Caring Incarnate

What Did Jesus Do?

Let us go to Judea again
John 11.7

When we care we sometimes mail a card. Sometimes we send flowers. A lot of us fill and send off shoe boxes. When we have the financial resources we will put a check in the mail. Often we find someone to send instead of going ourselves. But, in the end, a lot of our caring is removed from the person or cause we seek to care for. Not so with Jesus, he was the incarnation of caring, caring, if you will, in the flesh. The Incarnation of Christ was itself a demonstration of how much the Father and the Son cared for the world, and it was caring up close and personal.

Christ’s decision to return to Judea was a costly one (11.8), but the Lord cared so much, so completely, that nothing could have restrained him from going at that point. And it was not for the sake of Lazarus alone that Jesus went once more to Judea, to Bethany, the home of Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary, and then on to Jerusalem.

The raising of Lazarus would reveal the glory of God to Martha and Mary, and to the Lord’s disciples, and in seeing Lazarus rise and walk out of the tomb they were witnesses that Jesus was who he said he was, “the resurrection and the life.” (11.25, 40, 42) With the crucifixion just days away, a far greater demonstration of the Father’s love, and how deeply the Son cared, would soon be given to the world.

But, for the time, those present at the home of Lazarus and Martha and Mary, would see how moved the Lord was by the grief of his friends, how indignant he was at the wailing of the mourners whose performance had something of the aspect of the perfunctory, and how agitated he was in anticipating the coming confrontation with death, first for the life of his friend Lazarus, then on the cross for us all. Thus we see the fully human Jesus touched by, and sharing in, the grief of all who mourn the death of a loved one, and at the same time we see the divine Son of God marshalling the power and strength of his spirit for the great final confrontation with sin and death. Jesus cared, and it would be his very own flesh and blood that would be sacrificed in the greatest act of caring the world will ever know.

What cost are we willing to pay for the sake of caring for others? What sacrifices are we willing to make that someone in need, someone hurting, or homeless, or hungry, might be comforted? To what degree are we willing to spend and be spent for the lost? Unless we are truly devoted to those we claim to care for, we will likely find that there are real, even greatly constraining, limits to our compassion. Just how far are we willing to go to follow the Lord’s example of caring? Jesus certainly did not hesitate to tell us that we must even be willing to take up our own cross if we would follow him.

Are we willing to go hungry in order that another may eat? Will we endure cold so that a brother or sister may be warmed? Sacrifice sleep so that someone else may rest? Risk our health to help another be healed? Surrender our riches to help another out of their poverty? Would we willingly, “go again to Judea,” to a place of certain personal danger and sacrifice, out of care and concern for the souls of others? That’s what Jesus did.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4