How do you cultivate a compassionate heart?

The late theologian B.B. Warfield wrote a treatise on "The Emotional Life of Jesus." It's little surprise that this Princeton Seminarian who spent his days caring for his invalid wife would be moved to explore what he called the emotion which most frequently can be attributed to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: compassion. Stop and wrap your head around that a moment. The emotion which the Gospels most frequently attribute to our Savior is compassion.

Warfield goes on to describe the things which moved Christ's compassionate heart: the physical suffering of those in distress (Mk. i. 41; Mt. xx. 34; Lk. vii. 13), the wide-angle view of humanity's universal suffering (Mk. vi. 34, viii. 2; Mt. ix. 36, xiv. 14, xv. 32), spiritual destitution (Mark vi. 34; Mt. ix. 36), and most of all, persistent unbelief (Lk. xix. 41; Mk. viii. 12; Lk. vii. 34 and cf. Jn. xiii. 20) which seems to have elicited from Christ not only deep sighs but at times wails. Compassion, Warfield also explains encompasses, both the emotion which moves the heart and the benevolent action which flows from it.

Of course, this was a compassion rooted in love, not only for man but for the Father, who had created the world perfectly and made mankind to be fulfilled through right relationship with Him. Our sin marred everything and so Jesus is filled with compassion for us and for this large gap which remains between what is and what was supposed to be.

How then do we cultivate-this the most frequent of Christ's emotions? First, we must realize that compassion, like all spiritual fruit, is a work of the Holy Spirit. When we find our hearts lukewarm, we should pray for Christ's spirit of compassion to fill us, and then to move us. We can also contemplate the compassion of our Lord Jesus. We can study what moved Him. We can contemplate his most passionate desires: that people know God deeply and live in relationship with the Father. And we can find our own hearts being moved, like him, that people persist in their unbelief that they are like sheep with no shepherd.

In addition, to these things, we must cultivate our awareness. If we are ignorant of what is going on around us, or in our world, how can we be moved by compassion? The great abolitionist, William Wilberforce, for example, had to work hard to bring the evils of the slave trade before the eyes of the average Englishman. Very few slaves were held in England. The great horrors of the slave ships, of the plantations where men were beaten, and women watched as their own children were sold to others, were far removed from the eyes of the men and women on the streets of London. That's why Wilberforce and his Clapham Circle labored hard to cultivate awareness, since only then could the people of his day be moved by compassion to end the slave trade.

Awareness, however, is simply not enough. One recent study illustrates the importance of our sense of time in being willing to move from compassion to compassionate action. At Princeton, forty seminarians were asked to preach on the Good Samaritan. Every ten minutes a student would leave the prep room, walk to an auditorium, and deliver his sermon. But the test wasn't on preaching. Along the path, a man groaned in distress. Of the future pastors, only 16 stopped. It turned out that the only difference between those who stopped and those who didn't was their perception of whether they were late.

That's not very good news in our society, where using the word fast-paced to describe our culture is an understatement. It turns out when we are short on time, we are also short on compassion. The Jesus we encounter in the Gospels never seems hurried or rushed. He is on a mission, but that mission does not keep him from truly seeing those who are on his path.

I believe that as we sincerely pray for compassion, study the compassionate heart of our Savior in the Scriptures, work to be aware of the world around us, and slow down, we will find our hearts moved with emotions like Christ's and our hands outstretched in mercy as we follow his example.
Mark Earley is the President and CEO of Prision Fellowship, founded by Chuck Colson

For further reading:
B.B. Warfield, "The Emotional Life of Christ." http://www.the-highway.com/emotion-Christ_Warfield.html

Eric Metaxes, Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End the Slave Trade, Harper One, 2007. http://www.amazon.com/Amazing-Grace-William-Wilberforce-Campaign/dp/0061173002