Jesus is Compassionate

G (GOD)-mail: From the Heart of the Bridegroom to His Bride

Beloved, I have another message to deliver to you from the heart of the Bridegroom. He is so eager for you to know him as He truly is! Today I have been sent to help you understand what is at the core of His beautiful heart: compassion.

But before I tell you more about Jesus’s heart, let me show you what the Father is like. 

When the Father first revealed his nature to Moses, He placed him in the cleft of a rock and passed by proclaiming the following:

“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.”  Exodus 34:6-7

The very first word that the Father used to describe himself was “merciful”. The original Hebrew word used in the text is ‘Rachuwm” and it’s also translated “compassionate”.

One of Jesus’s primary assignments during his first visitation to earth was to show humankind what the Father was really like (John 17:6; John 14:9).

So, as I show you in the Gospels what motivated Jesus most during His time on earth, you’re going to see that the Father and Son are exactly alike! Like Father, like Son. 

They are compassionate. In fact, everything that God does is motivated by compassion and mercy.

I know what you’re thinking, “ How can that be true? God’s actions are always motivated by compassion? Always? Doesn’t he get angry sometimes and judge me when I sin?”

It’s true, Precious One. God’s actions are always motivated by compassion and mercy! Even when he is upset over our sin. I’ll be back soon to tell you more about how God will respond to you if you rebel, but for now, let’s focus on this aspect of his nature.  

Do you know what compassion is, Beloved?

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines compassion as “sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it” whereas dictionary.com defines it as “a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.”

In both cases, two aspects of compassion are noted. Firstly, it is a deep stirring of emotion brought on by perceiving the pain or suffering another person is experiencing. Secondly, it is motivated to act, to relieve the source of the suffering.

So, now that you understand what compassion is Beloved, look for that aspect of God’s nature as you read through the Bible!

To give you a little boost, I am going to take you through several times the compassion of Jesus was on display in the Gospels.

Let’s have a look together.

The Compassionate Heart of Jesus and the Leper

A leper came to Jesus. He knelt down and begged him, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”  Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him. “I am willing,” he told him. “Be clean.”  Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was healed. Mark 1:40-42

Beloved, picture this scene in your mind’s eye. Jesus had been preaching in synagogues across the region, driving out demons, and healing all sorts of diseases.  As He returned from giving his sermon on the Mount, a man with leprosy approached Him in total desperation. He knelt down at the feet of Jesus and begged for help. 

The leper’s condition and cry for help stirred compassion in the heart of Jesus. Jesus knew how lepers were treated in the Jewish community. They were cast out of common society due to the contagious nature of the disease they bore. Lepers were considered utterly defiled and unclean. By law they were required to keep away others, lest they cause others to be similarly defiled. Anyone suffering from that terrible disease certainly would have not only horrific physical effects, but the additional psychological devastation of being socially isolated, utterly rejected, and repulsed by others.

Jesus’s compassion motivated him to heal the man, Beloved. But did you notice how he healed the man? He touched him! Now, there are plenty of examples in the Bible of Jesus healing people with just a word. He could have done that in this case as well. But knowing that this man had probably not been physically touched by anyone in his condition for a long while, Jesus’s compassion acted in a tender and loving way. What a beautiful heart He has!

The Compassionate Heart of Jesus and the 5,000

And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the hour is now late. Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” Mark 6:32-37

Again, see this setting with the eyes of your heart, Beloved. 

Shortly before this miraculous event, Jesus had been informed that his cousin and forerunner, John, the Baptist, had been beheaded by King Herod. He intended to get away by himself, most likely to grieve and process the devastating loss. However, crowds of people got wind of His travel plans and ran on foot to meet the boat He had ridden on as soon as it came ashore!

Matthew tells us that He had compassion on the crowds because they were like “sheep without a shepherd”. In the natural realm, a shepherdless sheep is a danger to itself. Without guidance and oversight, sheep are prone to wander into hostile territory and become lost. In a similar reference in Matthew 9:36, it says Jesus had compassion on the crowds because “they were harassed and helpless”. Gotquestions.com describes the condition of the crowd this way:

“The people swarming toward Jesus are like sheep without a shepherd because their spiritual overseers, Israel’s religious leaders, have harassed and abandoned them. In Matthew 9:36, the verb translated as “harassed” (skyllomai in the original Greek) means “to be afflicted, troubled, grieved, bothered, annoyed.” “Helpless” comes from a verb that means “to be thrown down, rejected; thrown away, cast off.” This word speaks of the utterness of the people’s abandonment by their leaders and its thoroughly damaging effect. Jesus was profoundly moved when He looked into their faces because He saw people who were wholly disheartened, demoralized, and discouraged.

