Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.
Romans 12:15 calls for heartfelt sympathy that enters fully into both the gladness and the grief of others. It is practical instruction for daily Christian love, to be lived out as believers dwell together as members of one body, each doing his appointed work with care for one another. Jesus lived this fully, with matchless tenderness entering into the feelings of others, sorrowing with the sorrowful and sharing the joy of the joyful, and those who follow Him must let that example shape their character. Received through union with Him, His grace and love move believers to share the feelings of others, suffering with those who suffer and rejoicing with those who rejoice with deep tenderness for the weak and distressed. For God's workers this means cheerful, humble, cooperative service under Christ, showing kindness, courtesy, and unselfish love by personal care for the poor, sick, bereaved, and tried, and even by tender courtesy toward opposers.
Meaning and Romans Context
The verse calls for sympathy that enters into the feelings of others by sharing both in their happiness and in their sorrow. It is practical instruction for the life of Christian love, to be carried out in daily life as believers live together in Christ. That living together means serving as members of one body, each doing the work given to him, and showing practical love and care for one another in shared joys and sorrows.
It lays down one of the principles for the conduct of Christians toward one another, requiring them as members of the heavenly family to help and strengthen each other in joy and in sorrow. By so helping one another they keep working together to overcome as Christ overcame and to win heaven. It belongs to Romans 12, which sets forth religious duty and is for the whole church to study. Its meaning is that every member of the church has a work to do, with different members fitted by capability for different classes of work, all blending together into a complete whole.
It teaches the church in every place not to shut up within self but to love one another as brethren with kindness and courtesy. Each is to bring a different gift to find its proper place, so that all grow together into a holy temple in the Lord. This excludes judging a brother or putting a stumbling block in his way, since all must stand before the judgment seat of God and give account of self to God. The practical instruction of Romans 12, including this verse, must be brought into daily life, and living it shows true belief while failure to live it shows spurious faith by the daily exhibition of character.
Keeping it means showing sincerity by pure words, clean words, words full of sympathy, tenderness, and love. Keeping it does not end there, for those out of the right way also need words of reproof and sharp rebuke to bring them back. It belongs to moral renovation in every heart, to family religion and family holiness honored as never before, to having put on Christ, to being transformed by the renewing of the mind, and to proving by experience what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God in preparing a people to meet God. Romans 12 lays down principles that men of God's appointment must carefully study and obey by being doers of the Word in small matters as well as large if they are to be sustained. Neglect brings positive danger, for Satan tries by every device to weaken them by making them exalted in their own opinion and thus gaining power over them, while God, who is high and lifted up, uses men as His instruments only as long as they work humbly, seeking wisdom from Him.
Christ's Sympathetic Example
Jesus lived this call fully, entering into the feelings of others with matchless tenderness. Those who sincerely follow Him must let that example deeply shape character. By learning the lessons He teaches they overcome natural self-centeredness and opinionatedness, partake of His nature and live His life. They show that sympathy in kindly words and acts that make the path easier for weary feet.
His tender heart responds in sympathy to human sorrow and joy, weeping with those who weep and rejoicing with those who rejoice. He is the example for sharing sorrow, for He wept with those who wept and was touched by their suffering. Those entrusted with responsibility are therefore to be tender toward the weak, tempted, and tried, treating their cases as their own and ministering to them with care.
The verse pictures His pity, courtesy, and tender sympathy, who entered into the feelings of others and, touched with the feeling of their infirmities, sorrowed with the sorrowful and shared the joy of the joyful. Ministers of the gospel must study this example of their Master. Those who educate their minds to dwell on His perfections and perfection will represent Him to the world and have an influence on the character of His followers.
He is the example for everyone placed in a position of trust, who needs the daily subduing influence of the Spirit of God on the heart to live it out. To weep with those who weep means to be afflicted in all their afflictions and to be touched with the feeling of their infirmities. Christ does this as a tender and faithful High Priest who makes the cases of tempted and tried people His own and ministers to them. He carefully nourishes the weak ones of the flock with the manna He has supplied and educates them not to look to and trust in men whatever their calling.
Union With Christ
Union with Christ fills the heart with His grace and places the life under His controlling will, and that love moves the believer to enter into the feelings of others, suffering with those who suffer and rejoicing with those who rejoice. This sharing of joy and sorrow is accompanied by deep tenderness toward everyone who is weak, grieving, sorrowful, or distressed. Such compassionate response does not arise from nature but from abiding in Him and from a heart filled with His grace.
