“Remember those who are imprisoned, as if you are imprisoned with them. Call those to mind who are afflicted, as if you are the people who wear their bodies.” Hebrews 13:3 ABPE
God is love. To be a child of God is to be a child of love. As He is mindful of us, we are commanded to be mindful of others. And as His mindfulness is of no casual, distant nature, but intimate and active, so must ours be. As we see His plan unfolding all around the world, and witness the body of Christ under attack we are to be moved! In Christ we are many members, yet one body and He is our head. We are bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh. When one member suffers all the rest suffer with him. As Henry says, “It would be unnatural in Christians not to bear each other’s burdens.”
But how do we do this? Jesus said, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, from his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.” This river is the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. As we drink Him in, His love flows through us and awakens our hearts to the afflictions of others and we cannot help but respond! Check out Andrew Murray’s thoughts on this love: “Love is the new nature we receive from heaven, and is renewed from heaven day by day. The fruit of the Spirit is love. When the Spirit was poured out from heaven, love filled the hearts. Let us beware of attempting to fulfil these commands of love by our own will: it is only a love given from God that can love all, at all times and in all circumstances.”
We are called for such a time as this and we have a responsibility to those who are bound and afflicted in the body of Christ. Barnes says, “That God who has mercifully made our lot different from theirs, has commanded us to sympathize with them and we should sympathize all the more when we remember that but for his restraining grace we should have been in the same condition. Infidelity and atheism are cold and distant. They stand aloof from the oppressed and the sad. But Christianity unites all hearts in one; binds us to all the race, and reveals to us in the case of each one oppressed and injured, a brother.”
This is not the time to back down! Drink Him in daily and He will fill you with the supernatural love, strength, and wisdom to fulfill the specific plan He has just for you to touch this generation with His life-changing love! And remember, as Peter Scholte wrote, “they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”