A Pastor’s Thoughts: The Most Compassionate and Loving Thing

By Pastor Wayne Sibrava, Living Water Baptist Church —

The word compassion is defined as a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering. Showing compassion is definitely a discipline that Christians must embrace. Yet, with just compassion, a person’s deeper problem and condition may not be helped.

The word “love” is defined as a strong feeling of affection and concern toward another person, as that arising from kinship or close friendship. God’s love, biblical love, goes even further. When we love like God, we do so regardless of whether or not we receive anything in return. Showing love is the foremost character trait that every believer in the Lord Jesus must express. Like compassion, love alone, without a desire to help a person overcome a problem, may actually cause a problem to worsen. 

This begs the question, “What then is the most compassionate and loving thing that a person can do?” Most certainly be compassionate. Most certainly be loving. But, by all means, couple compassion and love with truth. There is only one truth, and that is God’s truth. Without truth, there can be no foundation to build anything on and, most certainly, you cannot build a life without a strong foundation of truth. 

Consider the ultimate example of love found anywhere in history: the love of God: John 3:16 (ESV) For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. This one verse summarizes the entire Word of God. It expresses not only God’s heart of love, but it also goes deeper into the truth. The truth is that humankind has a problem. The problem is sin. Yet God, in love, has the remedy, which is that He has given us His Son, Jesus, as the payment for our sin. Should we confess our sin and trust Jesus as the payment for our sin, we will have eternal life and go to heaven when we die. 

Compassion and love go to a deeper level when you take the truth of God’s Word and apply it to your life. God has not changed His mind on what He told us in the only source of truth, the Word of God. May God help us be compassionate and loving towards others, being sure to apply the truth of God’s Word.