The Lord Is Near to the Brokenhearted

"The righteous cry, and Yahweh hears, and delivers them out of all their troubles. Yahweh is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves those who have a crushed spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but Yahweh delivers him out of them all" (Ps 34:17–19).

The psalm does not begin by removing anything. It begins with a cry. The righteous cry — that is the first fact — and Yahweh hears. That is the second. Between the hearing and the deliverance, the psalm sets the word that carries this whole proclamation: near. "Yahweh is near to those who have a broken heart." The nearness is not after the trouble. The nearness stands in the middle of the passage, between the cry that is heard and the afflictions that are many, because the nearness belongs inside the affliction, not on the far side of it.

Read the order and let it stand. Verse 19 does not say the afflictions of the righteous are few. It says they are many — and it says it in the same breath as the deliverance: "Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but Yahweh delivers him out of them all." Both clauses are true at once, and neither cancels the other. A comfort that requires the affliction to be small is not the comfort of this psalm. A comfort that requires the affliction to be finished is not the comfort of this psalm either. The psalm gives a God who hears the cry, who is near to the broken heart, who saves the crushed in spirit — and who delivers, as His own act, in His own time, out of them all. The broken heart is not the obstacle to His nearness. In this text, the broken heart is where His nearness is announced.

Isaiah names the height of the One who is near, and the height is the wonder of it. "For the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy, says: 'I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also who is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite'" (Isa 57:15). He inhabits eternity. His name is Holy. And He names two dwellings: the high and holy place, and the contrite and humble spirit. The second dwelling is not a visit. He does not say He passes by the lowly, or pities them from the height. He says He dwells with him. The distance between the One who inhabits eternity and the heart that is crushed is closed from His side: He takes up residence there.

And mark His purpose in dwelling there: to revive. To revive the spirit of the humble, to revive the heart of the contrite. Reviving is not unbreaking. A revived heart is a living heart, not a heart that was never crushed. God does not promise the contrite a different past. He gives the contrite His own presence in the present — life breathed into the spirit that is low, the heart that is bruised — while the bruise is still the truth about them. This is why the comfort of Scripture never needs to pretend. It does not rest on a claim that things are other than they are. It rests on a claim about where God is: near, dwelling, reviving.

The Lord Jesus takes the same truth onto His own lips, and He puts the mourners under a blessing before He puts the comfort in the future. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted" (Matt 5:4). Blessed — now, in the mourning, not after it. They shall be comforted — the comfort is certain, and it is spoken in the future tense. Christ does not flatter the mourner by calling mourning pleasant. He does not hand him a cheerfulness he does not have. He declares him blessed in the middle of the grief, on the strength of what God will do: they shall be comforted. The word He uses is the comfort word — paraklēthēsontai, they shall be comforted — and it is the same word that builds the great comfort chapter of the New Testament, where Paul names it ten times in seven verses.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, through the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God" (2 Cor 1:3–4). His title is not the God of some comfort, or the God of comfort for the strong. He is the Father of mercies and God of all comfort — and the place of His comforting is named plainly: in all our affliction. Not out of it first, and then comfort as the receipt. In it. The affliction is the room where the comfort is given.

Paul then sets the proportion, and the proportion is the opposite of despair. "For as the sufferings of Christ abound to us, even so our comfort also abounds through Christ" (2 Cor 1:5). Sufferings abound; comfort abounds. The measure of the comfort is not the shrinking of the suffering but the abounding of Christ, through whom the comfort comes. The sufferings themselves are called His — the sufferings of Christ — so the afflicted are not suffering in a country their Lord has never entered. He is the channel of the comfort because He is the Lord of the sufferings: despised and rejected, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, as the prophet wrote of Him (Isa 53:3). The nearness of God to the brokenhearted is not an idea. It is a Person who has Himself been broken — "by His wounds we are healed" is the same passage's word (Isa 53:5) — and who now abounds comfort to His own out of His own fullness.

The comfort also has a direction: it travels. God comforts us "that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, through the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God" (2 Cor 1:4). Nobody manufactures this comfort. It is received, and then it is handed on, the same comfort, from the comforted to the afflicted. And Paul tells us what it produces while the suffering continues: "If we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer" (2 Cor 1:6). The comfort produces enduring — not escape, not numbness, but patient enduring of the same sufferings. That is the apostolic shape of it. The grief is still there. The sufferings are the same sufferings. What the comfort changes is that the sufferer does not suffer them alone, or without fruit, or without end.

For the end is also written, and Paul binds the hope to the sharing: "Our hope for you is steadfast, knowing that, since you are partakers of the sufferings, so you are also of the comfort" (2 Cor 1:7). Partakers of the sufferings — that part is present. Partakers of the comfort — that part is present too, and it is also the earnest of the day when the comfort will no longer be given inside affliction, because affliction itself will be gone. That day is described once, and it is described as future: "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; neither will there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more. The first things have passed away" (Rev 21:4).

Until that day, the church does not lie to the grieving. The tears are real, and they are not yet wiped away. The afflictions are many, and the psalm says so. The mourning is the mourner's present address, and Christ calls him blessed there. What God gives now is not pretense but Himself: a hearing ear for the cry (Ps 34:17), a dwelling presence with the contrite (Isa 57:15), a comfort that abounds through Christ in proportion to the suffering (2 Cor 1:5), and a promise in the future tense that will not fail — they shall be comforted (Matt 5:4). The Lord is near to the brokenhearted. Near is not the whole of what He will do. But near is what He is, now, to them.