Do you really care…?

On Thursday, I and a hundred or so others were asked the question: “Do you really care if people burn in hell forever?” It is a provocative question and the speaker meant it to be! As he went on I found myself reflecting that it doesn’t really look like I do care very much. In Matthew 9:36 Jesus looks at a crowd of people and loves them: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them.” I find it very hard to look at people that way. I am far more likely to look at a crowd of people with contempt. I am more likely to sneer at today’s society with its obsession with image and celebrity; I can’t help but snigger at the way teenagers dress today with jeans that are either ridiculously tight or hang down at thigh level so that their wearer waddles along like a penguin; I get cross with loud, drunk students who seem to care nothing for other people. You get the picture… not a lot of love in evidence.

Jesus looked at that crowd with compassion; Jesus looks at people and loves them. Matthew tells us that Jesus saw that people are like sheep without a shepherd, harassed and helpless, going this way and that, never satisfied, never safe. And most seriously of all, facing God’s righteous judgement: there is a hell and there will be people in it. Jesus came because he cares about that; Jesus came to be the Good Shepherd that we need because he loves us (John 10:11); Jesus came “to lay down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11), to take our punishment himself in the most wonderful swap precisely so that we wouldn’t face death and hell ourselves. Isn’t that the most wonderful news!

Everyone around us, indeed, across the world, faces God’s awful righteous judgement unless they know and trust in Jesus. How can I claim to know him and yet show such a lack of concern for the lost? Do you really care…?

Andy Martin, Assistant Minister