The Comforter
Puritan: Richard Sibbes
Source: The Bruised Reed
Originally Delivered: 1630, London, England
The Lord’s Day: September 13, 2026
“A bruised reed He will not break, and smoking flax He will not quench…” – Matthew 12:20
When we think of Christ, we should conceive of Him as a mirror of all meekness. If the sweetness of all flowers were in one, how sweet must that flower be? In Christ all perfections of mercy and love meet. Whatever tenderness is scattered in husband, father, brother, head, all is but a beam from Him; it is in Him in the most eminent manner.
We are weak, but we are His; we are deformed, but yet carry His image upon us. A father looks not so much at the blemishes of his child as at his own nature in him; so Christ finds matter of love from that which is His own in us. He sees His own nature in us: we are diseased, but yet His members. Who ever neglected his own members because they were sick or weak? He was love itself clothed with man’s nature, which He united so near to Himself, that He might communicate His goodness the more freely to us. And He took not our nature when it was at its best, but when it was abased, with all the natural and common infirmities it was subject to.
It was Satan’s art from the beginning to discredit God with man, by calling God’s love into question with our first father Adam. His success then makes him ready at that weapon still.
Lay your present state alongside the office of Christ and do not despise the consolation of the Almighty nor refuse your own mercy. Cast yourself into the arms of Christ, and if you perish, perish there. If you do not, you are sure to perish. If mercy is to be found anywhere, it is there. When the prodigal set himself to return to his father, his father did not wait for him, but met him in the way. He cannot find in His heart to hide Himself long from us. If God should bring us into such a dark condition as that we should see no light from Himself of the creature, then let us remember what He says by the prophet Isaiah, “Who is among you … that walketh in darkness, and has no light?” – no light of comfort, no light of God’s countenance – “let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God” (Isa. 50:10). We can never be in such a condition that there will be just cause of utter despair.
As Christ did, in His example to us, whatever He charges us to do, so He suffered in His own person whatever He calls us to suffer, so that He might the better learn to relieve and pity us in our sufferings. In His desertion in the garden and on the cross He was content to be without that unspeakable solace which the presence of His Father gave, both to bear the wrath of the Lord for a time for us, and likewise to know the better how to comfort us in our greatest extremities. God sees fit that we should taste of that cup of which His Son drank so deep, that we might feel a little what sin is, and what His Son’s love was.
But our comfort is that Christ drank the dregs of the cup for us, and will help us, so that our spirits may not utterly fail under that little taste of His displeasure which we may feel. He became not only a man but a curse, a man of sorrows, for us. He was broken that we should not be broken; He was troubled, that we should not be desperately troubled; he became a curse, that we should not be accursed. Whatever may be wished for in an all-sufficient comforter is all to be found in Christ.