God's goodness and forbearance and self-sacrificing love toward sinful people calls everyone who discerns His grace to show the same liberal sympathy to others. That sympathy enters with matchless tenderness into the feelings of the oppressed soul, sharing sorrow with those who sorrow and joy with those who rejoice in Christ's love, following the wonderful example of Christ's life. This example must have a deep influence upon the character of all who love God and keep His commandments. The same sorrow-sharing and joy-sharing belongs to those who cultivate sincerity and fervent piety for the lost race for whose redemption Christ suffered and died, ever looking unto Jesus and studying what He would do if in their place, and this watchfulness keeps from grievous mistakes.
This sympathy comes through union with Him and partaking of the divine nature, revealing the likeness of the divine Lord and glorifying God in body and spirit. It makes believers always willing to reach forth a helping hand to those in need of relief. Christ lived it with a heart ever touched with pity at human woe, weeping over sorrow and suffering on every hand and groaning in spirit for the tried and tempted. He carried it to dying on the cross of Calvary to lift the penalty of transgression and make salvation possible, refusing to fail or become discouraged but believing and pressing forward so that others might gain eternal life. This affable, compassionate sympathy is the outworking of the inner spiritual life, and by it the believer represents Christ, reflects the joy of the Lord, and reveals the beauty of the character of the risen Lord.
Sympathetic Ministry and Leadership
God's workers are called to cheerfulness that looks on the bright side, and to unity, sympathy, kindness, and unselfish love expressed in sharing the joy of those who are joyful and the tears of those who are sorrowful. That sharing means entering fully into the joys and sorrows of brethren as part of sober, humble, cooperative service under Christ's yoke. It forbids thinking of self more highly than one ought to think and working as a distinct whole apart from brethren. It requires self-denying, humble leadership rather than proud, dictatorial independence, for as the perfection of the physical body depends on the perfection of the individual organs, so the perfection of the spiritual body depends on each member sympathizing and uniting with the others in their work.
It is practical instruction to be obeyed by a change of attitude and by keeping self under control. Practicing it keeps a person useful and able to reach the standard of perfection, and past success will not be lost if its warning is heeded. This comes through intelligent, pure, cordial belief in the grace of Christ which brings salvation to all and places the feet on the eternal Rock. Care for others includes sharing their feelings, being glad with the glad and bringing comfort to the grieving. This calls for close, personal, sympathetic ministry alongside practical care for people's needs, including the poor, the sick, the bereaved, and the inexperienced.
Believers share one another's joys and sorrows, rejoicing when others rejoice and mourning with them in their trials. That fellowship includes caring for one who is suffering and seeking to soothe and help in affliction. It gives sympathy and practical care rather than leaving a person to bear grief and illness alone. It means sharing in the joy and sorrow of others through practical sympathy and helpfulness, with kindness, tenderness, and courtesy. All are linked together by the cross and none is independent, so there is to be mutual forbearance, especially toward those who love the Lord Jesus, bearing one another's burdens even while each carries his own.
Such helping includes relieving the poor, visiting the sick, comforting the sorrowing and bereaved, counseling the inexperienced, encouraging the fainthearted, and making the path safe for the weak, with harsh speech restrained and eyes fixed on Jesus. Helping in this way also helps the helper and opens new experience. Christian sympathy is expressed through personal, considerate care, in which kind words and small acts of attention can refresh and strengthen people facing hardship. Those small attentions can ease temptation and doubt and open hearts to Christ. Sharing the sorrows of others by lightening their burdens and feeling their distress is an obligation grounded in Christ's life and teaching, not a matter of personal choice.
It requires replacing natural, self-centered feelings with Christlike love, goodwill, nobility, and self-sacrifice. Christians, including church leaders, are to share in the sorrow and joy of others. Ministers who examine people seeking church membership are to show this sympathy rather than cold criticism, and failure to do so reflects a lack of the compassion their work requires. Ministers are to show tender pity and compassion toward erring and backslidden members, helping them where they are weak rather than burdening them with unnecessary censure. Ministers must have in their hearts tender sympathy that weeps with the sorrowful and rejoices with the joyful, and must act from that sympathy rather than from their own spirit.
Its absence is shown when those who present themselves for church membership are met with cold criticism instead of being led to God for supply of want and satisfaction of soul-hunger. Those who are led aright receive the renewing, sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit that gives peace and hope to the troubled conscience. That same influence restores health and happiness to the soul.
