More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
March 14, 2023 - March 17, 2024
I am gentle and lowly in heart. Matthew 11:29 My dad pointed out to me something that Charles Spurgeon pointed out to him. In the four Gospel accounts given to us in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—eighty-nine chapters of biblical text—there’s only one place where Jesus tells us about his own heart.
same word elsewhere translated “kind”—as in,
That’s what we all are like, confessing Christ with our lips but generally avoiding deep fellowship with him, out of a muted understanding of his heart.
“will” in both the leper’s request and in Jesus’s answer is the Greek word for wish or desire. The leper was asking about Jesus’s deepest desire. And Jesus revealed his deepest desire by healing him.
“compassion” is the same in all these texts and refers most literally to the bowels or guts of a person—it’s an ancient way of referring to what rises up from one’s innermost core.
the most vivid and arresting element of the portrait, is the way the Holy Son of God moves toward, touches, heals, embraces, and forgives those who least deserve it yet truly desire it.
The Jesus given to us in the Gospels is not simply one who loves, but one who is love; merciful affections stream from his innermost heart as rays from the sun.
This is deeper than saying Jesus is loving or merciful or gracious. The cumulative testimony of the four Gospels is that when Jesus Christ sees the fallenness of the world all about him, his deepest impulse, his most natural instinct, is to move toward that sin and suffering, not away from it.
Whatever horrors cause us to cringe—we who are naturally unclean and fallen—would cause Jesus to cringe all the more. We cannot fathom the sheer purity, holiness, cleanness, of his mind and heart. The simplicity, the innocence, the loveliness. And what did he do when he saw the unclean? What was his first impulse when he came across prostitutes and lepers? He moved toward them. Pity flooded his heart, the longing of true compassion.
Jesus’ healings are not supernatural miracles in a natural world. They are the only truly “natural” thing in a world that is unnatural, demonized and wounded.3
Christ’s “own joy, comfort, happiness, and glory are increased and enlarged by his showing grace and mercy, in pardoning, relieving, and comforting his members here on earth.”1
Jesus Christ is comforted when you draw from the riches of his atoning work, because his own body is getting healed.
“sympathize” here is a compound word formed from the prefix meaning “with” (like our English prefix co-) joined with the verb to suffer.
Looking inside ourselves, we can anticipate only harshness from heaven. Looking out to Christ, we can anticipate only gentleness.
So with Christ. We cling to him, to be sure. But our grip is that of a two-year-old amid the stormy waves of life. His sure grasp never falters. Psalm 63:8 expresses the double-sided truth: “My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.”
We are all on very good terms with ourselves, and we can always put up a good case for ourselves. Even if we try to make ourselves feel that we are sinners, we will never do it. There is only one way to know that we are sinners, and that is to have some dim, glimmering conception of God.1 In other words, we don’t feel the weight of our sin because of: our sin.
Dont totally agree. Yes need glimer of god. But some do not like themselves and just self talk to mKe self feel better
The text says his “compassion grows warm and tender” in light of his people’s sins. Who could have imagined this is who God most deeply is? The text connects God’s supreme holiness with his refusal to come in wrath.
The Greek word translated in 1 John 2:1 as “advocate” (parakletos) is used five times in the New Testament. The other four are all found in the Upper Room Discourse in John 14–16, each time referring to the ministry of the Holy Spirit after Jesus ascends to heaven (14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7). It’s difficult to capture the meaning of parakletos with just one English word. The difficulty is reflected in the diversity of translations, including “Helper” (ESV, NKJV, GNB, NASB), “Advocate” (NIV, NET), “Counselor” (CSB, RSV), “Comforter” (KJV), and “Companion” (CEB). Many of these translations contain
...more
There is no love so great and so wonderful as that which is in the heart of Christ. He is one that delights in mercy; he is ready to pity those that are in suffering and sorrowful circumstances; one that delights in the happiness of his creatures. The love and grace that Christ has manifested does as much exceed all that which is in this world as the sun is brighter than a candle. Parents are often full of kindness towards their children, but that is no kindness like Jesus Christ’s.
romance the heart of Jesus. All I mean is, ponder him through his heart. Allow yourself to be allured. Why not build in to your life unhurried quiet, where, among other disciplines, you consider the radiance of who he actually is, what animates him, what his deepest delight is? Why not give your soul room to be reenchanted with Christ time and again?
our job is to show our kids that even our best love is a shadow of a greater love. To put a sharper edge on it: to make the tender heart of Christ irresistible and unforgettable.
We too have the privilege of finding creative ways of drawing in the kids all around us to the heart of Jesus. His desire to draw near to sinners and sufferers is not only doctrinally true but aesthetically attractive.
splanchnizo, which is often rendered as “to have compassion.” But the word denotes more than passing pity; it refers to a depth of feeling in which your feelings and longings churn within you.
how does this emphasis on Christ’s heart, his gentle and lowly heart, his deep compassion, fit with the episodes of anger that we find in the Gospels? Are we being unhelpfully partial if we focus on his gentleness? Is he not also wrathful?
if we allow the world around us in our present cultural moment to dictate to us the significance of friendship, we not only lose out on a reality vital to human flourishing at the horizontal level; we lose out, even worse, on enjoying the friendship of Christ at a vertical level.
