The Compassion of Christ

Luke 7:11-17 says,

11 Soon afterward, Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went along with him. 12 As he approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out—the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her. 13 When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, “Don’t cry.” 14 Then he went up and touched the bier they were carrying him on, and the bearers stood still. He said, “Young man, I say to you, get up!” 15 The dead man sat up and began to talk, and Jesus gave him back to his mother. 16 They were all filled with awe and praised God. “A great prophet has appeared among us,” they said. “God has come to help his people.” 17 This news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding country.

In this account, we see that Jesus had compassion for the woman whose son had just died. The question here is: why did Jesus have compassion for the woman?

We could easily answer this question by stating the fact that Jesus is perfect and he has immediate and amazing compassion for everyone. Or we could go another, more heart wrenching route with this.

Jesus is 100% man and 100% God. We know that God knows everything that has happened to us and everything that is going to happen to us. He is sovereign over our lives. He is outside of time, space, and matter. He knows us better than we know ourselves.

And perhaps Jesus had compassion for the woman whose son died because he knows that his mother, Mary, was going to experience the death of a child, too. Jesus knew he was going to die on the cross. He knows how Mary is going to feel when she sees her first-born son dying the most inhumane death in the history of the world. And he knows that there isn’t anything he can do to prevent Mary from hurting with the same kind of pain this mother must have been feeling in this moment. He wanted to spare this mother the heartache that he knows Mary is going to have.

The first time I heard this take-away of this biblical account, my heart was overwhelmed with sadness, compassion, and gratefulness. It hurts my heart to know that Jesus was already thinking of Mary and how she was going to feel when she had to watch her son die, but it also makes me appreciate how sovereign God is over our lives and how He is always 1,000 steps ahead of us.