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The Divine Son of God, before His incarnation in our flesh, was, in His own personal being, separate from the sons of men. He knew, He felt, as a Creator, all that we suffer. But one link was wanting to bind Him to us; in fact, a gulf of vast extent lay yet between us. He had not undergone these things — we had undergone them. No cry of suffering had ever arisen from Him; from man, every hour since the Fall had sent up its utterance of woe. This distinction no Divine knowledge can overstep; this gulf no tender love of the Creator for His creature can ever bridge over. Personal experience is the prerogative of personal being, with which none can intermeddle, and which God Himself infringes not. Ever since the dawn of thought its exercise has been enriching each one of us. Its fruits are our own, in a manner in which nought else is our own. Ask the poor victim of suffering and pain where lies the charm in that one face, pale and wan, and with no outward charm, which above all others he loves to see bending over his bed and ministering to him? Others bring gifts; she, it may be, can bring none: others speak many words of studied kindness; she, perhaps, speaks but little and seldom, but there is that in the calm usual face, the ordinary casual word, the help better and more precious, and more powerful, and more beloved than all on earth besides. Yes; because that face has known sorrow — that sympathy, flowing so still, comes from the deep fountains of personal suffering; because that one, having suffered, knows how to succour them that suffer. Thus, then, Christ's temptation was His training; and we have now to consider how it may be our help. The question for us is, How may we. dwelling in the midst of temptation day by day, make use of our Lord's temptation, as an element in His course for our redemption, to help us in our conflict? I would say, then, to the tempted, first — Strive to understand Christ; not in the self-sufficient, lower sense of the word " understand," but in its higher and humbler sense — to take in a living idea of the length and depth and breath and height of that marvellous sympathising humanity which Christ bears about Him How, as He did then. Watch it growing broader and deeper by sorrow and suffering and temptation; watch it taking into itself, as a great world-wide stream, all those lesser drops, those tributary rills, of thy sorrows and mine, thy surf-rings and mine, thy temptations and mine. Nay, more; follow in the wonderful gospel record day by day the onward course of the Son of God. Bear in mind who He was and whence He came. See the calm surface of the ocean of Divine love and Divine wisdom becoming ruffled by the disturbing forces of our troubled humanity, till at length His whole being is torn into the fierce waves of the tempest, and He cries, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death," and claims the sympathy of those who were so unequal to console Him: " Tarry ye here and watch with Me." And all this for the very purpose that He might be touched with a feeling of thine infirmities — all this that He might in His present ascended state bear every temptation and suffering of every man on earth in His heart.

(Dean Alford.)

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KJV: For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted.

WEB: For in that he himself has suffered being tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted.