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COMPASSION FOR OTHERS

As Jesus was compassionate towards women and children, so He was towards those on the edges of society. In first century Israel, tax collectors and publicans were understandably despised and hated. They were Jews who acted as agents of the Roman government. Their task was to gather a specified amount of money from fellow Israelites with no exceptions. If they could extort anything beyond what was due, they pocketed the extra for themselves. So when Jesus wanted to stress the seriousness of sin in the church, he taught His disciples to treat the person as they would a tax collector if they didn’t repent (Matthew 18:17). People must have been scandalized when Jesus ate They must have been furious when Jesus invited Zacchaeus, a notorious publican to receive God’s redeeming, forgiving mercy (Luke 19:1-10). While telling a parable, Jesus must have perplexed His audience when a tax collector rather than a Pharisee received God’s grace (Luke 18: 9-14). The crowd must have been furious when Jesus, the friend of tax collectors and sinners, declared that the tax collectors and prostitutes who had responded repentantly to the preaching of John the Baptist would enter into God’s kingdom ahead of the self-righteous religious leaders (Matthew 21:31-32). According to Jesus, divine compassion could and would change members of the ostracized out-group into members of God’s in-group.

In His saving mercy, Jesus also broke through other barriers. He didn’t hesitate to touch lepers who were to avoid all human contact (Matthew 8:1-4; Mark 1:40-44). He exercised his power on behalf of needy individuals regardless of their race. He healed the son of a centurion, an officer in Rome’s oppressive army (Matthew 8:5-13). He healed the daughter of a pagan, a Canaanite woman (Matthew 15:21-24). He talked with a Samaritan woman and shared with her the liberating truth about God and the worship that was pleasing to God (John 4). He chose a Samaritan as a model of God’s own compassion – a Samaritan as a model of God’s own compassion – a Samaritan who had compassion on a victim of theft and violence (Luke 10).

Jesus welcomed the common people who gladly listened to him (Mark 12:37). The Jewish religious leaders looked down on the people with contempt because they were religiously illiterate (John 7:19), but Jesus who was moved with compassion taught the crowd, fed them repeatedly, healed their sick, and freed those who were possessed by demons (Mark 5:1-17; 8:1-10). Jesus’ pity towards the poor in their sickness, in their hunger, and in their suffering emerges in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:9-31) and again in His vision of judgement (Matthew 25:31-46). His heart and His arms were open wide, as they still are, to the lowest, the least, and the lost (Luke 15).

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