BE LIKE JESUS
The Compassion of Jesus: How He Saw People
He did not observe people from a distance. He felt them. And His feeling always moved Him toward them.
A word worth understanding
The Greek word used to describe Jesus's compassion in the Gospels is splagchnizomai. It is one of the most visceral words in the New Testament. It does not mean intellectual acknowledgment of another's pain or polite concern from a distance. It comes from the word for the intestines — the deep, interior organs of the body. To be splagchnizomai is to feel another person's suffering in your gut.
Every time the Gospels use this word to describe Jesus, something happens. He does not feel compassion and move on. He feels it and acts. The word is the bridge between seeing someone's need and doing something about it. Matthew uses it when Jesus saw the crowds scattered like sheep (9:36), when He healed the sick (14:14), when He fed the five thousand (15:32). Mark uses it when He healed a leper (1:41). Luke uses it for the father running toward the prodigal son (15:20).
This is not a passive emotion. This is the quality of attention that changes what you do next. It is the engine of love your neighbor in motion. And it is something you can learn. Not manufacture — but learn, through practice and encounter and the specific kind of attention that Jesus modeled with every person He met.
How Jesus showed compassion — scene by scene
A leper came to Jesus and knelt before Him: "If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean." Mosaic law required lepers to live outside human settlements, to not touch others, and to call out "unclean" as a warning to anyone who approached. This man was utterly isolated. He did not say "heal me" — he said "if thou wilt," as though he was not sure he deserved to ask.
Mark records: Jesus was "moved with compassion" — splagchnizomai. Then this: "and he put forth his hand, and touched him." He could have healed from across the street. He chose to touch. In a culture where no one touched lepers, Jesus made physical contact before He healed. The healing was the miracle. The touch was the message: you are not untouchable. You are not beyond the reach of human contact and care. Jesus saw the whole person, not just the disease.
John the Baptist had just been executed. Jesus withdrew by boat to be alone. The crowds learned where He was going and ran ahead on foot to meet Him at the landing. He arrived to find a hillside full of people. What He wanted was solitude and grief. What He found was need.
"And Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick." He set aside His own grief to serve the crowd's need. As evening approached, the disciples suggested sending the people away to buy food. Jesus said: "They need not depart; give ye them to eat." Five loaves, two fish, five thousand people fed. His compassion did not distinguish between spiritual need and physical hunger. He took both seriously.
Lazarus had died. Jesus knew what He was about to do — He had already told the disciples that Lazarus's sickness would not end in permanent death, that God would be glorified. He knew the ending of this story. He went to Bethany anyway, four days after the burial.
When He saw Mary weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping, John says He was "deeply moved in spirit and troubled" — the Greek word is embrimaomai, which suggests deep agitation, emotion that goes somewhere. Then: "Jesus wept." The shortest verse in the Bible, and one of the most important. He wept even knowing He was about to raise Lazarus. His tears were not for the permanence of death — they were for the present reality of grief, for the people He loved who were suffering in front of Him right now. He felt their pain on their timeline, not His.
Some who observed said, "Behold how he loved him." Others said, "Could not this man...have caused that even this man should not have died?" They missed it. The tears were not helplessness. They were love. He cried because they cried, and then He raised Lazarus from the dead. But He did not skip the tears to get to the miracle.
The scribes and Pharisees brought her before a crowd and announced her sin publicly. The man — equally culpable under the Law — was not brought. The crowd had gathered. The accusation had been made. The law required death. Jesus knelt and wrote in the dirt.
When they kept pressing, He stood: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." He knelt again. They left, oldest to youngest. When He looked up, He and the woman were alone. He asked: "Where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?" She said: "No man, Lord." He said: "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more."
Notice what He did not do. He did not minimize the sin — "go, and sin no more" is a direct acknowledgment. He did not give a lecture about sexual ethics. He did not require her to perform additional repentance before extending grace. He saw the full human being standing before Him — the sin, the shame, the public exposure, the fear — and He gave her a future. That is the specific shape of his compassion: it did not excuse; it restored.
Jesus was entering the city of Nain when a funeral procession was coming out. A young man had died — the only son of a widow. In the ancient world, a widow without sons had no financial support, no legal protection, no social standing. This was not just grief. This was catastrophe.
