The Painted Door Church - Chicago
The Suffering of Compassion / Colossians 1:24-29
September 10, 2017
Pastor Mark Bergin
The Painted Door Church - Chicago
The Suffering of Compassion / Colossians 1:24-29
Our God is a compassionate God. We know this only because he has entered
our suffering with us. That is the very definition of compassion -- "to
suffer with." How then can we consider ourselves the body of Christ if we
fail to enter the suffering of our neighbors? Many among us relish the
thought of being compassionate people, but whose suffering are we sharing
in? We live in a cultural moment when the dogmatic teachings of the church
largely fall on deaf ears. Our pronouncements of judgment against sin are
like clanging gongs in an echo chamber, ever ricocheting off hardened
surfaces, finding no soft places to land. Yet mercy and compassion are the
instruments of God's Spirit to turn stone into clay. Our church has a
mission: to participate in the life and death of Jesus, to suffer with
sinners as he did, to offer this Christ within us.
Our God is a compassionate God. We know this only because he has entered
our suffering with us. That is the very definition of compassion -- "to
suffer with." How then can we consider ourselves the body of Christ if we
fail to enter the suffering of our neighbors? Many among us relish the
thought of being compassionate people, but whose suffering are we sharing
in? We live in a cultural moment when the dogmatic teachings of the church
largely fall on deaf ears. Our pronouncements of judgment against sin are
like clanging gongs in an echo chamber, ever ricocheting off hardened
surfaces, finding no soft places to land. Yet mercy and compassion are the
instruments of God's Spirit to turn stone into clay. Our church has a
mission: to participate in the life and death of Jesus, to suffer with
sinners as he did, to offer this Christ within us.