TEXT: Mark 1:40-45

SUBJECT: The Humanity of Christ #6: Compassion

For the last few weeks we have been mediating on the human nature of Jesus Christ. I say ‘human nature’ because—even though our Lord is God, He is not only God: He is also a man, as human as you and I.

The study of His manhood is necessary because—as strange as it sounds—it helps us to see God. The German theologian Karl Barth defined God as wholly other. Like most of us preachers, he overstated his case, but you understand what he meant: words like ‘infinite, eternal, and unchangeable’ are only known to us by way of contrast.

But show us a God who is also a man and we starting getting a feel for Him. It’s like meeting a distant relative for the first time. Though you’ve never seen him (or his picture) before, there’s something familiar about him. He looks like your father around the eyes; his laugh reminds you of grandma; something like that.

God became a man to show Himself to us in a way other things cannot. While His Word and Works give us an outline of who He is, Jesus Christ fills in the details.

Philip was a disciple of the Lord and a good Bible student, it seems. He knew the Law and Prophets revealed God, but he wanted more than they offered: he wanted to see God face-to-face. Lord, show us the Father and it will suffice us.

Hoping, perhaps, for a vision of blinding magnificence, he got something far better—

God reveals Himself in many ways, and all of them are blurry, to one degree or another. Except Jesus Christ, whom—Paul says—is the Image of the Invisible God. When I speak of God revealed in Christ, I don’t mean some facets of God are seen in the Lord, but the whole God is wholly revealed in His Son—

Some of God’s fullness is seen in our Lord’s power and wisdom. The qualities that once made the world are displayed by His nature miracles, in particular. The Creator of the seas is also their Master, calming the waves one time and taking a midnight stroll on them another.

The Justice of God is also seen in our Lord’s life. He reveals Mary’s misunderstood love, He exposes the Pharisees’ pretence; in short, He knows what is in a man. In Christ, the Last Day has come: God has

Much more can be said on this—and will be, I hope. But for now, I’ve got settle on one thing, and the one I’ve chosen has got to be the one most dear to every believer—and most challenging too. The word is compassion. What kind of Man was our Lord Jesus Christ? What kind of Man is He? A compassionate Man!

What is ‘compassion’? The dictionary says it is ‘suffering with another’. Everyone suffers his own pains and losses in life, but the compassionate man suffers his own—and other people’s too.

Greek technicalities rarely help a sermon, but this one might: the word translated ‘compassion’ in our New Testament is the one from which we get ‘spleen’ (which is an organ near the stomach, of course). You might say ‘compassion’, therefore, is ‘getting a bellyache at the suffering of someone else.’

This is just what we see in our story. In the last day or two, the Lord has been working hard in and around Capernaum—casting out an unclean spirit in the Synagogue, healing Peter’s mother-in-law, healing all the sick and casting out every demon in town, and now, worn out by helping others, He slips off early in the morning for some quiet time with God. No sooner does He start praying, however, than a leper falls down before Him demanding another piece of Him—Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.

If the man was somewhat reverent, he was very rude and selfish. Our Lord was a man with the same limitations that we have, and the same need for privacy. But the leper didn’t care about Him, he cared only for himself, and to be rid of his disease. At the end of the story we find rudeness and selfishness were not his only character flaws: he was also ungrateful, stupid, and disobedient!

If ever a man should have been sent packing, it was this rude, selfish, ungrateful, stupid, and disobedient man. But he wasn’t sent packing. He was healed because—for all his faults—he was also a leper. And when the Lord saw him, He was moved with compassion—as if He Himself had the leprosy. This is compassion: forgetting yourself and feeling for others.

Leprosy is one of the ugliest diseases in the world. In the early stages it takes all the color out of your skin, but then the snow-white skin starts to blacken, and body parts start to crumble and fall off. The face our Lord looked into that morning might have had no ears or nose or lips. His fingers might have been stubs, and maybe he fell down—not only in reverence—but because his feet were half eaten up. No wonder the Lord was touched by his suffering!

But the leper was not the only person our Lord felt for. When the 5,000 came to hear Him preach, He was again moved with compassion for them. This time, not because they were sick and deformed and dying (like the leper), but because they were on their own spiritually—like sheep without a shepherd.

Though Israel was a conservative and religious society, they were no better than the people you work with: they didn’t know who they were, what they were here for, or where they were going. Of course they had leadership, but it was bad leadership—misleadership if I can make up a word.

They were led by people who were no more qualified than Dr. Phil or Dr. Laura who say they have seen the light--but have only seen the loot!

When our Lord saw these people—so messed up by the leaders of their time—He didn’t blame them or scorn them or ignore them. He wept for them.

If our Lord felt for the people in general, He also felt for persons in particular. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were His best friends in the world. When the dear man died, He looked on the red eyes of his sisters, and Jesus wept—wept so loudly that the people who heard Him could only say—Behold, how He loved Him!

The compassion He had for strangers and friends, He also had for His family. He was Mary’s oldest son, of course, and the one responsible for her welfare. He had at least five brothers, but they were not responsible men, and He could not trust His dear mother to their tender mercies. So, as He hung on the cross, suffering as no man ever has, He felt for His mother and turned her over to the man He loved—and trusted—more than anyone in the world. Nodding to Mary, it seems, He said to John—

And that day, John took her in and cared for Mary as if he were her first-born son.

