He Suffered Too: The Deep Compassion of Christ

Dannah Gresh: Because Jesus became human, He understands you deeply. Here’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. 

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: “He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust.” How does He know that? He not only knows it because He created us, but He knows it because He walked in our skin.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Incomparable, for October 15, 2026. I’m Dannah Gresh.

At the heart of what it is to be human, there’s a deep desire to be understood. Do you feel it? In your suffering, do you long for someone to come alongside you and whisper, “Me too”?

Friend, Jesus has done this. He has come alongside us in our suffering. Because He came to earth, took on a human body, and ultimately bore the cross, He understands your suffering. He looks on you with compassion and says, “Me too.” What miraculous comfort! We’re going to marvel at this understanding Savior together, starting with part of a message Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth shared in the series "Incomparable: The Person of Christ."

Jesus Understands the Full Range of Human Emotion

Nancy: We also know, and there is a lot of about this in the Scripture, that He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. The whole range of human emotions. He wept at the tomb of Lazarus; He burst into tears over Jerusalem. At the Last Supper, Scripture says, "He was troubled in his spirit" (John 13:21).

That verse in Hebrews 5:7 says,

In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death.

You see Jesus having this whole range of emotions. That says something to us. Sometimes we think that emotions are something bad, or they're supposed to be suppressed. If you're a good Christian, you won't get very emotional.

The example of Christ in His humanity tells us that emotions are an important part of what it is to be human. It gives us a model of the healthy, wholesome, godly, balanced display of emotions. Exhibiting those emotions as Christ did in the right time, place, way, and over right things.

My problem with emotions is I squander my emotions on the wrong things. I have the wrong emotions at the wrong time. I'm angry when I should be glad. I'm glad when I should be angry. I'm being driven by my emotions often, rather than by the Spirit and the Word of God. But there is nothing wrong with having emotions.

In fact, to be fully human as a child of God is to express emotions in a wholesome, balanced, godly way. That's part of our discipleship, being conformed into the likeness of Christ. Where we don’t squelch or bury them, but are able to express them in godly and balanced ways.

Jesus Shows Us What True Humanity Looks Like

Jesus experienced all that is part of a human makeup. He experienced temptation, as we've seen in this series. He experienced a need for dependence on His Father that led Him to pray. That's part of what it meant to be human. If He was just God and not also fully human, why would He have needed to pray. Why do we see such a pattern through His life of Him praying to His Father over and over again? It is because He was fully man. He was living life in that human body as a man.

He fully possessed a human nature, without possessing a sinful nature. We need to keep that tension in view. Sinful nature is not inherent to humans. Adam and Eve were humans without a sinful nature until they sinned. So Jesus was fully human without having a sinful nature.

It wasn't until Jesus came to earth, fully God and fully man, that we could understand what God meant and intended when He said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen. 1:26). What did that look like? Adam and Eve were made in the likeness of God, but pretty soon thereafter, they blew it. They rebelled against God. That image was shattered, marred, and broken.

We've never seen what it looks like to be a man created in the likeness of the image of God, apart from Christ. Christ has shown us what that was supposed to look like—what we would have been like had we not sinned! Wrap your mind around this if you can. The life that Jesus lived here on earth was intended to show us what we would have been like, and what we would be like, apart from sin. Fully human. We need that picture. We’re so helped by that picture.

The Humanity of Christ Made Our Salvation Possible

His humanity was not only necessary for us to see what it would be like to be created in the image of God, but it was necessary for us to be saved. His humanity—Christ, who is the invisible God—becoming a man made it possible for us to be sons of God.

You read that in Galatians 4, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, [that’s the deity] born of a woman, [that’s the humanity] born under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons (Gal 4:4–5). To make us sons of God, Jesus came as the Son of God and became a man.

As I try to do on this program day after day, that’s the "what." Now what’s the “So what?” What are the implications of that? Let me just mention a few.

First of all, the fact that Jesus was a man makes God accessible to us. I have a friend that received an email this week, and I received permission to share with you. This lady said in her email,

I feel really distant from God. It's hard to reach out to Him at times because He seems unimaginably big and powerful and distant and because He is unseen and spirit.

You ever felt that way? You can't get close to God. He seems so far away. You can't see Him. Well, in Christ, God came near. Look to Christ, and in Him you see how to draw near to God. He makes God accessible to us.

Then we experience incredible gratitude and worship as we contemplate His incredible condescension of Christ, that He, equal with God, would take on human flesh. Let me read to you a couple of quotes from a theologian named A.W. Pink who has written some wonderful things on the nature of God. He captures some of this wonder.