Courtesy Toward Opposers
Romans 12:15 calls believers to share in the happiness and sorrow of others with kindness and genuine concern for one another, and this fellowship belongs to living courteously and peaceably even toward people who are suspicious or unjust. Rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep is kindness and true heavenly courtesy, which is not weakness and which always pays. This courtesy belongs to life in the church militant, not the church triumphant, where much cannot be expected of men. There disappointment, suspicion, unjust and unkind treatment, and unadvised speech are to be met without retaliation, withdrawal, or hostility, by walking humbly before God, keeping His honor first, and showing sympathy to all, including opposers.
Those who present truth must enter into the feelings of others, even opposers of truth, with calm, dignified, self-controlled tenderness rather than accusation, condemnation, indignation, and reviling. To rejoice and weep with others means valuing the soul of the opposer as much as one's own soul, as purchased by the blood of the only begotten Son of God. It means dealing wisely and considerately with Christ's property, praying silently for God to touch the heart, and manifesting the Spirit of Christ learned from being with Jesus. Done in this way, the opponent's heart is softened and subdued and convinced, rather than wounded, bruised, and closed to truth.
Daily Life Applications
Weeping with those who weep means entering into the sorrow of people deeply affected by loss, feeling with them in their grief. When lives and interests are closely bound up with an institution that suffers loss, sympathy calls for grieving together with those who are bereaved by that loss, as in the burning of the Battle Creek Sanitarium.
In bereavement for a person, the command embraces both sides of the experience, grieving with those who have lost a loved one while also rejoicing in the hope and triumph connected with that death. Where the death is triumphant, as with Henry, the family has greater reason for joy than for mourning.
Rejoicing with those who rejoice applies to joyous occasions such as a marriage, and there is no sanction for refusing an invitation to be present. Christ's attendance with His disciples at the marriage feast reveals His will that followers share the joy of others in the observance of His statutes, attend gatherings honored by His presence, and sanctify them by presence and instruction, while never discouraging innocent festivities carried on in accordance with the laws of heaven.
The same sharing of joy belongs to conversion, when the church rejoices with those who rejoice over a change of faith, as when Miller's pious relations rejoiced at his conversion. It also requires rejoicing when fellow believers prosper or receive a better reputation, even when one's own character or achievements seem less important by comparison. Envy and rivalry must be restrained, since they grow from pride and ambition and produce strife.
In the home, parents are to share their children's griefs and trials by sympathizing with them and praying with them. By that sympathy and prayer they help their children press on in the way of life and trust in God.
Romans 12:15 calls for heartfelt sympathy that enters fully into both the gladness and the grief of others. It is practical instruction for daily Christian love, to be lived out as believers dwell together as members of one body, each doing his appointed work with care for one another. Jesus lived this fully, with matchless tenderness entering into the feelings of others, sorrowing with the sorrowful and sharing the joy of the joyful, and those who follow Him must let that example shape their character. Received through union with Him, His grace and love move believers to share the feelings of others, suffering with those who suffer and rejoicing with those who rejoice with deep tenderness for the weak and distressed. For God's workers this means cheerful, humble, cooperative service under Christ, showing kindness, courtesy, and unselfish love by personal care for the poor, sick, bereaved, and tried, and even by tender courtesy toward opposers.
Meaning and Romans Context
The verse calls for sympathy that enters into the feelings of others by sharing both in their happiness and in their sorrow. It is practical instruction for the life of Christian love, to be carried out in daily life as believers live together in Christ. That living together means serving as members of one body, each doing the work given to him, and showing practical love and care for one another in shared joys and sorrows.
It lays down one of the principles for the conduct of Christians toward one another, requiring them as members of the heavenly family to help and strengthen each other in joy and in sorrow. By so helping one another they keep working together to overcome as Christ overcame and to win heaven. It belongs to Romans 12, which sets forth religious duty and is for the whole church to study. Its meaning is that every member of the church has a work to do, with different members fitted by capability for different classes of work, all blending together into a complete whole.
It teaches the church in every place not to shut up within self but to love one another as brethren with kindness and courtesy. Each is to bring a different gift to find its proper place, so that all grow together into a holy temple in the Lord. This excludes judging a brother or putting a stumbling block in his way, since all must stand before the judgment seat of God and give account of self to God. The practical instruction of Romans 12, including this verse, must be brought into daily life, and living it shows true belief while failure to live it shows spurious faith by the daily exhibition of character.
Keeping it means showing sincerity by pure words, clean words, words full of sympathy, tenderness, and love. Keeping it does not end there, for those out of the right way also need words of reproof and sharp rebuke to bring them back. It belongs to moral renovation in every heart, to family religion and family holiness honored as never before, to having put on Christ, to being transformed by the renewing of the mind, and to proving by experience what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God in preparing a people to meet God. Romans 12 lays down principles that men of God's appointment must carefully study and obey by being doers of the Word in small matters as well as large if they are to be sustained. Neglect brings positive danger, for Satan tries by every device to weaken them by making them exalted in their own opinion and thus gaining power over them, while God, who is high and lifted up, uses men as His instruments only as long as they work humbly, seeking wisdom from Him.
Christ's Sympathetic Example
Jesus lived this call fully, entering into the feelings of others with matchless tenderness. Those who sincerely follow Him must let that example deeply shape character. By learning the lessons He teaches they overcome natural self-centeredness and opinionatedness, partake of His nature and live His life. They show that sympathy in kindly words and acts that make the path easier for weary feet.
His tender heart responds in sympathy to human sorrow and joy, weeping with those who weep and rejoicing with those who rejoice. He is the example for sharing sorrow, for He wept with those who wept and was touched by their suffering. Those entrusted with responsibility are therefore to be tender toward the weak, tempted, and tried, treating their cases as their own and ministering to them with care.
The verse pictures His pity, courtesy, and tender sympathy, who entered into the feelings of others and, touched with the feeling of their infirmities, sorrowed with the sorrowful and shared the joy of the joyful. Ministers of the gospel must study this example of their Master. Those who educate their minds to dwell on His perfections and perfection will represent Him to the world and have an influence on the character of His followers.
He is the example for everyone placed in a position of trust, who needs the daily subduing influence of the Spirit of God on the heart to live it out. To weep with those who weep means to be afflicted in all their afflictions and to be touched with the feeling of their infirmities. Christ does this as a tender and faithful High Priest who makes the cases of tempted and tried people His own and ministers to them. He carefully nourishes the weak ones of the flock with the manna He has supplied and educates them not to look to and trust in men whatever their calling.
Union With Christ
Union with Christ fills the heart with His grace and places the life under His controlling will, and that love moves the believer to enter into the feelings of others, suffering with those who suffer and rejoicing with those who rejoice. This sharing of joy and sorrow is accompanied by deep tenderness toward everyone who is weak, grieving, sorrowful, or distressed. Such compassionate response does not arise from nature but from abiding in Him and from a heart filled with His grace.
God's goodness and forbearance and self-sacrificing love toward sinful people calls everyone who discerns His grace to show the same liberal sympathy to others. That sympathy enters with matchless tenderness into the feelings of the oppressed soul, sharing sorrow with those who sorrow and joy with those who rejoice in Christ's love, following the wonderful example of Christ's life. This example must have a deep influence upon the character of all who love God and keep His commandments. The same sorrow-sharing and joy-sharing belongs to those who cultivate sincerity and fervent piety for the lost race for whose redemption Christ suffered and died, ever looking unto Jesus and studying what He would do if in their place, and this watchfulness keeps from grievous mistakes.
This sympathy comes through union with Him and partaking of the divine nature, revealing the likeness of the divine Lord and glorifying God in body and spirit. It makes believers always willing to reach forth a helping hand to those in need of relief. Christ lived it with a heart ever touched with pity at human woe, weeping over sorrow and suffering on every hand and groaning in spirit for the tried and tempted. He carried it to dying on the cross of Calvary to lift the penalty of transgression and make salvation possible, refusing to fail or become discouraged but believing and pressing forward so that others might gain eternal life. This affable, compassionate sympathy is the outworking of the inner spiritual life, and by it the believer represents Christ, reflects the joy of the Lord, and reveals the beauty of the character of the risen Lord.
Sympathetic Ministry and Leadership
God's workers are called to cheerfulness that looks on the bright side, and to unity, sympathy, kindness, and unselfish love expressed in sharing the joy of those who are joyful and the tears of those who are sorrowful. That sharing means entering fully into the joys and sorrows of brethren as part of sober, humble, cooperative service under Christ's yoke. It forbids thinking of self more highly than one ought to think and working as a distinct whole apart from brethren. It requires self-denying, humble leadership rather than proud, dictatorial independence, for as the perfection of the physical body depends on the perfection of the individual organs, so the perfection of the spiritual body depends on each member sympathizing and uniting with the others in their work.
It is practical instruction to be obeyed by a change of attitude and by keeping self under control. Practicing it keeps a person useful and able to reach the standard of perfection, and past success will not be lost if its warning is heeded. This comes through intelligent, pure, cordial belief in the grace of Christ which brings salvation to all and places the feet on the eternal Rock. Care for others includes sharing their feelings, being glad with the glad and bringing comfort to the grieving. This calls for close, personal, sympathetic ministry alongside practical care for people's needs, including the poor, the sick, the bereaved, and the inexperienced.
