6 Times We See the Heart of Jesus in Action—and What It Means for Us

Jesus Proves His Heart

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

What we see Jesus claim with his words in Matthew 11:29, we see him prove with his actions time and again in all four Gospels. What he is, he does. His life proves his heart. Consider the Gospel accounts, taken as a whole:

When the leper says, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean,” Jesus immediately stretches out his hand and touches him, with the words, “I will; be clean” (Matt. 8:2–3). The word 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.
When a group of men brings their paralyzed friend to Jesus, Jesus is so eager to help he doesn’t even wait for them to speak first: “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven’” (Matt. 9:2). Before they could open their mouths to ask for help, Jesus couldn’t stop himself—words of reassurance tumbled out.

The Heart of Jesus

Dane Ortlund

Featuring short, easy-to-read chapters and helpful explanations, this simplified edition of Gentle and Lowly takes readers into the depths of Christ’s tender heart for sinners and sufferers.

3. Traveling from town to town, “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless” (Matt. 9:36). So he teaches them, and he heals their diseases (9:35). Simply seeing the helplessness of the crowds, pity ignites.

4. Compassion comes in waves over and over again in Christ’s ministry. His compassion drives him to heal the sick: “And he had compassion on them and healed their sick” (Matt. 14:14). It drives him to feed the hungry: “I have compassion on the crowd because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat” (15:32). It causes him to teach the crowds: “And he had compassion on them. . . . And he began to teach them many things” (Mark 6:34). And it brings him to wipe away the tears of those who are sad: “He had compassion on her and said to her, ‘Do not weep’” (Luke 7:13). The Greek word for “compassion” in all these texts refers to the guts of a person. It’s an ancient way of referring to what rises up from deep within. This compassion reflects the deepest heart of Christ.

5. Twice in the Gospels we are told that Jesus broke down and wept. And in neither case is it sorrow for himself or his own pain. In both cases it is sorrow over another—in one case, Jerusalem (Luke 19:41), and in the other, his friend Lazarus, who has just died (John 11:35). What was his deepest anguish? The anguish of others. What drew his heart out to the point of tears? The tears of others.

6. Time and time again it is the morally disgusting, the socially hated, the disobedient, and the undeserving, who do not simply receive Christ’s mercy but to whom Christ most naturally draws near. He is the “friend of . . . sinners” (Luke 7:34).

Compassion reflects the deepest heart of Christ.

Actions Show Our Insides

When we take the Gospels as a whole and consider the total picture given to us of who Jesus is, what stands out most strongly?

Just as dolphins can’t help jumping and apple trees can’t help bearing apples, what’s happening inside us always shows itself through what we do. The heart reveals itself in our actions. And if the actions of Jesus reflect who he most deeply is, we cannot avoid the conclusion that it is the very fallenness, which he came to undo, that is most irresistibly attractive to him.

This is deeper than saying Jesus is loving or merciful or gracious. The 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 sin and suffering, not away from it.

Time and again in Jesus Christ’s earthly ministry, his heart refused to let him sleep in. Sadness confronted him in every town. And wherever he went, whenever he was confronted with pain and longing, he embraced others with cleansing mercy.

The English preacher Thomas Goodwin said, “Christ is love covered over in flesh.”¹ Picture it. If compassion clothed itself in a human body and went walking around this earth, what would it look like?

We don’t have to wonder.

Notes:

Thomas Goodwin, The Heart of Christ (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2011), 61.

This article is adapted from The Heart of Jesus: How He Really Feels about You by Dane Ortlund.

Dane C. Ortlund (PhD, Wheaton College) serves as senior pastor of Naperville Presbyterian Church in Naperville, Illinois. He is the author of Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers and Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners. Dane and his wife, Stacey, have five children.