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Compassion: More than a Bleeding Heart

Another value we will be studying is Compassion. 

Compassion means to suffer with another person. The word has a strong personal element. To have compassion means more than just feeling sorry for somebody. It means to get down where they are in the midst of their need and to suffer with them in the midst of their pain. When Noah Webster published An American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828, he began his definition of compassion this way: “A suffering with another; painful sympathy.”

I like that, but I find it very challenging.
As an illustration of this “painful sympathy,” Noah Webster quotes Luke 15:20, “His father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him." That verse is very significant because it shows us that compassion is more than just a feeling. It’s not just an emotion. It’s more than feeling sorry for people in trouble. 

Biblical compassion means that you see the problem, you are moved by the need, you go out to where the problem is, and you get your hands dirty trying to help one person after another get their problems solved and raise them up to a higher level of life.
We see this in a number of places in the life of Christ.

Matthew 14:14 tells us that Jesus had compassion on the great crowd following him so he healed the sick and then fed the 5000.
We need more “Painful Sympathy" 
Matthew 15:32 says that Jesus felt the same compassion on another crowd and so fed the 4000.
When Jesus saw the two blind men of Jericho, Matthew 20:34 tells us that he was filled with compassion and healed them on the spot.


Mark 1:40-41 offers the most telling example of what compassion meant to our Lord Jesus.
“A leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.”  Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.”
Here is the most shocking part of that text: Jesus touched a leper!
Jesus touched a leper! 

In doing that, he broke all the customs and rules of that day. According to the Old Testament, if you had leprosy, you were unclean. People were so scared of lepers that they made them live in a colony away from the rest of society so they would not contaminate anyone else. But when Jesus saw the man with leprosy, he was so moved that he reached out and touched him.

Please understand something. For our Lord Jesus Christ, compassion was not a feeling; it was a commitment to get involved with hurting people. Real compassion is more than a feeling. Real compassion moves from feeling to action.

If you must be like Jesus, you must be compassionate towards people.

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