Jesus Christ: Pioneer of Christian Philanthropy

We find in the Synoptic Gospels, clues as to what was central in the thought and mind of Jesus in His recorded sayings. Above all, was His love and compassion to the outcast, the “publicans and sinners,” of Jewish society. That love, then, we may take to be the first and fundamental Christian fact. We love because He first loved us.

It shows us for one thing that Christ is not to be thought of primarily as an Instructor coming with some marvelous new doctrine of moral or religious value. For as great as He was as a Teacher, He was greater still in His love. "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13.

His love was the primary revelation. He had to disclose and make this love revelation known through His deeds and words. For no recorded word of Jesus is more characteristic, more incredibly authentic than His conception of His mission: “The Son of man is come to save that which was lost.” And, His other parabolic saying, “They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.” Therefore, He intimated that His vocation was that of a Savior and Healer of spiritual disease, and suggested the thought that Christianity is the means of redemption, a vital living faith movement that announces and applies a new divine power of love to cure moral evil. That power He exemplified in His own ministry, effecting spiritual recoveries among the depraved by a compassion and love that no moral evil could repel and making credible the hope that a similar love nestled in the heart of God the Father.

Jesus healed men bodies as well as their souls. The same love and empathy, which made Him feel compassion for transgressors in their sins, caused Him also to bear on His heart the burden of their illnesses. Some of the best-authenticated narratives in the Gospels are accounts of cures brought about instantaneously on the bodies of sick individuals. It affirms that Jesus had at His command a supernatural divine power. That One so exceptionally humane should desire to remove all evil, physical as well as moral, was perfectly natural; that He was able by a word to heal a leper seems to show that in some supernatural manner “God was with Him.”

Apart from their miraculous aspects, these works of healing possess permanent significant by showing the comprehensiveness of Christ’s conception of salvation. Nothing fell outside His concern regarding the well being of man. In His healing ministry, He was the pioneer of Christian philanthropy, the quintessential humanitarian.

Jesus’ Concept of God

Though Jesus was not a philosopher or mere ethical teacher, He did teach in a characteristic style. His doctrine was not elaborate but important. It was remarked by the common people of Judea that He taught, “not as the scribes” Perhaps in our day, it would be said Jesus did not teach as a scholar or theologian. The truth is that Jesus taught His disciples the doctrine of love by a single word, “Father.” This one word connection gave His thought about God a new and startling aspect. It was offensive to those who were reputedly holy and righteous called Pharisees, but enthusiastically welcome to the great mass of Jewish people.

Father, as Jesus used it, implied God had paternal characteristics and goodwill to the ungrateful and evil, to the immoral and irreligious, to the outcast. It suggested that He was God and Father of the publicans and sinners, of the lost sheep of the house of Israel, not merely of Pharisees, scribes and priests. It was only an extension of Jesus’ thought about God when Paul said that God was not the God of the Jews only but also the Gentiles. And today, we simply apply His great inspiring doctrine to our modern circumstances when we say God is the God and Father of the motherless and fatherless, of the homeless, the outcasts, the street people and slum people of our great cities. It was a new idea of God and a revelation full of hope for humanity.

Jesus’ Concept of Man

Christ’s idea of man was related to His idea of God. Jesus thought man was a being of infinite value with enormous spiritual capabilities and potential. He said, with emphasis previously unknown, a man is a son of God. He did not say this in reference to the holy, wise, learned men. On the contrary, of the holiness, wisdom and learning in vogue, He seemed to have a poor opinion, even less with reference to men that were rich and to whom He spoke most often with compassionate disdain.

Jesus affirmed the indefeasible worth of human nature with reference to the poor, the ignorant, the foolish, the immoral, and the irreligious to the amazement and disgust of those belonging to the upper echelon of society. He taught this revolutionary doctrine not as a Rabbi delivering theoretical lectures in a school to His disciples, but primarily by the more difficult method of action. He freely associated with people low down on the social scale, whose worth to God and men, in spite of degradation, He persistently proclaimed. The reality of the extent of human degradation He was well aware of, and often described by the pathetic term “lost.” He knew that His outcast friends needed saving, but He believed, in defiance of all appearances and assertions to the contrary, that they were capable of being saved and worth saving. That though lost, they were still lost sons. Of course, this hopeful, optimistic humanitarianism of Jesus was a scandal to His contemporaries, including Jewish followers.

But it is not merely through care for the general good and well being of others that Christ’s doctrine of man works for the establishment of the divine moral order. It tends with equal power to incite the individual awareness of the realization of entering into a divine family relationship.

The doctrine that man is the son (and daughter) of God has two sides. On one side is the privilege of being able to call God, our Father. The other side requires responsibilities. Though it is a great privilege to address God as Father, that grace imposes high obligations. God’s sons and daughters must be Christ-like. We must realize in our character the Christian moral ideal. It is a very high exacting ideal as illustrated for example, in the Beatitudes, which implies a passion for the right, and a willingness even to suffer for righteousness sake. That ideal, not less than God’s gracious love to all of us, is a part of Christ’s gospel for the world.

Jesus was a remarkable Man, exceptional, unique in goodness and wisdom, a moral phenomenon, difficult to account for in any age and country, and especially in such an arid spiritual wilderness as Judea was at the beginning of our era. The Gospels create this great vision: God entering into the world in human form and under the limited conditions of humanity, as a redemptive force, to battle with the moral evil that afflicts mankind. What can be more exhilarating to the soul than the idea that God is like Christ, He loves us as Christ loves us, and Christ loves us and God loves us.

“God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” 2 Corinthians 5:19.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16.