This is the compassion our Lord had in the day.

But what about now?

When a man is at the bottom himself, he has a certain feeling for those who are down there with him. But as he rises to the top, he often forgets where he came from, and looks down on the ones still there. While this is not always true, it usually is. There’s a Proverb to this effect—

At God’s Right Hand, Jesus is nobody’s servant any more, but is Lord of all! The power and happiness has not gone to His head. He remains this same Jesus. Hebrews 4:15 reminds us that our Lord is a High Priest, but unlike a lot of the men who occupied that high office, He has not lost touch with the common man, He is still touched with the feeling of our infirmity.

Modern Bibles usually say He ‘sympathizes’ with us or words to that effect, but there’s something in the older translation that, well, touches me: Touched with the feeling of our infirmity.

Observe: it doesn’t say He used to be touched, but He is touched—not way back then—but now, today, Jesus Christ feels for you in your suffering every bit as much as He did for the leper who cut into His devotions that morning!

How did our Lord come to be such a compassionate man? A lot can be said here, but I’ll only say a little.

He may have been wired for compassion. I’m not too fond of the way I said this, but I couldn’t come up with anything better. Some people are naturally sympathetic. From the cradle they side with the underdog and are deeply hurt by the hurts of other people. Many of these people are not Christians and their compassion is not the fruit of the Spirit. But the compassion is real and we ought to be thankful for it, for without it, the world would be a far worse place to live in than it is.

I believe the Lord was this way. I can’t quite prove it, but it makes good sense to me, and I’ll say no more.

Whatever we make of His wiring, we know He was an obedient Man. And if God commands compassion, He obeyed. Does the Lord order His people to feel this way? Of course He does! Look up the words fatherless and widow in a concordance and you’ll see God commanding His People to remember them, to help them, to include them in their celebrations, and so on. What does the Lord require of you? asked the prophet.

Jesus Christ loved mercy, if for no other reason, because His Father told Him to!

His own life made Him feel for others. If you’ve never been homeless, all of the homeless may seem like bums, winos, and beggars. Of course some are, but not all. And, even if they are, they’re still wet when it rains, hungry when they don’t eat, and cold at night.

Our Lord knows what hunger feels like. He went forty days and forty nights without food, and so a swollen belly is not only a picture to Him. A life of doing without fitted Him, in part, to feel for people who don’t have all the good things of life.

If all of these things contributed to His compassion, there was something else, something more basic than any or all of them put together. John 5:19 tells us what it is—

Who’s the Father? God. Who’s the Son? Christ? What does the Son do? Only what He sees the Father doing. What is the Father doing? Showing compassion to the world!

God’s compassion is universal—He makes His sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. This is from Matthew’s Gospel, but Luke adds—and on the unthankful.

If God’s compassion is for everyone, so is our Lord’s compassion. Read the Gospels and you find a battery of tests between Him and the people who needed His help. He didn’t just help Jews, but Gentiles too. Not just men, but women. Not just His family, but strangers. Not just people with deep faith, but people with shallow faith—and with no faith at all!

What the Psalm says of God in general, we can say of our Lord in particular—

Near the start of this sermon I called His compassion one of His dearest qualities—and so it is. But I didn’t leave it there; I went on to add, and one of the most challenging.

For the Lord’s compassion is not out there to be looked at or even admired. It’s out there to be imitated. He wants us to mark His example and to follow it. We cannot do this perfectly—and He doesn’t mean us to—but we can start and stumble along behind Him.

There is no set formula for becoming compassionate or more compassionate than you are, but I’ve got two or three hints that might do you good.

My first tip for becoming compassionate is…is pretend to be! I chose the words carefully here, partly to get a rise out of you, but mostly, to make my point. It is easier to command actions than feelings. If you can’t really feel for the shut-in, pretend you do, and pay him a visit. Who knows, by spending time with him you might start feeling for him.

Remember compassion is its own kind of help. Sometimes we don’t try to help people because we don’t know how—or don’t know what to say. If you’re a million dollars in debt, I cannot get you out of it. If your wife was just killed in a car accident, I don’t know what to say. But who says suffering people only need solutions? They may need these too, but, they also need compassion, the compassion Job’s friends gave him—until they opened their fool mouths and started explaining the ways of Providence!

Keep this in mind: Compassion is personal. When the leper asked for healing, the Lord didn’t just speak to him, He touched Him. This indicates His personal involvement with needy people. He never wrote a check to help people way off somewhere (though that’s not wrong), but He came to them Himself.

Without going off on a tangent, let me tell you the most important thing you can do when trying to comfort someone: sit down. He needs you sitting there and saying nothing more than standing there hurriedly reading the 23^rd Psalm or offering a prayer on your way to the movies. When it came time to save His people from their sins, God did not sent His Word; He sent His Son!

Meditate on the example of your Lord and the simple commands of the Bible. What part of ‘comfort the weak’ do you not understand? Maybe you don’t know how to do it, but you know you ought to try. Just try to do your duty and let the Lord lead you in the way you should go.

Remember, you have received a lot of compassion yourself. Some from other people, but most from the Lord Himself. When you cry for mercy—and get it—how can you stop your ears to the cries of other people?

I fear the number one reason we’re so hard hearted is because we have forgotten we, too, live on mercy, always have, and always will. And living on mercy ourselves, we can give it to others—