“Christ is such a pitiful One that He seeks out those that are cast down: He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.
He lays Himself out to succour them that are tempted, and therefore He does not hide himself from them, nor pass them by on the other side.
What an example is this for us! He devotes Himself to this divine business of comforting all such as mourn. He is Lord of all, yet makes Himself the servant of the weakest.
Whatever He may do with the strongest, He succours “them that are tempted.” (Heb. 2:18)
He does not throw up the business in disgust.
He does not grow cross or angry with them because they are so foolish as to give way to idle fears.
He does not tell them that it is all their nerves, and that they are stupid and silly, and ought to shake themselves out of such nonsense.
I have often heard people talk in that fashion, and I have half wished that they had felt a little twinge of depression themselves, just to put them into a more tender humour.
The Lord Jesus never overdrives a lame sheep, but He sets the bone, and carries the sheep on His shoulders, so tenderly compassionate is He. Here is His pity.
He has the right to succour them that are tempted, for they are His own, since He has bought them with His blood. The feeble, the weak, the trembling, the desponding, are His care, committed to Him by God.
He said, “Fear not, little flock.” (Luke 12:32) This shows that His flock is little and timid.
He says, “Fear not, little flock,” because they have great tendency to fear, and because He does not like to see them thus troubled.
He has bought them, and so He has the right to succour them, and preserve them to the end.”
–Charles H. Spurgeon, “The Suffering Saviour’s Sympathy,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, Vol. 33 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1887), 33: 416-417.
