Graham: Our attitude toward suffering should not be...

Only God’s Spirit can truly mend a broken heart, but we can be a part of the healing process. We don’t have to be a priest or preacher, a trained counselor or psychiatrist to be a comforter. We just need to be available, as Christ is available to us. When He was comforting His disciples before He left them, they were confused, questioning, and frightened. He said, “Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy” ( John 16:22).

Our attitude toward suffering should not be, “Grit your teeth and bear it,” hoping it will pass as quickly as possible. Our goal should be to learn all we can from our personal problems, so that we can fulfill a ministry of comfort, just as Jesus did. “Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted” (Hebrews 2:18).

We are surrounded by hurting people. Some may wear a plastic mask, but beneath the mask is a scarred soul. Are we approachable and available, even when we may be hurting, too? God does not comfort us to make us comfortable, but to make us comforters.

Why, you do not even know what will happen
tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that
appears for a little while and then vanishes.
James 4:14

Graham, B. (2004). The enduring classics of billy graham. Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

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John Stott on the "old man" and the "body ruled by sin" in Rom 6 v 6

There are, in fact, two quite distinct ways in which the New Testament speaks of crucifixion in relation to holiness. The first is our death to sin through identification with Christ; the second is our death to self through imitation of Christ. On the one hand, we have been crucified with Christ. But on the other we have crucified (decisively repudiated) our sinful nature with all its desires, so that every day we renew this attitude by taking up our cross and following Christ to crucifixion. The first is a legal death, a death to the penalty of sin; the second is a moral death, a death to the power of sin. The first belongs to the past, and is unique and unrepeatable; the second belongs to the present, and is repeatable, even continuous. I died to sin (in Christ) once; I die to self (like Christ) daily. It is with the first of these two deaths that Romans 6 is chiefly concerned, although the first is with a view to the second, and the second cannot take place w...

Berkoff: "The law was not substituted for the promise; neither was faith supplanted by works. "

The giving of the law did not effect a fundamental change in the religion of Israel, but merely introduced a change in its external form. The law was not substituted for the promise; neither was faith supplanted by works. Many of the Israelites, indeed, looked upon the law in a purely legalistic spirit and sought to base their claim to salvation on a scrupulous fulfillment of it as a body of external precepts. But in the case of those who understood its real nature, who felt the inwardness and spirituality of the law, it served to deepen the sense of sin and to sharpen the conviction that salvation could be expected only from the grace of God . L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans publishing co., 1938), 498–499.

F.F. Bruce: ...know their father's will...

The NT does not contain a detailed code of rules for the Christian. Codes of rules, as Paul explains elsewhere, are suited to the period of immaturity when the children of God are still under guardians; but children who have come to years of responsibility know their father’s will without having to be provided with a long list of “Do’s” and “Don’t’s.” What the NT does provide is those basic principles of Christian living which may be applied to varying situations of life as they arise. So, after answering the Corinthian Christians’ question about the eating of food that has been offered to idols, Paul sums up his advice in the words: “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). Phrases current in worship, like “to the glory of God” or (as here) “in the name of the Lord Jesus,” were given a practical relevance by being applied to the concerns of ordinary life. Bruce, F. F. (1984). The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the...

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