Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep

Romans 12:15 (NKJV)

Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.

The proof of your unselfishness and putting others first before yourself is when you fully comply with this verse.  To rejoice means to be exceedingly glad and to weep means to mourn.  When others are rejoicing are you sincerely rejoicing with them?  When others are weeping, are you sincerely weeping with them?  Rejoicing and weeping appropriately with others are true indicators of Christian character.   

However, it is easier to weep with those who weep than to rejoice with those who rejoice.  This is not hard to understand.  To rejoice with others’ success or for whatever reason(s) they are celebrating requires much greater unselfish love than to weep with those who weep.  When others are rejoicing we tend to be jealous and envious.  We are brought up in a competitive world so when others “win” and you don’t, you really don’t have much, if any, desire to rejoice with them.  Some examples:   

·  One of your neighbors wins the lottery, how happy are you for them?

·  You and a co-worker are competing for the same job opening that is a nice promotion.  He or she gets it rather than you  Do you rejoice with him/her?

·  A friend’s son is the town’s athletic hero while your son sits on the bench.  Are you happy for your friend?

·  You receive Christmas letters from people with the letters filled with all kinds of good news and good circumstances while your circumstances are not very good at all.  Do you rejoice at the good news from others? 

You see what I’m getting at.  Most of us become easily jealous, easily envious, and/or easily angered over hearing good news from others especially when you think that they don’t deserve it.   We are very competitive and if we cannot win, we don’t want to see others win either.  This is a serious flaw in our human character that can be overcome only by submitting to the authority of the Lord and being filled with the Holy Spirit.  When the Holy Spirit controls your soul (mind, emotion, and will) your selfish nature disappears and then you can rejoice with those who rejoice.

William Barclay wrote:  "It is, indeed, more difficult to congratulate another on his success, especially if his success involves disappointment to us, than it is to sympathize with his sorrow and his loss. It is only when self is dead that we can take as much joy in the success of others as in our own".

To weep with those who weep, while easier to practice for most of us (“misery loves company”), weeping with others does require deep and authentic loving compassion.  My friend, Pastor OJ Hogan, wrote that “loving compassion always suffers”.  Those who are weeping are suffering in some great way----great sadness, depression, anguish, discouragement, sometimes feeling overwhelmingly beaten up.  Your weeping with them cannot be superficial and often words will not help.  You have to suffer with them and “participate in the sufferings of Christ” (I Peter 4:13).  Yet, often, because you have your own troubles, you have a very hard time authentically suffering with others.  Or, frankly, you don’t have sufficiently deep compassion in your heart.  This is another indication that your Christian character is not where it should be.  Pray about this and make a greater effort to invite the indwelling Holy Spirit to fill you every day and follow His leading. Spend more quality time studying and meditating on verses that teach about the love of Christ and loving others, e.g. I John 3 and 4, John 13:34-35, Phil 2:1-11, so many others.   

To rejoice with those who rejoice and to weep with those who weep requires that you love others in the way Jesus taught and gave the example.  "Not to regard with joy the happiness of a brother is envy; and not to grieve for his misfortunes is inhumanity" – John Calvin