Compassion – 1 Peter 3:8

To sum up, all of you be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kindhearted, and humble in spirit.

God’s vessels of mercy on a dark and turbulent sea; such are we when we love mercy and understand compassion, when we exude tenderness and overflow with brotherly love.

For just as the Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loving-kindness,[1] so should we be gracious and compassionate as our natural response to one another in Christ.  Our love-imbued hearts should view others with affection.  We should sense their fragility and recognize their need for kindness and, at times, sympathetic understanding, just as in difficult seasons of our lives, we will need the same.  The Spirit within us should provoke us to love one another as we love the Lord and ourselves, that we might be faithful to support others, especially when they are struggling through various trials and sorrowing under hardship and loss.[2]

As those whom the Father of mercies has ministered to in our afflictions and distress, so we should minister to those around us who are suffering.  We should comfort them with the same tenderness and charity of spirit with which the Father has comforted us.[3]  Rather than living merely to please ourselves, being quick to attack and discount others for their shortcomings and deficiencies, we should build them up in their weakness.[4]  We should encourage them and lift them when they fall, helping them gain strength to stand and courage to enter into the fullness of the life prepared for them by Christ Himself.

Take on the heart of Jesus who feeling compassion when He looked at the weary and dispirited masses following Him set aside His own exhaustion to extend His love to them and to heal them.[5]  With Christlike tenderness, minister to your fellow denizens when they are low and in need of a hand extended in kindness.  Offer compassion, being sympathetic, loving, gentle, and forgiving.

Carry out a ministry of tenderness and sympathy, allowing Christ-inspired and Spirit-directed compassion full reign over you, and you will not only be performing a God-honoring kindness, for the Lord will make your own heart glad.[6]  As you freely give your heart and time to comfort a hurting soul, prepare to receive your prize since your compassionate acts will please the Father, who rewards us for that which we do in love.[7]

[1] Psalm 111:4, Joel 2:13

[2] Galatians 6:2

[3] 2 Corinthians 1:3-4

[4] Romans 15:1-3

[5] Matthew 9:35-36

[6] Proverbs 10:28

[7] Matthew 10:42