The Lord Jesus has commissioned all who believe in Him and have received His salvation to go and preach the Good News to everyone. This act of love requires more than just knowing what Christ did and the willingness to obey His command. It requires the very thing that He had for all of us: compassion.

Why Compassion is key

The Bible tells us that the Father had so much love for all men that He sent His one and only begotten Son to save us (John 3:16). He sacrificed the most precious thing He had as a Father – His only Son – so that He could show His love to us, the love we could never understand before.

The Lord Jesus, the only begotten Son, came to show us the loving face of God. He was the exact representation of the Father and also the exact personification of His loving nature (see John 10:30, 14:8-14; 2 Corinthians 5:19).

Everywhere He went He'd see the plight of the people and would come to meet their need. He fed the hungry, healed the sick, and drove away demons that imprisoned people. While He did not do as everyone wanted Him to do, He did what He did to show the love of God to all men: even dying on the cross as the propitiation for our sins, and rising from the grave to our hope. (see 1 John 2:2)

Without such love, the Father wouldn't have sent the Son. And without such love, Christ wouldn't have died for our sake. Following this logic, if we don't have compassion on the very people God loves, we won't be able to show them who God is, for God is love.

John exhorts us:

"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this way the love of God was revealed to us, that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we must also love one another. No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwells in us, and His love is perfected in us." (1 John 4:7-12)

A new commandment

Fellow believers, we as Christians should desire to have God's compassion towards all men. We who received such a love must realize that we are also told to give it away.

"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." (John 13:34-35)

Let us all grow in God's love and demonstrate His compassion to all men.