God became man. But what does this mean for you and me? You can never again take sin lightly, as Jesus Christ saw it as something so destructive that he came out of heaven and endured the worst that man could throw at him to deal sin a deathblow. And you can never again take God’s love lightly. He didn’t have to become a man and suffer as he did, but he did, and he did for you!¹

How could we ever doubt the love of God when we see Christ becoming a man?

Let me read a little bit more from A.W. Pink. He says,

It was truly remarkable when man was made in the image of God. . . . But bow in wonderment and worship at the amazing condescension of God being made in the image of man! How this manifests the greatness of His love and the riches of His grace! It was for His people and their salvation that the eternal Son assumed human nature and abased Himself even to death. He drew a veil over His glory that He might remove our reproach. Surely, pride must be forever renounced by the followers of such a Savior.²

He humbled Himself. He veiled His glory. He took on flesh and our humanity. That's the power of the Incarnation. How can we not humble ourselves toward God and toward others?

Jesus Understands Our Suffering and Weakness

Here’s another “So what?” of the humanity of Christ. It gives us great encouragement and comfort. When we experience physical weariness, pain, human limitations, a whole gamut of emotions in a broken world, we're reminded that Jesus has experienced all that and more! He subjected Himself to the same laws of nature that we are bound to. So when struggling under the weight of physical and emotional challenges of our humanness, we can cry out to Him and know that He understands—that He can empathize.

Psalm 103:14 says, “He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust” (NASB). How does He know that? He not only knows it because He created us, but He knows it because he walked in our skin. Human like me.

That's what makes Him a merciful and faithful high priest who is is sympathetic toward us in our weaknesses, as Hebrews 2 tells us, and is able to help us.

There's an old gospel song that I love that says,

Does Jesus care when my heart is pained
Too deeply for mirth or song,
As the burdens press, and the cares distress,
And the way grows weary and long?

Oh, yes, He cares, I know He cares,
His heart is touched with my grief;
When the days are weary, the long nights dreary,
I know my Savior cares.³

We know because he's been there.

Dannah: We’ve been listening to Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth as she helps us reflect on the humanity of Christ. She has more to share in the series "Incomparable: The Person of Christ." You’ll find a link to it in the transcript of this program, at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Because Jesus came to earth, lived a human life, and endured the cross, he understands our suffering. What a special comfort that is!

One of the most prevalent forms of suffering today is loneliness. And my friend and former Grounded co-host, Erin Davis, is going to show us the lonely side of Jesus. 

Jesus Knows the Loneliness of Being Misunderstood

Erin Davis: I’m going to read us Mark 14:3–9. I hope you’ll read along with me. I’m going to read out of the ESV.

And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. There were some who said to themselves indignantly, “Why was the ointment wasted like that? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor.” And they scolded her. But Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me.”

That’s how I know His death was heavy on His heart. He was thinking about it even as He was supposed to be having a meal with friends. 

“She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial. And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”

I bet you’ve had this experience. You’re in a room full of people and people are doing what people do: they’re eating, they’re making small talk, they’re pulling out pictures of their grandbabies. And you, in that room full of people, have this sense that nobody there really knows you, that nobody really sees you. 

You know when that can happen sometimes? It can happen in a family gathering with the people whose faces you’ve seen over and over again. I know I’m not the only one that sometimes in those moments can think, These people don’t know me, and I don’t know them. Jesus knew that feeling too. 

Jesus knew that very soon He was going to be nailed to the cross for the people in that room. And other than the woman who was socially shunned in this moment, they didn’t get it. What a lonely feeling that must’ve been. 

Jesus Experienced the Loneliness of Rejection and Betrayal

I want to move on to verses 10–11. I think it’s another lonely snapshot. 

Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. And when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money. And he sought an opportunity to betray him.

If we know our Bibles, we say Judas with a snarl on our lips. “Judas.” We know he was the one who betrayed Jesus. But have you ever thought about this? Jesus chose Judas knowing he would betray Him. Judas thought that he had gone to the chief priests in secret, except with Jesus there are no secrets. Jesus knew what Judas would do, and He knew what Judas had done. Jesus had always known since before Judas was even born that Judas would not be a faithful friend.

That means that every time Jesus and Judas shared a meal together, every time that Judas and Jesus took a walk, every time that Judas and Jesus worked side by side to minister to the people who gathered around Jesus, Jesus knew that one day Judas was going to sell him out for a little bit of silver.