Believers share one another's joys and sorrows, rejoicing when others rejoice and mourning with them in their trials. That fellowship includes caring for one who is suffering and seeking to soothe and help in affliction. It gives sympathy and practical care rather than leaving a person to bear grief and illness alone. It means sharing in the joy and sorrow of others through practical sympathy and helpfulness, with kindness, tenderness, and courtesy. All are linked together by the cross and none is independent, so there is to be mutual forbearance, especially toward those who love the Lord Jesus, bearing one another's burdens even while each carries his own.
Such helping includes relieving the poor, visiting the sick, comforting the sorrowing and bereaved, counseling the inexperienced, encouraging the fainthearted, and making the path safe for the weak, with harsh speech restrained and eyes fixed on Jesus. Helping in this way also helps the helper and opens new experience. Christian sympathy is expressed through personal, considerate care, in which kind words and small acts of attention can refresh and strengthen people facing hardship. Those small attentions can ease temptation and doubt and open hearts to Christ. Sharing the sorrows of others by lightening their burdens and feeling their distress is an obligation grounded in Christ's life and teaching, not a matter of personal choice.
It requires replacing natural, self-centered feelings with Christlike love, goodwill, nobility, and self-sacrifice. Christians, including church leaders, are to share in the sorrow and joy of others. Ministers who examine people seeking church membership are to show this sympathy rather than cold criticism, and failure to do so reflects a lack of the compassion their work requires. Ministers are to show tender pity and compassion toward erring and backslidden members, helping them where they are weak rather than burdening them with unnecessary censure. Ministers must have in their hearts tender sympathy that weeps with the sorrowful and rejoices with the joyful, and must act from that sympathy rather than from their own spirit.
Its absence is shown when those who present themselves for church membership are met with cold criticism instead of being led to God for supply of want and satisfaction of soul-hunger. Those who are led aright receive the renewing, sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit that gives peace and hope to the troubled conscience. That same influence restores health and happiness to the soul.
Courtesy Toward Opposers
Romans 12:15 calls believers to share in the happiness and sorrow of others with kindness and genuine concern for one another, and this fellowship belongs to living courteously and peaceably even toward people who are suspicious or unjust. Rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep is kindness and true heavenly courtesy, which is not weakness and which always pays. This courtesy belongs to life in the church militant, not the church triumphant, where much cannot be expected of men. There disappointment, suspicion, unjust and unkind treatment, and unadvised speech are to be met without retaliation, withdrawal, or hostility, by walking humbly before God, keeping His honor first, and showing sympathy to all, including opposers.
Those who present truth must enter into the feelings of others, even opposers of truth, with calm, dignified, self-controlled tenderness rather than accusation, condemnation, indignation, and reviling. To rejoice and weep with others means valuing the soul of the opposer as much as one's own soul, as purchased by the blood of the only begotten Son of God. It means dealing wisely and considerately with Christ's property, praying silently for God to touch the heart, and manifesting the Spirit of Christ learned from being with Jesus. Done in this way, the opponent's heart is softened and subdued and convinced, rather than wounded, bruised, and closed to truth.
Daily Life Applications
Weeping with those who weep means entering into the sorrow of people deeply affected by loss, feeling with them in their grief. When lives and interests are closely bound up with an institution that suffers loss, sympathy calls for grieving together with those who are bereaved by that loss, as in the burning of the Battle Creek Sanitarium.
In bereavement for a person, the command embraces both sides of the experience, grieving with those who have lost a loved one while also rejoicing in the hope and triumph connected with that death. Where the death is triumphant, as with Henry, the family has greater reason for joy than for mourning.
Rejoicing with those who rejoice applies to joyous occasions such as a marriage, and there is no sanction for refusing an invitation to be present. Christ's attendance with His disciples at the marriage feast reveals His will that followers share the joy of others in the observance of His statutes, attend gatherings honored by His presence, and sanctify them by presence and instruction, while never discouraging innocent festivities carried on in accordance with the laws of heaven.
The same sharing of joy belongs to conversion, when the church rejoices with those who rejoice over a change of faith, as when Miller's pious relations rejoiced at his conversion. It also requires rejoicing when fellow believers prosper or receive a better reputation, even when one's own character or achievements seem less important by comparison. Envy and rivalry must be restrained, since they grow from pride and ambition and produce strife.
In the home, parents are to share their children's griefs and trials by sympathizing with them and praying with them. By that sympathy and prayer they help their children press on in the way of life and trust in God.