The author looks at the compassion of Jesus Christ when He was on earth, but also for us today.

Source: The Monthly Record, 1997. 3 pages.

The Compassion of Christ

In their record of the testimony concerning the emotional life of Christ, Matthew, Mark and Luke time and again lay emphasis upon the compassion of the Lord, and highlight it as the one outstanding motive for His actions. While John takes us deeper than this to the love of Christ that is the ground of His compassion, the Synoptic writers draw attention to the outpour­ing of that love in tenderhearted compassion, and they do so with a word that does not appear in classical Greek. It is a word that refers to a man's deepest feelings and emotions; a word that brings us into the singularly affective heart of the Saviour.

While He was in this world, Jesus could not but be moved by what He saw. To be sure, there were things that moved Him to righteous indignation, such as when His Father's house was made into a place of merchandise, in John 2:16; or when he was angry because of the hardness of men's hearts in Mark 3:5.

But, surrounded as He was with a world in the grip of sin, the heart of Jesus went out in feelings of empathy and of affection. When he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd (Matthew 9:6), to which Mark 6:34 adds that he began to teach them many things. Again, when Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them ... he healed their sick (Matthew 14:14). On another occasion Jesus left Jericho, and saw two blind men sitting by the way. Matthew 20:34 says that Jesus had compassion (on them), and touched their eyes: and immedi­ately their eyes received sight, and they followed him. The healing of the leprous man, whose hands Jesus touched, is also ascribed in Mark 1:41 to his being moved with compas­sion.

Interestingly, too, the compassion of Christ was to form the rudimentary evangelistic theme of the church. When Legion was cured of his devils in Mark 5:19, he was commissioned by Christ in these terms: Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee. Compassion also moved him in Luke 7:13 to raise the son of the widow of Nain, as, in the parable, it moved the father to run to his returning son (Luke 15:20).

There was, therefore, no human condition hidden from Christ's eye. He entered a world of sin and misery, whose agonies surrounded Him daily. The haunting images of human need were neither ignored nor overlooked. He not only saw, He looked. And the vision of a world in the grip of spiritual death etched itself upon the soul of the one who was the fountain of all spiritual life.

Jesus is, however, not only open-eyed; he is also open-hearted. He is moved by what He sees; that is the meaning of the Greek word for 'compassion'. He is affected by it. He is neither cold-hearted nor hard-hearted. The images of need do not bounce off His heart, but bend His heart and incline Him to reach out to those within His view. Two blind men, a grieving mother, a hungry crowd: these are the sights that move the Saviour. The decree of God to save men, in pursuit of which Jesus came into the world, is disclosed incarnately in the feelings and in the longings that rise up within the Lord's 'reasonable soul'.

But there is more than emotion here. Always the compassion involves contact, touching. The leprous hand is restored by a touch in Mark 1:41, as the eyes of the blind beggars are touched in Matthew 20:34. He even touches the bier carrying the dead man in Luke 7:14. With the compassion there is action. There is open­handedness. He is not content to stop and stare. He becomes involved. He steps in. He does not draw back. Always there is exposure. He cannot watch the drama as the Athenians could watch a play by Euripides for their cleansing, their 'catharsis', the way we can watch a film or read a book and be moved at a distance. For Jesus, compassion always led to contact. The private movements of His soul brought forth public displays of His affection. He was a rescuer, and to save He had to step in to the desperation of men, and out into their gaze.

For Those Around🔗

Because of the compassion of Christ, all was made new for those into whose agony He stepped. The blind remained blind no longer. The leprous man is cleansed. The crowd are fed, and taught, and shepherded. At Nain, a home is transformed. A son lives because the Son had compassion. In Decapolis, an audience marvels at the works of God; and in 'a desert place' (Matthew 14:13, 15) carers rejoice at the healing of their patients as they all, five thou­sand of them, eat to the full from a meal of five loaves and two fishes. And all because of the compassion of Jesus.

How different this was to the reaction of others. What could the common people expect from the Pharisees? Nothing but scorn and disdain. The Pharisee in the temple thanked God he was not like other men. The very thought of them sent a shudder through his soul. The crowd deserved no compassion. Luke tells us that as he prayed, the Pharisee "stood"; his position was apart from everyone else. From his proud position of aloofness he looked down on all others; especially the tax-collector.

But with Jesus it was different. He was separate from sinners, but never separated from them. He too went apart to pray, but His commitment to the One to whom He prayed brought Him to stand and live and work among those for whom He prayed. And because His commitment to God is married to His commitment to men, He reaches out to change lives by His presence and by His touch.

It is impossible to experience His look, His love, His touch, without being transformed. These have the power to change a life. Days are changed by him, as lives are changed by Him. Into old age a lady in Nain will tell of how her son came home as her husband had never come home. The tale will live on for generations. She saw nothing like it in all her time on earth. For a moment her path crosses that of the Saviour, and neither are the same again.