When Jesus looked upon this crowd, he recognized people needed to be fed, both spiritually and physically. He taught them “many things” to address their spiritual hunger and then in Mark 6:41-42 we learn that Jesus multiplied the two fish and five loaves to address their physical hunger as well. 

Because God is compassionate, He is always looking to meet all of the needs of those for whom He deeply cares. You can be assured, Beloved, that He thinks about you in the exact same way. There is no need that you have that He is unwilling or unable to address if you will come to Him in humility and truth.

The Compassionate Heart of Jesus and the 4,000

In those days, when again a great crowd had gathered, and they had nothing to eat, he called his disciples to him and said to them, “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way. And some of them have come from far away.” Mark 8:1-3

In another example in the gospel of Mark, Jesus refused to send the crowds away hungry after they’d been listening to Him teach for several days. Many in the crowd had traveled far distances to sit under His teaching. Jesus was deeply concerned about their well-being and ability to make the journey back to their homes on empty stomachs. Once again, Jesus demonstrated that it was not only the spiritual condition of mankind that He cared about, but rather the total condition of mankind that concerned Him. 

Beloved, Jesus genuinely wants to meet every single need that you have. As the Bridegroom of new covenant, His eternal commitment is to take extraordinary good care of those with whom He is in covenant agreement!

The Compassionate Heart of Jesus and Grieving Widow at Nain

Soon afterward he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him. As he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a considerable crowd from the town was with her.  And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then he came up and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Luke 7:11-15

In this next example of Christ’s compassion on full display, Jesus comes across a woman who is in the process of burying her only son. Because this woman is described as a widow, we know that she had already suffered the previous loss of her husband. Her grief must have been unbearable. 

Jesus, moved by her suffering, instructed her not to weep. She was not merely crying, but mourning over her son. Because Jesus empathized with her deep pain, and was moved to alleviate it, He raised her son from the dead and then gave Him back to His mother.  

Can you imagine how mourning turned to joy in a single moment for that mother, all because of the compassionate heart of Jesus?

The Compassionate Heart of Jesus and Mary of Bethany

When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in private, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.”  Jesus wept. John 11:28-35

In the last example we will cover today, Jesus came face to face with the death of his close friend, Lazarus and the impact it had on his sisters. The apostle John wrote in 11:5 that Jesus loved Martha, Mary, Lazarus. The Greek word used for loved,  ‘agapao’ means to be very fond of or to love deeply.  These three were no strangers to Jesus. They were a family for whom he cared for personally and deeply.

Both Mary and Martha approached Jesus with the same despairing question in their hearts. Why didn’t you keep our brother from dying? These sisters had enough faith to believe that Lazarus would never have died had Jesus intervened beforehand. But since Lazarus had been dead for several days, they’d lost hope of his recovery. Instead they were left only with questions and tears, and the presence of the Christ whom they must have felt had failed them in the hour of their greatest need.

Jesus knew ahead of time that He would raise Lazarus from the dead. He knew that within a matter of moments, He would call Lazarus forth from the grave and all would be well. He could have ignored the wailing and weeping and encouraged the mourners to cheer up. He certainly had cause to! But rather than doing that, Jesus stepped into the grief of those who mourned. He identified with them in their grief. He saw their pain. He saw their suffering. What He observed both moved him deeply and greatly troubled Him. In fact, Jesus identified with their hurt and feelings of loss so much that He wept himself.

Jesus is compassionate.

Conclusion

Beloved, God already knows the end of your story as well. 

Whether you are currently in a mountaintop season, or walking through the valley of the shadow of death, Jesus is walking through it with you. 

He sees you. He knows you. He cares for you. 

Whatever you are going through Precious One, Jesus understands exactly what you need. If you have a hardship of any kind, whether emotional, relational, spiritual, financial -  anything at all, He not only wants to meet your need, but He also has the ability to meet your need!

Take a moment to reflect on your life right now, Beloved? 

What do you need to entrust into the  Lord’s hands? 

Turn to Him. His love and compassion are waiting to meet your every need.