“Love your enemies! Do good to them. Lend to them without expecting to be repaid. Then your reward from heaven will be very great, and you will truly be acting as children of the Most High, for He is kind to those who are unthankful and wicked. You must be compassionate, just as your Father is compassionate.” (Luke 6:35-36 NLT)
Compassionate, as used in the above verse, means to be merciful. What first comes to mind when you think of mercy? To me, mercy means to give what isn’t deserved. Someone is unkind, unfair, demanding, mean, but instead of retribution, anger, or unkindness, you remain calm, caring, considerate. Someone cuts you off in traffic, but rather than honk and express your displeasure, you lift a prayer of concern for the inconsiderate driver to your heavenly Father who always gives you the benefit of the doubt.
Where does God’s compassionate mercy originate? Why is He so kind, considerate, caring, merciful? Because He’s love! All things loving originate and have their home in our heavenly Father, whose life and being was given full embodiment and illustration in and through the life of His only Son, the Lord Jesus. Why is that important for us to know?
Because He’s our role model, our example whom we’re supposed to emulate. Why does that matter? Because if we don’t seek to follow our Savior’s example in the simple, daily activities of our lives, what we do or say at church doesn’t matter. Jesus didn’t just obey His Father in the big, important matters, He obeyed in the smaller, everyday issues even though they led to His death.
When His heart was breaking and His nerves were shot, His emotions were raw and bleeding, as well as when He walked out of His grave. Every second of every day Jesus was real, alive, attentive, and submissive to His Father’s authority, desires, and directives. That’s what I want in my life. Don’t you? Isn’t that our goal as a Jesus follower? To model our life after His?
But that’s not a religious exercise we “perform,” it’s a heart exercise we adapt as our own. Loving kindness, mercy, grace, compassion doesn’t grow out of our disciplines alone, but out of our heart that longs to be like our Master. We must at some point allow His nature in us to override and outperform our sinful, fleshly nature. We must long for and work towards total submission and obedience to the Lord’s directives and commands in and over our life. To what end?
Our compassionate Father is also a fierce warrior. How so? If you’re a parent think of someone messing with your child at any age. It doesn’t matter. When someone seeks to hurt our children in any way, what happens? We go into “fierce” mode! There’s literally nothing we wouldn’t do to protect our children. That’s how our heavenly Father feels about us. That’s why Satan’s not going to have a good day on judgment day.
Jeremy Treat echoes this sentiment when he writes: “The Lord is just and joyful. He is a fierce warrior because He is a compassionate Father.“ Love, mercy, grace, kindness and every other fruit of our life in Christ, grows out of power, not weakness. It takes a strong person to be merciful when someone hurts us and deserves to be hurt in return. Our strongest witness for the Lord won’t come when we respond like everyone else, but like only Jesus would.
That kind of behavior doesn’t grow out of self-discipline alone, but out of God-dependence and reliance upon the Holy Spirit’s power living in and working through us.
Food for thought.
Blessings, Ed 😊
Walking With Jesus 