How can I overcome the pain of betrayal?

I feel what a world of sorrow it is, and how real a share you have in that sorrow; but a world where, if sin and sorrow have entered in, grace has come in after them; and now love has risen above all the sin and sorrow, and, having entered into the worst of all it could bring on us, has given us a place out of it all: into the place from which it flowed the spirit of your dear wife has entered, and is with Him who entered into all that sorrow here that He might deliver us from it all; and, if you remain in the scenes of it down here, that very love has revealed itself by coming down into them that we might have it here. Jesus was a man of sorrows, and indeed none like His. And His love is perfect sympathy as well as deliverance. Look to this, dear brother, and you will find it in your sorrow, and raising you out of it, not by destroying the feeling, but by coming into it, taking all human will out of it which causes regret and bitterness, and bringing His will into it, and Himself in love with us in it. His grace is sure, in its path does not fail; nothing escapes or happens without it. This is a great comfort - first our will, subtle as it is and meddling with the best affections, is broken and there is submission; then comes the sense of positive love. Any sense of failure even on our part, if such there be, is lost in the sense of the perfect love and ordering of God. He takes the place of the reasoning of our minds and all is peace. This is a wonderful thing, for after all even as to our ways we cannot answer Him nor account for one of a thousand. He does use all to set our hearts right, and gives softened peace like a river.

But I will not trespass on you, dear brother, with many words at this moment. Only look to Jesus, and believe in and count on the love of God towards yourself - towards her there is no difficulty, she is where all is clear - for your dear little ones and believe that He is sufficient, and wait upon Him who knows our sorrows and difficulties and trials. Be assured of my unfeigned sympathy, for indeed I feel that your loss has been very great, but I am sure my God is able to supply all your need according to His riches in glory. Peace be with you: be much with Jesus, and the God of peace shall keep your heart.

107 But this bringing iniquity on the soul by wicked men as instruments of Satan (which the Lord went through more deeply than any one could, because He took our iniquity) is a very solemn thing. It is not the wrath directly that Christ bore, and we never shall; but the bringing it on the soul by the power of Satan by wicked men. The Lord may see it needed, but it is only a special case with Christians. There is confidence in God, an expectation that His ear is open to the cry of the heart that trusts Him. But till the Lord is looked to, the power of wickedness, and the wickedness itself distress and bow down the soul. The existence and power of evil, of what is opposed to God, weighs on it. This is united with the deepest wounding of confidence in man, for it was not an open enemy, but a friend, who had done it. What in man was to be trusted when the nearest betrayed? It gives isolation of heart. Nothing can be trusted. Now the Lord went through this power of evil. We only feel it when flesh is not broken down and has to be broken down. It is there, but its power is broken by Him for faith. But, inasmuch as we are sinners, this kind of power of Satan brings the character of judgment with it. We may get above this by grace and confide. For this it was that Christ prayed for Peter; and he was kept, when falling under the power of Satan, from going on to doubt the Lord's love, and to despair. The most terrible thing here is wickedness coming as the power of evil. But the spirit itself shrinks from the heartlessness of it and would flee; for a gracious spirit would rest in peace when evil is all around. The heart meanwhile is conscious that it has no association with it, and would only flee away and be alone in quiet, for the condition is that it has none to trust in. But this casts the mind on the Lord, for after all it has not the wings of a dove in this world.

The words of your friends reach your ears, and perhaps leave you more hopeless and bewildered than before. His words will reach your soul and give you divine support for human props, and a comfort and peace that death cannot destroy, for His words reveal Himself, and He is more than all you need. Turn yourself about to Him; lift your tear-filled eyes to His; hide not your broken heart from His touch; tell Him the cause of your grief.

The words of your friends reach your ears, and perhaps leave you more hopeless and bewildered than before. His words will reach your soul and give you divine support for human props, and a comfort and peace that death cannot destroy, for His words reveal Himself, and He is more than all you need. Turn yourself about to Him; lift your tear-filled eyes to His; hide not your broken heart from His touch; tell Him the cause of your grief.

Think of our Lord Jesus in that hour, on that very night. He knew what was going on. He knew that the leaders of that nation, so beloved by Him, had the price for His betrayal ready. He knew that one of His disciples had bargained to sell Him for that price, a goodly price, the price of a slave, and there He sat in the midst of His disciples, knowing all this, and His soul was sorely troubled as He said to them, "One of you shall betray Me." Not a poor, blind pagan; not a besotted cut-throat from the slums of the city, nor even those leaders of that apostate nation, Israel, but ONE OF YOU whom I have chosen and gathered round Me, to whom I have been communicating heavenly things, and revealing the Father's Name. "One of you shall betray Me." No tongue can tell how the Lord felt that! keenly felt it; but, feeling it, He took the bread and then and there instituted the Supper. What was the meaning of that? It seems to me it meant this. You may not be able to trust anyone else, but you may trust Me. If treachery springs up in this inner circle, to whom can you look? My love will not fail you. Throughout all the days of the pilgrimage of the church upon earth you may rest in My unchanging love. Amid days of darkness and nights of treachery and betrayal you will find Me always the same. My death for you is the pledge of it, and the Supper will ever keep this fact before you. Surely that was the meaning of the fact that the Supper was instituted on the night of the betrayal. The betrayal is the dark background, the love of the Saviour, an unchanging love, a love that would go even to death, a love that could not bear to be forgotten, is the picture that shines out upon the background.