The Gospel is full of power. And the power of the Gospel is the power of the Lord's right hand. It is because of the work of His hand, doing valiantly, that the song of salvation is heard in the tents of the righteous (Psalm 118:15). The power of the Word is a power that transforms the lives and thoughts of men. It is not only a soul-saving power, but a life-changing power. Or, as Rabbi Duncan has it, Christ came to save the very opposites of Himself, but not so as to leave them such.

For Us Now🔗

We profess to have a life-changing message to declare; a soul-transforming message to preach. What can it be but the message of a compassionate Christ? Nothing can transform a soul like this. He lives still. And His look, His touch, His love are still able to give sight, healing, feeding and life.

Indeed, the writer to the Hebrews says that this is the only way by which we can truly understand the High Priesthood of the Saviour. As with every high priest, Christ is taken from among men, because He can have 'compassion on the ignorant and on them that are out of the way' (Hebrews 5:2), and he is become like his brothers in order that he might be a faithful high priest before God (Hebrews 2:17). It is impossible to divorce the saving work of Christ in incarnation and atonement from the compassions that flow in the Saviour's heart. He is our brother Jesus, touched with the sense of our weaknesses, our great high priest in the Heavens.

We dare not preach another Gospel. We dare not divorce the eternal, saving decrees of God from the self-revelation of God in Christ. We dare not make the ground of our faith and our Christianity some abstract notion of divine sovereignty which bears no resemblance to the movements of the heart of Christ. He is a compassionate Saviour because He is a high priest, and He is a High Priest touched with the very feeling of our need.

There are countless times on life's journey when the child of God is bereft of any comfort other than "He knoweth the way that I take, and when he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold" (Job 23:10). The Lord's heart can never be hidden from His children as His face can. Even in the darkest hour, in the loneliest experience, in the most testing moment, when man's help proves to be less than useless, it is from Christ's compassion for His people that grace comes to them. Love and obligation become intertwined in the marriage covenant between the Lord and the church. His compassions fail not - great is the faithfulness of the husband of the church (cf. Lamentations 3:22-23).

There is, surely, a great need, for such a Christ as this to be heralded in such a world as ours. The world shows little pity, little understanding, little patience. The world is only interested in results. People do not matter. The great compa­nies are not interested in the great complications of their people's lives.

And it is into the darkness of an uncaring world that the light of the Gospel comes, extolling the virtues of one who was compassed about with infirmities, and is the more able to tailor grace to need, strength to infirmity.

But there is more. We are not only to declare Him as He is, but to be like Him as He is. Christ told a story about a man who was shown compassion but gave none. Jesus clearly intended that the master of Matthew 18, freed from his debt of ten thousand talents by a compas­sionate monarch, should freely loose his servant who owed him a hundred pence. There was compassion enjoyed in experience but not given in return. All who have experienced the compassionate love of Jesus are to show it as they were shown it, and to echo it in their own lives and conduct.

That has profound implications for Christian ministry. To be untouchable is to be not like Jesus. The luxuries of clericalism can allow us to turn a blind eye to real need. We can be moved, but that is not enough. We can retreat into our manses, but Jesus bids us step out of the shadows. Compassionate ministry is performed on the stage, and not in the stalls. It demands accessibility. Christ had no vestry hour. Christ had no vestry. He did not delineate hours of availability. He meets Nicodemus at midnight as He meets the bad Samaritan lady at noonday. His concern is the need to meet, not the convenience of when to meet. Christian ministry cannot retain its Christlikeness and luxuriate at the same time in the demand for privacy. To follow Christ may mean a stain on our clothes as well as on our honour.

It also has profound implications for Christian living. It is impossible to claim real Christianity on the basis of a mere profession. James tells us that faith, without works, is dead because it is alone (James 2:17). John illustrates this principle thus: "...whose hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?" (1 John 3:17). To be like Christ is not to be separatist, self- absorbed, and disinterested in the world. It is to be moved to action, with the response of faith, to go about doing good. Christianity must be intolerant of every teaching, every philosophy and every principle that threatens the cause of Christ and the authority of the Scriptures. But our Christianity dare not be intolerant of those around us who are crying out for help, guidance and counsel in a world of sin, sickness and despair.

The compassion of Christ ought to shape our attitude, and our action, as far as men, women and children in the grip of sin are concerned. That means raising a voice and a hand for the threatened unborn, the abused child, the drug-taking teenager, the divorced mother, the alcoholic father, the frail elderly. Christ could not look on such without being moved to reach out and touch, to go the extra mile, leaving Himself open to misrepresentation and vilification. It was this Jesus, anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power, who went about doing good, because God was with him (Acts 10:38). And it is in the footsteps of such a one that those who profess the Christi­anity of the Bible are called to walk.

A passion for Christ will generate a compassion for men. It will produce real saints who love sinners, not Pharisees who despise them.

Add new comment

(If you're a human, don't change the following field)
Your first name.
(If you're a human, don't change the following field)
Your first name.

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.