Teach Your Children to Have Compassion
Have you ever struggled in a relationship in which you felt like you couldn’t do anything right? Jesus understands. He couldn’t even be sure of having a meal without someone judging Him and saying that He was doing something wrong. While eating at the home of Matthew the tax collector, Pharisees asked Jesus’ disciples why He was eating with tax collectors and sinners. How rude and how cowardly, too—Jesus was right there.
Jesus heard what the Pharisees said and told them that it was not healthy folks who need a physician but folks who are sick. He didn’t leave it there. He taught them how to treat people. To those prideful folks who thought they knew so much, He said:
“ . . . 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
Matthew had just experienced Jesus’ compassion himself. He had been a tax collector, but Jesus knew that Matthew could do better than that. He had so much compassion for Matthew that He invited him to become a Jesus follower.
The Calling of Saint Matthew
by Giovanni Battista Caracciolo , c. 1625–30
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Purchase, The Morris and Alma Schapiro Fund Gift, 2016
Many tax collectors and sinners were eating with Jesus and His disciples at Matthew’s house that day. Jesus had compassion for them, too.
Later, in that same chapter, Jesus felt compassion for Jairus and for his 12-year-old daughter who had just died. On His way to raise her from the dead, He had compassion on a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years. Imagine that. She had been bleeding since around the time Jairus’ daughter was born.
After raising the young girl, Jesus healed two blind men. Then He healed a mute man.
Jesus continued on from there through one city and village after another. He kept putting His compassion into action. He taught. He proclaimed the gospel. He healed every kind of disease and sickness.
Then, at the end of the chapter, Jesus noticed people who were distressed and dispirited. They were like sheep without a shepherd. His response?
. . . He felt compassion for them . . .
Matthew 9:36b
And compassion is His call to us and our children. Family life has daily opportunities to put compassion into practice, making our homes the perfect place for compassion training.
So, as those who have been chosen of God,
holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion,
kindness, humility, gentleness and patience;
bearing with one another, and forgiving each other,
whoever has a complaint against anyone;
just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.
Colossians 3:12-13