At this time of the year we especially think about the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ and how He suffered so much in order to purchase Salvation. In these days running up to the Easter weekend as I have been considering Christ's Passion I have seen a glimpse of His Compassion.
You will of course remember how the anguish of the Lord Jesus began in the Garden of Gethsemane where, 'He sweat as it were great drops of blood'. He was then arrested and dragged around Jerusalem to stand before the High Priest, Pilate, Herod and then Pilate again. He was mocked, buffeted, spat on and finally whipped so severely that His back was lacerated from the neck to the back of the knees. After this a heavy cross beam was placed across his severely wounded back and he was forced to carry it to the site of Crucifixion. So deep had been the physical trauma that His now severely weakened body was unable to carry the cross beam and it was given to 'one Simon, a Cyrenian' to bear it for Him.
Stop for a moment and think of what has happened to Him up to this point. Put yourself in that situation. How would you have been feeling? What would you have been thinking? Severe fatigue and pain would be shooting across your nervous system or perhaps you would have been angry with your tormentors.
Having set the scene and the context I now want to show 'The Compassion of Christ'. As He was being lead to the cross with Simon bearing the cross beam a group of women who loved Him and believed in Him followed after him weeping. Luke records in his gospel...
'And there followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him. But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck.' Luke 23 v 27-29
What a picture of compassion, at the very moment when the Lord Jesus was in deep agony and contemplating what lay ahead for Him on the cross He still demonstrated a concern for others and took the time to minister unto them by giving them a word. What selflessness, what love, what compassion, what an example...WHAT A SAVIOUR!!!
'Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.' 1 John 3 v 16
