing us back to ourselves with advice on weariness management or techniques for rest maximization. Of course there are great techniques and advice for dealing with weariness in the here and now. Jesus is not opposed to those, but he’s addressing the deeper exhaustion we all experience. In that moment, it’s all about him and who he is, what he has done and his disposition toward us. He wants us to come to him.

To all of us who are burdened, exhausted by our sin or its effects, the first gift of the Comfortable Words is that God acknowledges our misery. We do not have to hide our longing and need for good news. Even better, God loves to respond and provide the rest we need.

Let us come to Jesus, and he will give us rest.

Note: Some of the material for this post was influenced by “Divine Allurement: Cranmer’s Comfortable Words” by Ashley Null (The Latimer Trust, 2014).