Full of Compassion
Compassion, “suffering with another,” compassion may be described as pity touched with loving concern (Baker’s Dictionary of Theology). Pity touched with loving concern.
I started a new audio book last week, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers, by Dane Ortland. I’m not finished yet, but I can tell that this is one you all should read or listen to. I’ve already ordered the print book so that I can go back through it with a highlighter, pen, and notebook.
Dane said that the characteristic of Christ most frequently noted in the New Testament is compassion. More than anything else, Jesus looked at sinful people, at suffering people, and he showed them pity touched with loving concern.
Early in his ministry Jesus went from town to town preaching and teaching. He was on a mission. He had places to go and things to do. One day, along with his disciples and a crowd of followers, he approached the village of Nain. But before he entered the town he stopped. Coming toward him was a funeral party carrying the body of a widow’s only son. “When he saw her, he had compassion on her…” (Luke 7:13). He moved toward the suffering woman. “Do not weep,” he said, and he raised the man back to life.
Then there was the day that Jesus walked up to a tax collector’s booth and said to Matthew, “Follow me.” And Matthew did so, (Matthew 9:9). Tax collectors were despised. They were traitors to their own people. Good people steered away from them. That evening Jesus went to Matthew’s house for dinner. The only people who would join Matthew and his new friend Jesus were other tax collectors and bad people, sinners. But, come they did. In fact, it must have been quite a party. Describing the evening later Matthew wrote that many tax collectors and sinners came to dinner. The “good” people in town were scandalized. They demanded an explanation. They wanted the disciples to tell them, “Why is your teacher eating with tax collectors?” Jesus, hearing this said, “I desire compassion, not sacrifice, for I came to call sinners, not the righteous” (Matthew 9:13).
One more example. A leper came to Jesus and fell on his knees before him. He said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” When Jesus saw the man who was unclean and rejected by society, he was filled with compassion for him (Mark 1:41). Jesus moved toward him, touched him, and healed him.
There are many other examples of Jesus’s compassion, pity, and loving concern for sinners and sufferers. What can we glean from this for us?
Understand that when you fall short, when you mess up, whether in big ways or small, when you go back to that same sinful habit that you have repeatedly promised to never indulge again, Jesus’ default response toward you is compassion. When you are suffering, when you have physical pain, when you struggle with depression, when you have been betrayed and hurt by others, understand that Jesus’ default response toward you is compassion. He moves toward you, just as he moved toward the widow, tax collectors and sinners, and the leper. Jesus is never surprised by your sin or your suffering. He is never repelled by your failures. He is full of pity and loving concern for you. Please, take comfort in this truth and rest in his compassionate, loving care for you.
Then, knowing of Jesus’ pity and loving concern for you, let that knowledge fill you with compassion for others. “The prophets and other men of God … taught that anyone who had experienced [his compassion] would feel it his duty to have compassion on his fellows, especially the fatherless, the widow, the foreigner… those in poverty, and the afflicted” (New Bible Dictionary). And, because Jesus did in Matthew 25, I would add to that list the prisoner.
Let us pray that God will grant us the grace to see and know of Jesus’ compassion for us and for the grace to be filled with compassion for our incarcerated brothers and sisters. And, may that compassion cause us, like Jesus, to move toward them with pity and loving concern. Let us not fail to pray for them and to write to them with words of hope and encouragement, pointing them to Jesus, who loves them with perfect compassion.
Much love, Barry