Manners and Compassion
When Ray led the Notgrass History team devotional on Wednesday, he talked to us about Jesus’ compassion in the book of Matthew. Ray said that compassion may not have been one of this former tax collector’s traits before he met Jesus, but that Matthew spoke of Jesus’ compassion again and again in his gospel. In the New American Standard translation, the gospels of Mark and Luke mention compassion three times each. Matthew mentions it seven times.
Once, while Jesus was eating with tax collectors and sinners, the Pharisees rudely asked His disciples why Jesus was eating with those people. Jesus told the Pharisees:
But go and learn what this means:
‘I desire compassion, and not sacrifice,’
for I did not come to call the righteous,
but sinners.”
Matthew 9:13
A few verses later, Jesus was going through cities and villages teaching, healing, and proclaiming the gospel.
Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them,
because they were distressed and dispirited
like sheep without a shepherd.
Matthew 9:36
Another time Jesus’ disciples picked heads of grain and ate them while they were going through grainfields on the Sabbath. When some Pharisees saw this, they pointed out the disciples’ behavior to Jesus. Jesus told the Pharisees:
But if you had known what this means,
‘I desire compassion, and not a sacrifice,’
you would not have condemned the innocent.
Matthew 12:7
When Jesus heard that King Herod had had Jesus’ cousin John the Baptist beheaded, Jesus went away in a boat to a secluded place by Himself. When the people found out, they walked to where He was.
When He went ashore,
He saw a large crowd,
and felt compassion for them
and healed their sick.
Matthew 14:14
That crowd grew to 5,000. In the evening, compassionate Jesus miraculously fed them all.
Jesus, seeing the multitude,
is moved with compassion
and miraculously feedeth them.
By artist William Hole,
courtesy of the Library of Congress
Later a crowd of 4,000 gathered around Him. The crowd included people who were lame, crippled, blind, or mute. Jesus healed them and afterwards . . .
. . . Jesus called His disciples to Him, and said,
“I feel compassion for the people,
because they have remained with Me now three days
and have nothing to eat;
and I do not want to send them away hungry,
for they might faint on the way.”
Matthew 15:32
Jesus always had compassion and that compassion resulted in action. He called His followers to do the same. One day His disciple, Peter, asked Jesus how often he should forgive his brother who sinned against him. Jesus responded to Peter’s question with a story about a slave who owed his lord a great sum of money and begged the lord for more time to repay him. Jesus said:
And the lord of that slave felt compassion
and released him and forgave him the debt.
Matthew 18:27
Jesus then told how that slave had then demanded payment from a fellow slave who owned him a much smaller amount. Jesus taught Peter and the other disciples that God requires each of us to forgive one another from the heart.
One day, as Jesus and the disciples were walking along the road leaving Jericho, a large crowd followed them. Two men who were blind cried out to Jesus as they sat by the road. Jesus stopped and asked them what they wanted Him to do for them. This is what happened when they replied that they wanted their eyes opened:
Moved with compassion,
Jesus touched their eyes;
and immediately they regained their sight
and followed Him.
Matthew 20:34
Near the end of Matthew, Jesus performed His greatest act of compassion when He died for us on the Cross. Just as He wanted the disciples to demonstrate compassion, He wants us to do that, too. While writing about manners this week, I realized that compassion is at the heart of good manners because good manners is caring about others and taking action consistent with that caring.
Therefore, as God’s chosen people,
holy and dearly loved,
clothe yourselves with compassion,
kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
Colossians 3:12