Christ, a Man of Feeling

Scripture reveals not only the power and authority of our Lord Jesus but also His heart as our compassionate Savior. Today, Sinclair Ferguson considers the refining influence of reflecting on Christ’s affections for His people.

Welcome to today’s edition of Things Unseen. This week, we’ve been thinking about what Jesus is really like—not how we imagine Him to be or even would like Him to be but how the New Testament describes Him.

Some time ago, I was reading a once quite well-known book by an older Scottish professor of theology by the name of James Stalker. It’s called Imago Christi, the image of Christ. And it’s got chapters on such topics as Christ as a friend, Christ as a man of prayer, Christ as a student of Scripture, Christ as a sufferer, and so on. It’s a little different from most books on Christ that are written today, but there’s value in the chapter titles alone, I think, because they make us think about the Lord Jesus not in terms of categories but in terms of personal descriptions, in terms of what He was really like in our humanity. I say this, of course, because of that great verse, Hebrews 13:8: Jesus is the same today as He was during that yesterday, those days described in the Gospels.

Towards the end of Professor Stalker’s book, there’s a chapter title that really has arrested my attention. It is “Christ as a Man of Feeling.” That’s a subject that has interested and fascinated me for a long time—what the American theologian, Benjamin B. Warfield called “the emotional life of Jesus.” So, I was interested to see how Professor Stalker would approach it, and he does so in a very simple way, by looking at the gospel narrative of the raising of the daughter of Jairus, the synagogue ruler.

Now, this passage comes at the end of a section in Mark 4:35–5:43. And there’s a kind of standard way of preaching that section that students are often taught, and rightly taught. In this section, Jesus reveals His authority in a whole series of ways. He calms the storm in Galilee and shows His power over nature. He exorcises the demons and shows His power over the kingdom of darkness. He heals the woman with the issue of blood and shows His power over disease. And He raises Jairus’s daughter and shows His power over death.

Now, as I say, all that is true and right, but what does it tell you about Jesus? It tells you that Jesus is very powerful indeed. But what does it not necessarily tell you? It doesn’t necessarily tell you that His power was exercised not just for its own sake or just for what it could do, but in a way that gave expression to the feelings, the affections, the emotions of the Lord Jesus.

And so, focusing on the raising of Jairus’ daughter, Stalker points out how the following qualities are evident in the Lord Jesus. Listen to the list: compassion, sensitiveness, indignation, delicacy, modesty. That’s more than mere power, isn’t it? These are beautiful personal qualities in the Lord Jesus. And it’s because He’s like that that we are drawn to Him to trust Him and love Him and tell Him about ourselves and our need. And that surely must have meant a tremendous amount to Jairus and his wife.

Listen to the fine way Professor Stalker finishes his chapter: “Such was the heart of Jesus as it is laid bare in a single story. By taking a wider sweep we might have accumulated more illustrations. But the clue, once seized, can be easily followed in the Gospels, where the notices of how He felt in the different situations in which He was placed are far more numerous than anyone whose attention has not been specifically directed to them would believe.” I think that’s right, don’t you?

But then he concludes: “Nor would it be difficult to trace the refining influence which intercourse with Him had on His disciples—how they learned to feel about things as He did. There is no other influence so refining as genuine religion. Where the Gospel is faithfully preached and affectionately believed, there is gradually wrought into the very features of people the stamp of the Son of man. The friendship of Jesus breeds the gentle heart.” I think that’s worth thinking about actually for the rest of the day. Let’s pray that we will be helped to know that Jesus is like this.