Filled With Christ's Compassion

As in our Lord’s life his teaching was always connected with healing, he would have the church also take a very deep interest in the bodily sorrows of the people as well as in their spiritual needs. It will be a very great pity if ever it should be thought that benevolence is divorced from Christianity, for hitherto the crown of the faith of Jesus has been love to men; it is, indeed, the glory of Christianity that wherever it comes it erects buildings altogether unknown to heathenism - hospitals, asylums, and other abodes of charity. The genius of Christianity is pity for the sinful and the suffering.

Let the church be a healer like her Lord: at least if she cannot pour forth virtue from the hem of her garment, nor “say in a word” so that sickness may fly, let her be among the most prompt to help in everything that can assuage pain or assist poverty. So ought it to be, for “as Jesus was, so are we also in this world.” Did he not tell us, “As the Father hath sent me even so send I you.” We cannot too diligently study his character, for he has left us an example that we may follow in his steps.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Chief Physician And The Centurion's Servant," delivered June 30, 1878. Image by Steve Corey on Flickr under Creative Commons License, without alteration.

Draw Them With Love

Men will not gather to some individuals: they are too hard, too cold, too stern. They seem cut out of stone, they have no feeling; or else they are dry and leathery, and have none of the juice of humanity in them-no warm blood-no milk of human kindness, and you are not attracted to them. Who loves a bag of old nails, or a sack of sawdust? And yet some men and women are almost as hard and dry. If you want to draw people around you, you must have sympathy with them: compassion magnetizes a man, and makes him attract as the lodestone fascinates the needle. A big heart is one of the main essentials to great usefulness. Try and cultivate it. Do not let another man’s sorrow fall upon a deaf ear as far as you are concerned, but sorrow with the sorrowful, and have compassion upon the ignorant and those that are out of the way: they will soon perceive it, and they will do to you as they did to your Master, of whom we read, “Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners.” Men will cluster around you like bees around their queen, they will not be able to help it; they will not wish to help it. Love is the queen bee, and where she is you will find the center of the hive.

By this same spell you will hold those whom you gather, for men will not long remain with an unloving leader: even little children in our classes will not long listen to an unsympathetic teacher. Great armies of soldiers must be led by a great soldier, and children must be held in hand by child-like instructors. When human beings surround an uncompassionate personage they soon find it out, and fly off at a tangent as if by instinct. You may collect people for a time by some extraneous means, but unless they perceive that you love them, and that your heart goes out with desires for their good, they will soon weary of you. The multitude still clung to the skirts of Jesus, even to the last, whenever he preached, because they saw that he really desired their good.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Compassion On The Ignorant." Image by Caroline on Flickr under Creative Commons License, without alteration.

He Came Through Compassion

The Samaritan came to the wounded one because in the course of business he was led there, and, being there, he helped the man; but Jesus came to earth on no business but that of saving us, and he was found in our flesh that he might have sympathy with us. In the very existence of the man Christ Jesus you see the noblest form of pity manifested. And being here, where we had fallen among robbers, he did not merely run risks of being attacked by thieves himself, but he was attacked by them; he was wounded, he was stripped, and not half dead was he, but altogether dead, for he was laid in the grave. He was slain for our sakes, for it was not possible for him to deliver us from the mischief which the thieves of sin had wrought upon us excepting by suffering that mischief in his own person; and he did suffer it that he might deliver us.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Good Samaritan," delivered June 17, 1877. http://www.flickr.com/photos/alancleaver/3620029062/ Image by Alan Cleaver on Flickr under Creative Commons License.