When you know that someone who claims to love you would stab you in the back the first chance they got, that’s lonely. When you know that someone is claiming to be your friend, claiming to stand beside you, but you also know some of the things they’ve said about you that they don’t know you know, that’s lonely. 

And then there’s the Passover. The disciples asked a really very benign question in verse 12. They said, “Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?” That was no big deal, because of course, Jesus would observe the Passover. Jesus always observed the Passover. For thirty-three years Jesus had observed the Passover, because for thousands of years, Jesus’ people had observed the Passover. 

So, the disciples were really not saying anything profound when they went to their Savior and said, “Where should we have the Passover this year?” Only Jesus knew that He was the lamb who would be sacrificed for that year’s Passover. Only Jesus knew that he would never again gather with His friends on this side of the crucifixion. He said to them in that moment, “I have eagerly desired to share this meal with you,” because he knew this was it.

You’ve probably had some of those moments when you know it’s the last time you’ll go out with that group of friends before you move to a different town, or you know it’s the last lunch you’re going to have at your company before you move to a new job. This is that on steroids. And knowing something that no one else can know is really lonely. Like, maybe no one knows that your marriage is hanging by a thread and your husband sleeps in a different room, or maybe no one knows that your teenaged daughter is suicidal. 

I had a woman recently pull me aside in the hallway where I was teaching. I’d never met her before. I can’t even tell you her name. She pulled me into a hallway and tears filled her eyes. She said, “It’s cancer, stage four.” And then she said, “Nobody in my church knows.” I haven’t had cancer, but I’ve been close enough to know that cancer is scary and cancer can be very lonely.

Maybe no one knows that you haven’t picked up your Bible in months and you don’t want to. Maybe no nobody knows that you stopped going to church six months ago, and no one has seemed to notice. Nobody’s called, nobody has checked up on you, and you wonder if those people ever even knew you were there?

Maybe nobody knows that your husband’s drinking is starting to scare you. Maybe nobody knows that your drinking is starting to scare you. Maybe nobody knows that you lost it so severely with your child this morning that you scared yourself, and you scared that toddler that you love so much. Maybe nobody knows that your credit card debt is out of control and you have no idea how you’re ever going to pay it off. 

Maybe none of those apply to you, but I bet you can think of something or some time when you knew something and nobody else could know it. 

I want you to picture Jesus in that upper room having that Passover meal with His disciples. I’m sure they were laughing and eating like they always did on Passover. This was a holiday. When He held up the bread, He knew that He was literally going to give up His life for them. His body was literally going to be broken not long after that meal. They didn’t get it. 

Human experience has taught me that sometimes we feel the most lonely in a room full of people . . . and Jesus knew that loneliness. 

Let’s pick it up at verse 26:

And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. And Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’” (vv. 26–27)

Let’s sit in the weight a bit for a minute. Let’s have some empathy for our Savior. As Jesus stepped toward the most horrific hours of His short life, He knew in every human cell in His body that ultimately He was going to have to stand alone. That’s a really lonely feeling.

From there, Jesus and His friends walked to the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus’ soul became so heavy that, verse 33 tells us, "He was distressed and troubled." Verse 34, Jesus himself said, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to the point of death. Remain here and watch.” In this moment of intense anguish, no faithful friend could be found. 

Look at verse 37:

And he came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour”

Maybe you’ve had this kind of moment. I have. A moment of tragedy or failure or heartbreak or illness comes, and the people who should stand with you scatter. They seem to fall asleep at the wheel. When hard comes and you look around and it seems like your people have scattered like sheep, you can know that Jesus knows that kind of loneliness. If you keep reading through this chapter, you’ll see that Judas did follow through on His commitment to betray Jesus. He betrayed Him in an incredibly intimate way. He betrayed Him with a kiss.

Verses 53–65 of this chapter describe Jesus standing trial with no defense attorney, no jury of his peers. It was Him against the system bent on His destruction. And the chapter ends like this:

And as Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the servant girls of the high priest came, and seeing Peter warming himself, she looked at him and said, “You also were with the Nazarene, Jesus.” But he denied it, saying, “I neither know nor understand what you mean.” And he went out into the gateway and the rooster crowed.

And the servant girl saw him and began again to say to the bystanders, “This man is one of them.” But again he denied it. And after a little while the bystanders again said to Peter, “Certainly you are one of them, for you are a Galilean.” But he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know this man of whom you speak.”

And immediately the rooster crowed a second time. And Peter remembered how Jesus had said to him, “Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.” And he broke down and wept.

