Thursday: Compassion and Passionate
Daily Lesson for Thursday 23rd of January 2025
The God of the Bible is compassionate and passionate, and these divine emotions are supremely exemplified in Jesus Christ. God is sympathetic (compare with Isaiah 63:9, Hebrews 4:15), deeply affected by the sorrows of His people (Judges 10:16, Luke 19:41), and willing to hear, answer, and comfort (Isaiah 49:10,15; Matthew 9:36; Matthew 14:14).
Read 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. In what ways does this passage call us to reflect God’s compassionate and amazing love in our relationships with others?
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We long to be in relationship with persons who exemplify the kind of love described in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. But how often do we seek to become this kind of person toward others? We cannot make ourselves long-suffering and kind; we cannot make ourselves not be envious, conceited, rude, or self-seeking. We cannot muster a love in ourselves that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things,” and “never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:7-8, NKJV). Such love can be exemplified in our lives only as the fruit of the Holy Spirit. And praise God that the Holy Spirit pours the love of God into the hearts of those who, by faith, are in Christ Jesus (Romans 5:5).
By the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, in what practical ways might we respond to, and reflect, God’s profoundly emotional, but always perfectly righteous and rational, love? First, the only appropriate response is to worship the God who is love. Second, we should respond to God’s love by actively showing compassion and benevolent love to others. We should not simply be comforted in our Christian faith but should be motivated to comfort others. Finally, we should recognize that we cannot change our hearts, but that only God can.
So, let us ask God to give us a new heart for Him and for others—a pure and purifying love that elevates what is good and removes the chaff from within.
Let our prayer be: “may the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another and to all, . . . so that He may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints” (1 Thessalonians 3:12-13, NKJV).
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Why is a death to self and to the selfishness and corruption of our natural hearts the only way to reveal this kind of love? What are the choices that we can make in order to be able to die this death to self? |
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There are two kinds of research activities. Some people do real research. They get involved in their subject, collect the data, create and test new ideas. These folk wark at the coal face. Then there are the meta-researchers who look at the research done by others and gather statistics about the research of others. They write papers with statements like, "Fifty-four research papers say this ... and seventy-two say that ..., and so on. I am not saying that such research is unnecessary, but they are a couple of steps away from the coal face in terms of fundamental research. They would not exist if nobody did the primary research.
We are in danger of becoming meta-researchers in God's love. There is a whole industry devoted to describing how we should talk about God's love, and we like to tell others that they have not used the right words, or that we should have included this or that idea in our description of God's love. Now some of that is useful and even illuminating but it is at the meta-level - a step away from the experience.
The coal face of God's love is to experience it first-hand. And the reality is that you do not experience love by reading about it. It is not a mystical experience like feeling good after thinking about God's love. It is about physical action. Paul says this:
We experience God's love when others share that love with us. And if we have been the recipients of that love it is our responsibility to pass that love on to others. That is how the Holy Spirit works.