"And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not." He had not been asked. No one made a request. He simply saw her and was moved. He touched the coffin. He spoke: "Young man, I say unto thee, Arise." The young man sat up and began to speak. "And he delivered him to his mother." The specific detail of that last sentence matters — he was returned to her. Jesus was not just performing a miracle. He was repairing a life that had been shattered.
The Book of Mormon's witness of Christ's compassion
The Book of Mormon provides a second, independent account of Christ's character — including His compassion. The scenes in 3 Nephi describe the same Jesus as the Gospels: attentive, physically present, responsive to human suffering, unable to leave a suffering person without acting.
Jesus had been teaching all day. He announced He needed to return to the Father. He looked at the multitude and saw their faces — and He could not go. "And it came to pass that when Jesus had thus spoken, he cast his eyes round about again on the multitude, and he said unto them: Behold, my time is at hand...Nevertheless, I perceive that ye are weak, that ye cannot understand all my words." He chose to stay. Not because His schedule allowed it. Because their faces asked Him to.
"And it came to pass that he commanded that their little children should be brought. So they brought their little children and set them down upon the ground round about him...And he took their little children, one by one, and blessed them, and prayed unto the Father for them." One by one. Not a general blessing over the crowd. He gave individual attention to each child. That is the precision of His compassion.
"Have ye any that are sick among you? Bring them hither. Have ye any that are lame, or blind, or halt, or maimed, or leprous, or that are withered, or that are deaf, or that are afflicted in any manner? Bring them hither and I will heal them, for I have compassion upon you." And the text records: "and he did heal them every one." Not most of them. Every one. The comprehensiveness is part of the message: there is no one too broken, too far gone, too many for His compassion to reach.
Abinadi's prophecy about Christ: "Having ascended into heaven, having the bowels of mercy; being filled with compassion towards the children of men; standing betwixt them and justice; having broken the bands of death." The phrase "bowels of mercy" echoes the Greek splagchnizomai — deep interior feeling, not surface emotion. His compassion was structural to who He was. It was the reason He stood between humanity and justice. Not because justice was wrong, but because His compassion for us was great enough to take justice upon Himself.
How to develop compassion today
Compassion is not a gift some people have and others don't. It is a capacity that grows through specific practices and atrophies through neglect. Here is what the evidence — both scriptural and practical — suggests about how it develops.
Slow down and actually look
The priest and the Levite in the Good Samaritan parable saw the man. The Samaritan saw him and stopped. The difference is not sight — it is attention. Most of us move fast enough through our days that we see people without seeing them. Deliberately slowing down — in conversations, in transit, in the grocery store — creates the conditions for compassion to happen. You cannot be moved by what you have not looked at.
Ask rather than advise
The instinct when someone shares pain is to offer solutions. Jesus rarely led with solutions — He often led with questions or presence. "What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?" (Mark 10:51) — He asked blind Bartimaeus what he wanted, even though it was obvious. Asking creates space for the person to be seen in their specific situation, not managed with generic wisdom. "What is this like for you?" is often more compassionate than "Here is what you should do."
Remember your own need
The unforgiving servant in Matthew 18 had been forgiven an astronomical debt and immediately demanded repayment of a small one. He had forgotten what had been done for him. People who are aware of their own poverty — their own need for grace, their own history of failure — find it easier to extend compassion to others. The connection between receiving mercy and giving it is not accidental. It is the mechanism.
Pray specifically for difficult people
Jesus said to pray for those who despitefully use you (Matthew 5:44). This is not primarily a command about those people — it is a practice for your own heart. It is nearly impossible to pray for someone by name with genuine concern and continue feeling contempt for them. Prayer for a specific person tends to grow compassion for that person. This is not sentimental advice. It is a spiritual technology that works.
Engage stories unlike your own
Compassion for people unlike you requires some knowledge of what their experience is. Reading, listening, asking questions of people whose lives look different from yours — these are not political gestures, they are the practical groundwork of loving your neighbor. The Samaritan and the Jewish man in the ditch were supposed to be enemies. His compassion crossed that line. Crossing it requires knowing something is on the other side.
Act on the feeling
Compassion that stays at the level of feeling is not yet the biblical thing. Every time Jesus was splagchnizomai, something happened. The action does not have to be large — sometimes it is as simple as staying in a conversation a few more minutes, sending a specific message to someone you have been thinking about, or stopping what you are doing to help. The act, however small, is what turns empathy into compassion.
