In Matthew 9:36, we read that when Christ “saw the multitudes,” that he “was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.” In reading this, it struck me how the Lord did not divide them into classes of worthiness, nor did He withhold His kindness from one group while extending it to another. In one sense, He acknowledged only their need, not whether they were Jew or Gentile, rich or poor, respectable or despised, moral or immoral, learned or unlearned. His compassion was not parceled out according to human distinctions, but flowed to all who were lost and wandering.
He ‘saw’ them all alike, lost, needy, perishing. There is surely a lesson here for us as we consider the people the Lord brings into our lives. People with so many different backgrounds, different beliefs, and different ways of life; all kinds of people, all so amazingly unique and wonderfully crafted; people of every ethnicity, people of every religion, and every background, &c., even those whose lives run ‘contrary’ to God’s design. And if Christ looked on such multitudes with compassion, should it not be the same with us? For apart from Christ, all men stand in the same condemnation, and all alike are in need of the same mercy. Whether neighbor or stranger, friend or foe, the religious or irreligious, all alike need the same gospel, the same Christ, the same salvation. To embrace them, (not in the “bonds” of Christ, for that is impossible outside the gospel,) in the bonds of humanity, and in the truth that apart from Christ we are all in the “same condemnation,” Luke 23:40, (“for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:23,) and outside of Christ have no hope and are without God in the world. Ephesians 2:12.
In a sense, I would equate it to seeing ourselves in others, or “myself in everyone’s eyes.” Titus 3:2-3. In their weariness, we see our own weakness; in their wandering, our own straying; in their sin, our own corruption; and in their need, our own desperate need of Christ. This recognition keeps us from pride and makes compassion natural. For if we see ourselves in another’s misery, we cannot despise them without despising ourselves, and more than that, without forgetting the pit from which we were dug, and the mercy that first raised us up in Christ. “For who maketh thee to differ from another, and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?” I Corinthians 4:7. MPJ