As Jesus approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. A large crowd from the town was with her. And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.” (Luke 7:12-13)
When Jesus came to the town of Nain, he encountered a funeral procession for a widow’s only son. The widow, now deprived of her source of support, was in a state of grief and vulnerability. Moved by compassion, Jesus stepped forward and raised the young man back to life. This act of divine power astonished the crowd. The death and grief did not glorify God, but it was the miraculous reversal of suffering that led the people to glorify him, exclaiming, “God has visited his people!”
This narrative reveals the compassion of Jesus Christ. He was moved by compassion and took action. He did not address only the spiritual aspect of the widow’s situation, but also the physical and financial dimensions of her plight. The result was a spiritual revival for the entire town. In the ministry of Christ, compassion, healing, miracles, and revival were intertwined. It is impossible to claim that one was essential while others were optional. And it would be absurd to claim that one aspect now continues and increases while others, if we can even separate them meaningfully, are non-essential and have ceased. If Jesus had not made such a separation, it certainly takes arrogance like that of Satan to do it for him and then preach it as gospel.
God’s compassion is not a historical anomaly but an ongoing reality. The fact that God has visited his people in the person of Jesus Christ is central to the gospel, shaping our understanding of God’s nature and his relationship with humanity. Jesus saw the widow’s suffering, and he did something about it. This was a consistent theme throughout the ministry of Jesus. He was moved by compassion to heal the sick, cast out demons, and raise the dead. God is not indifferent to the suffering of his people. He is not cold or distant. He is compassionate, and he has come near to help, not only by offering spiritual comfort when we suffer but by meeting us at the exact level of our need, delivering us from physical suffering when we face it.
The crowd praised God in response. They said, “A great prophet has arisen among us” and “God has visited his people.” Their praise was connected to the deliverance that God had provided. They recognized that the miracle was an expression of God’s goodness and care. God is glorified when we preach a message that highlights his compassion and his eagerness to help on the level of our needs and desires, and then pray for the people with miracles following. When we do this, we show forth his nature as a God who is merciful and kind. He is a God who visits his people.
Faithless religious people often boast that they preach a God-centered message. They frown upon sermons that apply God’s promises to concrete human wants. They insist that every topic and every text must culminate in principles about the nature of God and his redemptive plan. But this is a farce to conceal their lack of faith in God’s power to invade our lives, deliver us from all our troubles, and lead us to victory for his glory.
They explicitly declare that we must not preach that God will solve all our problems. Instead, they focus on how we must be broken, how we must serve him, glorify him, and benefit him. They speak as if we are the ones saving God and not that he is the one saving us. He is not here to solve our problems, but we are here to solve his! What a pathetic and blasphemous religion! The “God” of this orthodoxy is man himself.
However, the true gospel is not about what we can do for God, but about what God has done for us. The good news is that God has come to save, to help, and to intervene in our lives at every level. God has visited his people, not to demand from them what they do not possess but to give to them all that he has. Yes, he requires our loyalty and obedience, but he also provides everything that he requires. Whatever he asks of us, he supplies. If you believe this, then that faith is the evidence that God has come to visit you. Pray to him, and believe, and he will help you. This is what brings glory to him.
This is the real God-centered gospel. God is the one who receives all the credit. He is the one who saves us. We are not the ones who save him. He is the one who blesses and heals us. He is the one who supplies everything that he demands. It reveals his goodness and compassion. It shows forth his character as a God who loves his people, who cares for them, and who intervenes in their lives. When we preach about God’s compassion, his willingness to heal, deliver, and restore, we are not detracting from his glory. We are magnifying it. We are affirming who he is. God is not only holy and just; he is also compassionate and kind. God is not only the healer of the spirit; he is also the savior of the body.
What kind of help does God provide? The Faithless have restricted God’s help to the forgiveness of sins and the pursuit of holiness. This is a persistent religious scam. Faithless religion emphasizes the symbolic application of the miracles recorded in the Bible. They may affirm that these miracles were historical, that they truly happened, but their applications are always symbolic. They take miracles of physical healing and provision and turn them into mere metaphors and allegories for spiritual restoration and sustenance. They take miracles over nature and reduce them to symbols of peace, generosity, or other ethical concepts. They claim to defend the inspiration of Scripture, yet in practice, they spiritualize and allegorize anything they wish to avoid. In effect, the inspiration of Scripture has become irrelevant, because they have made the Scripture of no effect by their faithless interpretation.
In the account of Jesus raising the widow’s son, the compassion of Christ did not result in a mere symbolic gesture. It led to a literal, physical miracle that brought social and financial restoration to the widow. Perhaps the faithless people would be satisfied to symbolically get saved but literally burn in hell? Would that be good theology? This would be just as good as twisting the miracles of Christ into mere symbols to make spiritual lessons out of them. God’s compassion reaches every aspect of human life — spiritual, physical, social, and beyond. To diminish the miracles of Christ to mere symbols is to deny his power and love for his people. Instead of preaching the gospel, it is sidestepping the gospel.
The gospel is that God has visited his people. He has come in the person of Jesus Christ, and he has demonstrated his compassion through miracles, healings, deliverances, and through his death and resurrection. The miracles of God are indeed displays of power and revelations of his nature, but they are intended to actually bless and help each person that they happen to. They are not meant to be distorted into symbols for something else. A miracle of healing is a miracle of healing, and intended to bring wholeness and comfort to the one who receives it.
Faithless people hurl great insults at God by turning miracles into something else, often claiming that the miracle itself is “not the point.” But the miracle is precisely the point. That is why a miracle of healing is recorded as a miracle of healing and not turned into a symbolic lesson right there in the text. Do you think the apostles were idiots? Do you think they did not know how to spiritualize and allegorize things? Years after the actual event, a miracle of healing remained a miracle of healing when they wrote about it.
What did it mean that Jesus fed more than five thousand people? At the very least, it meant that Jesus fed more than five thousand people. What did it mean that Jesus stopped a storm and walked on water? If nothing else, it meant that Jesus stopped a storm and walked on water. The Faithless dishonor the miracles by turning them into metaphors and allegories without first acknowledging a direct application, that by faith in Jesus, it is possible to heal the sick, multiply food, stop a storm, and walk on water. As Jesus himself said, “All things are possible to one who believes,” and that by faith, we can command a mountain to throw itself into the sea.
After this, we can talk about what other lessons we can draw from the miracle. But if we do not first acknowledge the direct application, then there can be no lessons from the miracle, because we do not believe it at all.