Today's Devotional

March 24, 2005

Subject:  Fellowship With The Cross Of Christ - Compassion

Philippians 3:10 - "That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;

Luke 23:34 - "Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots."

Day 4 of how we "Fellowship With The Cross of Christ" contrasts the way we love with His great love.  As the theme of the week continues, we should see that our fellowship in His sufferings requires us to love the way that He loves.

We've all heard the great quote above from Jesus while hanging from the cross.  These people had just crucified Him after a malicious and torturous beating when He had done nothing wrong.  This was injustice epitomized.  Then Christ did the one thing that we find hard to do when we are wronged and none of us are ever wronged to the degree that Christ was wronged.  He showed compassion on those who wronged Him.  

We have difficulty showing compassion to those who have not wronged us, but Christ asks us to go beyond that when we live the Christ life.  When we fellowship in His sufferings, we should seek out opportunities to respond with the love of Christ.  We will be wronged continually in this life.  The question is, will we respond in a manner that shows our fellowship with the cross of Christ and exhibit compassion, or will we despise those who despise us and hate those who hate us?  As the scripture says, we are no better than unbelievers when we do that.

Our challenge today is to choose whether we will be more concerned about our pain and our suffering or will we look outward at the pain of others as Christ did and do something about it.    

Final Note:  Amazing what word studies can reveal.  So I really wanted to know what "compassion" was really all about and found that it was from the Latin com + pati which means "to suffer" or "to bear."  Then the definition read, "sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it."

Christ's compassion, and ours too, is meant to see the distress of others and desire to alleviate it.  Christ went one step further and He gave His life for others (us).  That's the compassion of an Eternally Loving God.  Let's fellowship with Him in His compassion.

  Carlen