Rejoice, and weep

Sometimes the shortest commands in the Bible are the hardest ones.

• Love your enemies
• Forgive
• Bless those who persecute you

Well, here’s another one that maybe we don’t typically spend as much time on, but which can also be tough.

Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. (Rom. 12:15)

The context of the verse is an awesome passage in Romans 12 that dives into many ways we are to act toward others: love without hypocrisy, live peaceably, prefer others over ourselves, and the list goes on.

At first glance, the idea of rejoicing or weeping with others sounds neither hard nor counterintuitive. Celebrate with others who are celebrating and mourn with others who are mourning. It’s simple. I mean, we’ve all been to weddings and funerals—we’ve got this one down, right? 

But this goes far beyond that. Like so many things Christians are called to do (ok pretty much everything), celebrating and mourning with others often requires dying to self. 

After all, how do we celebrate with the friend who’s gotten 14 promotions when we’ve just lost our jobs? How do we rejoice with the expectant mother at the 57th baby shower we’ve attended when we’ve just had our third miscarriage? How do we rejoice with the friend whose spouse was just miraculously healed when ours died? 

Conversely, how do we mourn with others when it means entering into the discomfort of their pain, resisting the temptation to try to fix it or cheer them up, or temporarily laying aside our own time of rejoicing so we may join with someone else’s weeping? 

Before Job’s friends opened their mouths and immediately inserted their feet trying to analyze Job’s suffering, they sat with him in silence for seven days and seven nights (Job 2:11-13). I’m thinking they would have done better to just keep their silence! 

So often, rejoicing or weeping with others is far from easy. And I think part of the reason is that, within the context of this verse, these two things have nothing to do with us—nothing to do with how we feel. 

Instead, we are instructed in this case to be guided by the condition of others.

Now, I realize this sounds counterintuitive and even dangerous—are we to let others control our actions?  No, not at all. But we are instructed to bear with one another, lay ourselves down for one another, and walk in love toward one another.  

And this often means rejoicing through our own pain or mourning despite our own joy.

And the only way we can do this is through the love of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. 

It’s funny – we immediately recognize we need the Holy Spirit’s help to love our enemies, bless those who persecute us, and forgive those who wrong us, as none of these is our natural inclination. But we sometimes fail to realize we need the same Holy Spirit’s help to rejoice and weep with others—because in many instances, these actions won’t be our natural inclination, either. 

And truly the overarching reason we can do any of this is the hope we have in Christ. Not wishful hope but confident hope—in His promises, in His goodness, and in His love. 

For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope. (Rom. 15:4)

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Rom. 15:13)