COMPASSION

 

Most humans believe in a power greater than themselves. If they don’t know the true God, they are apt to create a god or gods to help them explain the mysteries of life. The God of the Bible, on the other hand, while unchanging  in nature and purpose, is genuinely personal.

Because we are made in his image (Genesis 1:27), we can begin to grasp what God is like by using our own person hood as a clue to God’s divine person hood. If we eliminate anything imperfect bout ourselves and magnify everything we know about God to an infinite degree, we may begin to understand God’s flawless person hood. The Bible also tells that the one true and living God actually feels. He experiences a whole range of emotional reactions that are similar to our own. He laughs (Psalm 2:4), he grieves (Genesis 6:6), he hates (Psalm 5:5), he is  patient (Nehemiah 9:30), and he is compassionate (Psalm 103:8).

Scripture tells us God is eternal, holy, just, all-good, wise, powerful, and loving. And because he is loving , he is compassionate. That adjective points to a divine attribute that is like the trait we have in mind when we characterize a human as a compassionate. Eliminate God’s compassion, and he is no longer God – the personal God who interacted with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Eliminate compassion, and God is no longer the God who has experiences similar to our own states of joy, regret, grief, and merciful kindness. Eliminate compassion from God’s nature, and Scripture must be rewritten, our understanding of the divine nature must be radically revised, and theology must be turned inside out. But compassion cannot be eliminated. It must be given its proper place among God’s attributes. He is the caring God. It follows, therefore, that if Jesus is the self-revelation of God of the Old Testament, then compassion will be embodied in Him.

Old Testament believers were taught to be compassionate by God’s deeds and declarations. And we certainly see Go’s compassion highlighted by the inspired authors of the Old Testament. King David included in a prayer, “But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness” (Psalm 86:15). Isaiah, the prophet, wrote: “For a brief moment  I  abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back. In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you, ‘ says the  Lord your Redeemer.... Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,’ says the Lord, who has compassion on you” (Isaiah 54:7-10). And the prophet Micah wrote, “You will again have compassion on us; you will  tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19). Texts like these give God’s people an in-depth perception of God’s heart.

Living in Peace:

In the beginning, God established a world of wholeness and peace. Once that world was shattered by Adam and Eve’s disobedience, God chose to re-establish the state of shalom through his chosen nation, Israel. If Israel had obeyed God’s law of compassion, life in Israel for both men and women would have been the happiest place.

The Hebrew word for peace, “Shalom”, is so rich that its almost untranslatable. Thus the society envisioned by the psalmist in Psalm 85:10, as a society of shalom, is an order of life characterized by joy and justice, piety and plenty, kindness and caring. But God’s people failed to achieve God’s loving ideal. Isaiah graphically depicted the moral  and spiritual sickness of that disobedient nation (Isaiah 1:5-7). Divine punishment, administered in sorrowful grace, again and again overwhelmed Israel.

Although the nation lasted more than 450 years, eventually Israel was overtaken by invading empires. Thousands of God’s people were taken  captive and carried to another land. But God in his mercy allowed a remnant of Israelites to return from exile. They fiercely resolved not to repeat their ancestors’ sinful failure. So began a long period of legalism that extended from roughly 400 BC to 400 AD. Well-meaning rabbis, many of them devout and learned, developed a restrictive system of rules and regulations. At first these teachings circulated orally, but gradually their interpretations were written down. Life-giving laws that were once a delight and joy as well as the source of soul-enlightening guidance and blessing (Psalm 119) changed into a rigid system of religious ritualism that Jesus denounced (Matthew 23:13-14).

To be sure, there were teachers of the law, rabbis, priests, as spiritual servants of God, proclaimed and practised Micah 6:8, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you ? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God”. Likewise, many ordinary Israelites were models of virtue and piety, loving God and doing good to their neighbours. The  Jewish people as a whole found life a heavy burden under the oppression of their Roman conquerors and the rigid rules and structure of the Pharisees. Economically impoverished and spiritually ignorant, they were “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36).

Yet into this turbulent situation, Jesus came as compassion incarnate. He made caring central in his ministry, sweeping aside any legalistic distortions and ethnic limitations, and focusing on the all-inclusive grace of God. A Jew by birth, and a devout Jew by practice, Christ knew that his heavenly Father, the God of the Old Testament, is the God of compassion. Jesus modeled perfectly the compassionate neighbour-love that Paul later wrote about to the church in Corinth (1 Corinthians 13), declaring it to be the greatest of all virtues.

Compassion and Jesus:

Jesus came with his revolutionary message of God’s kingdom – a kingdom accessible only by faith. It required loving obedience to the King and Father, as well as loving service to brothers and sisters in God’s family and to every member of the human family. Love was its one all-inclusive law, a love that Jesus spelled out in his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5), and a love that fulfilled the Ten Commandments (Romans 13:10). The controlling attitude and behaviour in this born-again society was to be compassionate, demonstrate love in action, and to provide caring concern for others – all of which was modeled by Jesus himself.

As God incarnate, Christ flawlessly reflected his Father’s nature, not only the divine holiness but the divine heart. Because he was sinless and most acutely sensitive to sin, Jesus sympathized with sinful people who were suffering the consequences of inherited depravity and personal sinfulness. He was aware that the multitudes he ministered to were made up of sinners, most of whom were spiritually weak and emotionally brittle. He realized too that in the crowds pressing around him were people whose faith was not burning brightly but was at best smoldering (Matthew 12:20). Gently, without judgement, Jesus tried to strengthen the weak and ignite their faith. One  Old Testament text that he continued to emphasize was Hosea 6:6, where God said, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings” (Matthew 9:13; 12:7). Jesus appropriated those significant words spoken by God himself to defend his tradition-violating compassion.

Children:

The people of Israel were a society that prized their children. Abortion and child exposure – leaving children outside to die – which were practised by the pagan nations surrounding the Holy Land, were sinfully abhorrent to God’s elect people. They hailed every birth with joy and gratitude.

Growing up with brothers and sisters, Jesus , no doubt, had opportunity and responsibility to help care for his younger siblings. He thus acquired realistic insight into the characteristics and needs of children (Mark 3:31-32; 6:3). While the Gospels give no specific information about the family relationships in the home of Mary and Joseph, we have good reason to believe they were sensitive, caring, and God-fearing parents.

As His own attitudes were influenced by the attitudes of his parents, Jesus became a lover of children. During his ministry, he was delighted to welcome them whenever they clustered around Him. He had an acute understanding of their need for warm acceptance and adult help. Some of the children in the crowds that followed Jesus were acutely hungry or at least malnourished. Some were sick with all too common ailments. Some of them were deformed and blind. Some were in the grip of demonic powers (Mark 9:17-18).

The disciples of Jesus were annoyed by restless children and tried to push them to the outskirts of the crowds. They ordered them to be quiet or to go away. Nevertheless, the children who sensed Jesus’ love for them, clustered about, waiting to be picked up and held in his welcoming arms. Jesus embraced them and even prayed God’s blessing on them, much to the surprise of his disciples, who he later rebuked  (Mark 10:13-16). Not only that, He declared that children were to be welcomed in His name and that they – so dependent, so trustful, so teachable, so innocent – serve as models of the faith needed to enter the kingdom of God (Matthew 18:1-5). He declared that anyone who causes a child to go astray will suffer severe punishment (Mark 9:35-37, 42).