The Nurse Who Stopped Charting
A nurse in her mid-thirties had been working ICU shifts for eight years. Somewhere around year five, she noticed she had started thinking of patients by their room numbers. Not by names, not by what they did before they got sick — by room numbers. It was efficient. It was also a sign of something breaking.
One night she was behind on charting. A patient in room 11 had been declining all day, and his family — a wife and two adult daughters — had been sitting in the hallway because the room felt too small for their grief. She had forty minutes of notes to enter. She walked past them twice. On the third pass, the older daughter looked up and said nothing, just looked at her with the specific exhaustion of someone who has been waiting for another human being to stop moving.
She stopped. She pulled a chair into the hallway, sat down, and stayed for twenty-two minutes. She did not offer medical updates. She did not explain the care plan. She just sat. The wife talked about her husband's garden. The daughters talked about his laugh.
She stayed late to finish her charts. She cried in the parking lot on the way to her car — not from sadness, exactly, but from the feeling of having been a person that night instead of a function. She said later: "I had forgotten that staying present was the job. I thought the job was the charting." Jesus wept with Mary before He raised Lazarus. He did not skip the grief to get to the miracle. Splagchnizomai — gut-level compassion — always costs something. It also gives something back that efficiency cannot.
Questions for your own journey
Try This Before Sunday
Pick one conversation this week — with a coworker, a family member, a stranger — where you ask a genuine question and listen for 30 seconds before responding. Not to fix. Just to see them. If you find yourself composing your answer before they finish speaking, you haven't done it yet. Try again.
Track your daily practices in Covenant Path — set a reminder, journal what you notice, and watch your consistency build over time.
Think about the last week. Were there moments when you saw someone in need and kept moving — like the priest and Levite? What were the reasons you kept moving? What would stopping have required?
Jesus touched the leper before He healed him. Who in your life is the equivalent — someone who is untouchable by social or emotional convention? What would it mean to make contact with them?
"Jesus wept" even knowing the outcome. Are there people in your life whose grief you have tried to move past quickly — offering solutions or silver linings rather than sitting in the sorrow with them? What would staying look like?
The Gospels show Jesus withdrawing regularly to pray and be alone. Compassion requires replenishment. What does your own replenishment practice look like? What would change if you were more intentional about it?
Is there a person or a category of person you find it difficult to have compassion toward? Bring that honestly to God in prayer. Ask Him to show you that person the way He sees them. See what changes.
Questions about compassion
What does the Bible say about compassion?
The word used most often for Jesus's compassion in the Gospels is splagchnizomai — visceral, interior feeling for another person's pain. It is not polite concern. It is gut-level response that always produces action. Matthew 9:36, Mark 1:41, Luke 7:13, and John 11:35 all show Jesus moved by the suffering of specific people. Colossians 3:12 instructs believers to "put on" compassion as a deliberate practice — it is a chosen quality, not just a feeling.
How did Jesus show compassion?
Through physical touch (touching the leper), personal attention (stopping for individuals in crowds), staying present in grief (weeping with Mary at Lazarus's tomb), feeding the physically hungry (five thousand fed), defending the publicly shamed (woman caught in adultery), raising the dead for a grieving widow, and blessing every child individually in 3 Nephi 17. His compassion was never abstract — it was always specific to the actual person in front of Him.
How can I become more compassionate?
Six practices help: (1) slow down and actually look at people; (2) ask questions rather than giving advice; (3) remember your own need for grace; (4) pray specifically for difficult people; (5) engage stories unlike your own; (6) act on the feeling when it comes. Compassion is not a personality trait — it is a capacity that grows through practice and atrophies through avoidance.
What is the difference between sympathy and compassion?
Sympathy says "I feel sorry for you" from a position of not sharing your pain. Compassion says "I am with you in this" — it crosses the distance. The biblical word splagchnizomai is not sympathy. It is a visceral, interior response that moves toward the person suffering. Jesus didn't send sympathy from across the room — He wept with Mary, touched the leper, stayed when He was about to leave. The distinction matters practically: sympathy can remain at the level of feeling; compassion moves.
Continue your study
Study the compassion of Christ — in Covenant Path
Compassion grows through daily encounter with Jesus. Covenant Path gives you daily scripture reading plans, a personal prayer journal, habit tracking with streaks, and AI-guided study companions — so the compassion you read about here becomes something you practice every day, not just admire from a distance.