Para
Here is the promise of the gospel and the message of the whole Bible: In Jesus Christ, we are given a friend who will always enjoy rather than refuse our presence.
“All the kinds and degrees of friendship meet in Christ,” wrote Sibbes.2
If anyone hears my voice and opens the door”—what will Christ do?—“I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (v. 20).
He is come down from heaven and has taken upon him the human nature in purpose, that he might be near to you and might be, as it were, your companion.5
condescension of God in the person of his Son means that he approaches us on our own terms and befriends us for both his and our mutual delight.
In what way is the Spirit a superior comforter to God’s people? “He shall tell you, if you will listen to him, and not grieve him, nothing but stories of my love. . . . All his speech in your hearts will be to advance me, and to greaten my worth and love unto you, and it will be his delight to do it.”
The Spirit loves nothing more than to awaken and calm and soothe us with the heart knowledge of what we have been graced with.
The Spirit’s role, in summary, is to turn our postcard apprehensions of Christ’s great heart of longing affection for us into an experience of sitting on the beach, in a lawn chair, drink in hand, enjoying the actual experience. The Spirit does this decisively, once and for all, at regeneration. But he does it ten thousand times thereafter, as we continue through sin, folly, or boredom to drift from the felt experience of his heart.
The Lord, according to James 5:11, is “much compassionate.” And that the Lord is much compassionate or greatly compassioned is synonymous with saying that he is merciful.
As you consider the Father’s heart for you, remember that he is the Father of mercies. He is not cautious in his tenderness toward you. He multiplies mercies matched to your every need, and there is nothing he would rather do. “Remember,” said the Puritan John Flavel, “that this God in whose hand are all creatures, is your Father, and is much more tender of you than you are, or can be, of yourself.”
Calvin put it, the Old Testament is the shadowy revelation of God—true but dim. The New Testament is the substance.2
For he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men. There is an implicit premise in this verse and an explicit statement. The implicit premise is that God is indeed the one who afflicts. The explicit statement is that he does not do it from his heart.
He is not reluctant about the ultimate good that is going to be brought about through that pain; that indeed is why he is doing it. But something recoils within him in sending that affliction. The pain itself does not reflect his heart.
showing mercy, he says he does it “with his whole heart, and with his whole soul,” as the expression is in Jeremiah 32:41. And therefore acts of justice are called his “strange work” and his “strange act” in Isaiah 28:21. But when he comes to show mercy, he rejoices over them, to do them good, with his whole heart and with his whole soul.3
God is also complex enough to make decisions both of judgment and of mercy out of his heart.
If you catch God off guard, what leaps out most freely is blessing. The impulse to do good. The desire to swallow us up in joy.
Left to our own natural intuitions about God, we will conclude that mercy is his strange work and judgment his natural work. Rewiring our vision of God as we study the Scripture, we see, helped by the great teachers of the past, that judgment is his strange work and mercy his natural work.
God is described as having “compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love” (3:32), and the author uses several of the key Hebrew words underlying the revelation of Exodus 34:6–7. Many other texts likewise echo Exodus 34, including Numbers 14:18; Nehemiah 9:17; 13:22; Psalms 5:8; 69:14; 86:5, 15; 103:8; 145:8; Isaiah 63:7; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2; and Nahum 1:3.
We expect the bent of God’s heart to be retribution to our waywardness. And then Exodus 34 taps us on the shoulder and stops us in our tracks. The bent of God’s heart is mercy. His glory is his goodness. His glory is his lowliness. “Great is the glory of the Lord. For though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly” (Ps. 138:5–6).
The first words. The only two words Jesus will use to describe his own heart are gentle and lowly (Matt. 11:29). And the first two words God uses to describe who he is are merciful and gracious. God does not reveal his glory as, “The Lord, the Lord, exacting and precise,” or, “The Lord, the Lord, tolerant and overlooking,” or, “The Lord, the Lord, disappointed and frustrated.” His highest priority and deepest delight and first reaction—his heart—is merciful and gracious. He gently accommodates himself to our terms rather than overwhelming us with his.
His anger requires provocation; his mercy is pent up, ready to gush forth. We tend to think: divine anger is pent up, spring-loaded; divine mercy is slow to build. It’s just the opposite. Divine mercy is ready to burst forth at the slightest prick.2
he speaks of himself, as Richard Sibbes put it, “clothed all in sweet attributes.” Sibbes goes on to say: “If we would know the name of God, and see God as he is pleased and delighted to discover himself to us, let us know him by those names that he proclaims there, showing that the glory of the Lord in the gospel especially shines in mercy.”4
Isaiah 54:7–8, where the Lord says: For a brief moment I deserted you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you.
The Christian life, from one angle, is the long journey of letting our natural assumption about who God is, over many decades, fall away, being slowly replaced with God’s own insistence on who he is. This is hard work. It takes a lot of sermons and a lot of suffering to believe that God’s deepest heart is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger.” The fall in Genesis 3 not only sent us into condemnation and exile. The fall also entrenched in our minds dark thoughts of God, thoughts that are only dug out over multiple exposures to the gospel over many years.
The message of this book is that we tend to project our natural expectations about who God is onto him instead of fighting to let the Bible surprise us into what God himself says.