Jesus wasn’t the only lonely one. His disciples knew moments of loneliness in these dark hours. Peter had the lonely feeling of knowing “I just messed up so royally,” and there was nothing he could do about it. 

Every one of us who has ever been betrayed or denied or rejected by the ones we hold most dear, by the ones who maybe took a vow to love and cherish us until death do us part, or who are our parents or our siblings or our pastors or our friends; when we’ve experienced rejection from those people, we know that this sting of loneliness hurts and it doesn’t quickly go away. But Jesus knew it too.

Now we know why Isaiah 53:3 describes Jesus this way:

He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Certainly Mark 14 describes wave after wave after wave of loneliness in the life of Jesus. But the loneliest moment that Jesus faced during His time on earth is in the next chapter. It came on the cross. 

Listen to Mark 15:33–34:

And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. [Verse 34 is a lonely verse] And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Remember, Jesus had always enjoyed perfect fellowship with the Father, and in this moment, Jesus felt the loneliness of sin. That’s what sin does. It separates. Sin separates us from God and sin separates us from each other. And Jesus, when He became sin, He who knows no sin became sin for us. Spiritually speaking, He took on the weight of the world. And for a moment—it must’ve felt like an eternity—He was forsaken by the Father and alone in His suffering. 

Jesus Endured Loneliness So We Would Never Be Alone

What are we to do with that? Jesus had a lonely side. 

One of the things that can do for us is it can comfort us. Because that makes Jesus suited to understand that you have a lonely side, too.

• When you are rejected, you can know your Savior was rejected, too.
• When it feels like nobody understands you, you can know that nobody understood Him either.
• When someone you love and trusted turns on you, you can know that Jesus experienced that, too.
• When you face a season of sorrow, when your friends seem to scatter, you can know that Jesus endured that, too.

He knows. He understands. And while I know you will face loneliness, and I will too, because of Jesus one thing that is beautiful and true is that we are never alone in our loneliness. 

But Jesus didn’t just face loneliness to give you someone to commiserate with. Just like the anger of Jesus and the wrath of Jesus, the loneliness of Jesus accomplished something significant. Because Jesus endured everything we just read, because Jesus endured friends who sold him out, because Jesus’ best friends, his inner circle, fell asleep when they should’ve stayed awake, because Jesus faced trials where He had to stand alone, and because Jesus endured that moment on the cross when His Father’s face was temporarily hidden from Him; Jesus endured true loneliness so that you don’t ever have to be alone. His death made a way for you and I to be permanently adopted into the family of God. 

Dannah: What Savior could be more compassionate than our Jesus? He not only suffered with us in order to sympathize with us. He suffered with us to rescue us from suffering forever. One day we’re going to dwell with him in eternity, sorrow free! 

This message you just heard from Erin Davis is part of a larger episode on The Deep Well podcast. We’ll link to the rest of it in today’s transcript at ReviveOurHearts.com. In it, Erin shares how she’s traveled to churches all over studying the loneliness epidemic. You know what she found? The loneliest woman in pretty much every church is the pastor’s wife. 

This just breaks my heart, but you know what. Revive Our Hearts is doing something about it through our Ambassador program. A Revive Our Hearts Ambassador connects with pastors' wives and women’s ministry leaders local to her to cheer them on in the hard and often lonely work of ministry. If you’re interested in becoming an Ambassador for your area or connecting with one, we’d love for you to visit ReviveOurHearts.com/ambassador. There, you’ll find all the information you need to get involved!

Well, as you know, we’re fixing our eyes on Jesus this month in celebration of Nancy’s newly-released Advent devotional. Its title is Consider Jesus, and it is a beautiful invitation to do just that. To set aside all that would distract you during the Christmas season and find true joy and rest in Him. We’d love to send you a copy as our thanks when you make a donation of any amount. Just visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959 to give and request your copy. 

Tomorrow, we’re talking about what might be the most comforting name of Jesus ever spoken—Immanuel, which means God with us. And I know, we usually talk about this name at Christmastime, but it’s true all year round. So join us to celebrate the God who became flesh for us, next time on Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the ESV unless otherwise noted.

¹ A. W. Pink, Gleanings in the Godhead). http://www.pacificchurch.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/20091213_deity-of-jesus.pdf

² A.W. Pink, Gleanings in the Godhead. http://www.pbministries.org/books/pink/Gleanings_Godhead/godhead_29.htm

³ “Does Jesus Care?” Frank E. Graeff, 1901.

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