Think of our Lord Jesus in that hour, on that very night. He knew what was going on. He knew that the leaders of that nation, so beloved by Him, had the price for His betrayal ready. He knew that one of His disciples had bargained to sell Him for that price, a goodly price, the price of a slave, and there He sat in the midst of His disciples, knowing all this, and His soul was sorely troubled as He said to them, “ One of you shall betray Me .” Not a poor, blind pagan; not a besotted cut-throat from the slums of the city, nor even those leaders of that apostate nation, Israel, but ONE OF YOU whom I have chosen and gathered round Me, to whom I have been communicating heavenly things, and revealing the Father's Name. “ One of you shall betray Me .” No tongue can tell how the Lord felt that! keenly felt it; but, feeling it, He took the bread and then and there instituted the Supper. What was the meaning of that? It seems to me it meant this. You may not be able to trust anyone else, but you may trust Me. If treachery springs up in this inner circle, to whom can you look? My love will not fail you. Throughout all the days of the pilgrimage of the church upon earth you may rest in My unchanging love. Amid days of darkness and nights of treachery and betrayal you will find Me always the same. My death for you is the pledge of it, and the Supper will ever keep this fact before you. Surely that was the meaning of the fact that the Supper was instituted on the night of the betrayal. The betrayal is the dark background, the love of the Saviour, an unchanging love, a love that would go even unto death, a love that could not bear to be forgotten, is the picture that shines out upon the background.

It was on the night of the betrayal. The betrayal is the background that throws into bright relief the love that moved the Lord to give to us the supper that we might have it until He comes as a memorial of His death for us. The betrayal was very definitely in the Lord's thoughts; how keenly He felt it we must surely feel, as reverently we consider Him in that solemn hour. “One of you shall betray Me,” He said to them (Matt. 26:21). “One of you that eateth with Me shall betray Me” (Mark 14:18). Then in Luke 22:21, after they had partaken of the supper, His words are recorded, “The hand of him that betrayeth Me is with Me at the table.” And here in 1 Corinthians though now in the glory of God, the Lord does not forget this; it was on “the same night in which He was betrayed” that He took bread and gave thanks. There was base treachery in the inner circle and this caused Him the deepest pain. Jerusalem He loved, but it had never professed to love Him. It had always despised Him, proudly asking, “Who is this?” When His love took Him to it to spend laborious days in the midst of it, it offered Him no welcome, or rest, or home. It left Him friendless on its streets, with no place to lay His head unless He sought it on the Mount of Olives . He felt this, and only His touching lament and tears can tell us how keenly He felt it. But in this inner circle He surely could find consolation and rest! These disciples of His, the “ you ” to whom He loved to speak, they surely would be faithful to Him; for one and all of them had protested oft and again their love to Him! No, He cannot rest even here, for having gathered them together He says, “ one of you shall betray Me.” Treachery within was a hundred-fold worse than hatred without, and this treachery was well calculated to discourage and destroy a less than perfect love. But He rose up above it all and in connection with it all He instituted the supper which was to be to all His own, as long as ever they needed it, a memorial of His love that no failure on their part could destroy.

Notice the next thing which Joseph's brethren do. They send a messenger. They would have been far happier if they had gone themselves individually. "And they sent a messenger to Joseph, saying, Thy father did command before he died, saying, So shall ye say to Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin." I have a very grave doubt whether the old man did say this, but they knew the time had now come when they had to get thoroughly right with Joseph, and this could only be effected by an honest acknowledgement of the past. So with you, my friend, and God. If you do not confess downright you will never get peace. Hear David's statement regarding this: "When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer" (Ps. 32:3-4). This misery was his while he cloaked up his sin. Now note the contrast, and how he illustrates the New Testament statement: "*If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). He evidently made a clean breast of all his sin in regard to Bathsheba, as detailed in Psalm 51. Observe the result. "I acknowledged my sin to thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin" (Ps. 32:5). So say Joseph's brethren. "For they did to thee. evil: and now, we pray thee, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept when they spake to him" (Gen. 50:17). What is the meaning of that? Their distrust pained him. Beloved friend, if you want to chill and pain the heart of Christ, distrust His love. Nothing touches our hearts like being distrusted. He loves to be fully trusted.

This is what men do between each other now-a-days, to reach some end they have in view. I dare say they may not perhaps think so: but the largest portion of the sorrows between men, or even between brethren, are caused by some hint, behind backs; or some whispered story, to which the heart of others is ready to lend an ear; which causes distrust to spring up between souls. Distrust engendered, dislike follows, but more especially in the one who has wronged the other. It is exceedingly hard to trust a heart you have wronged. “A lying tongue hateth those that are afflicted by it”; and “He that repeateth a matter, separateth very friends”; and “He that did his neighbor wrong, thrust him away,” etc. These passages (kindred in their character) are but the workings of this principle of evil. Hence the true saying, “The injured may forget; the injurer, never!”

It may be that some man whom we have trusted and believed in with all our heart as a pillar in the church has disappointed us and disappeared. We feel, perhaps, that in spiritual matters we cannot trust anyone any more. Our hearts are like Job's full of feelings of doubt and distrust of God. Let each one ask, Is this not true in my case?