The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
"Full of Compassion"
"The Lord is gracious and full of compassion" (Psalm 111:4).
The Psalmist declares our God to be filled with caring. The writer of Hebrews expands and enhances the truth...
"Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession, for we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:14-16).
Compassion ventures far beyond caring. It rather enters into the sorrows and sufferings of others, finding a way to share and bear burdens. Such a sensibility fills the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ for humanity, to the degree this eternal, infinite Being of glorious majesty left His throne of Heaven to reveal a compassion that required the taking upon Himself of our humanity. Consider but a few confirmations of such devotion and deference…
God's "eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord" meant that our Savior knew from everlasting He would enrobe Himself with our humanity, and all the challenges this would entail (Ephesians 3:11).
He was conceived in the womb of a virgin through the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, the Divine becoming human in the greatest of all mysteries and condescensions (I Timothy 3:16).
The Creator of Joseph and Mary, their sovereign Lord, obeyed them as a child, and as an adult. Indeed, the Lord Jesus delayed the beginning of His ministry in deference to His earthly parents. He also began His ministry in deference to Mary (Luke 2:51; John 2:1-11). Our Savior realized that God often administers His divine authority through human authority, and humbled Himself accordingly in devotion to the pride-ravaged humanity He came to save.
He lived so inauspiciously during the vast majority of His early lifetime that when His ministry began, His own brothers did not know who He was (John 7:5).
He conducted His ministry in a manner that clearly revealed His compassion for the lost, the dying, and the deceived. Whether in tender ministrations to sufferers, or the willingness to confront wayward hearts and minds, the Lord Jesus made the needs of human hearts His own (Isaiah 53:4).
He wept tears as a man, and was "the man of sorrows." Not His own sorrows, but the sorrows of others (John 11:35; Isaiah 53).
The cross. He who should have been eternally borne by a throne hung on a tree because we all matter to Him in a measure that eternity will never fully reveal. "The love of Christ passeth knowledge" (Ephesians 3:19). Not only did He make our cares His cares. He also bore our sins in the great sacrifice of the ages and of eternity. The Apostle Paul even declares our Lord to have been "made… sin" for us in a mystery of horror that made possible the mercy of God's freely given salvation (I Peter 2:24; II Corinthians 5:21). Yes, for you and for me and for all, the One who "hated iniquity" became everything He was not in order to make us everything we were not.
He cared? He cares? Oh yes, but it is so much more than that. "Full of compassion." As the adage so beautifully expresses, "our tears fall from His face." Let us make this personal. We bear scars of the past. No one escapes some form of pain in the present. We will hurt in the future. Not one of our griefs and sufferings goes unnoticed by our Lord. All have a place in His heart, a place of the most wondrous grace our hearts can imagine. Little wonder the Apostle Peter called us to do something with our cares, to cast them upon the One who cares - and who more than cares (I Peter 5:7). Full of compassion.
"He hath poured out His soul unto death: and He was numbered with the transgressors; and He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."
(Isaiah 53:12)
Weekly Memory Verse
And it is yet far more evident: for that after the similitude of Melchizedec there ariseth another priest, who is made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life.
(Hebrews 7:15-16)
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