We face a world full of inequalities, a world that needs to know the true purpose of God's kingdom. God has delegated this mission to the church. In this way, compassion becomes a way of life for everyone who knows God. 

Compassion is related to two biblical principles inherent in every believer: giving and love.

We have the responsibility to minister to each person’s spirit, soul, and body. God is in the child who has gone to bed without food, who has nothing to wear. God is in the old man who does not value himself. God is in the woman whose husband abandoned her, leaving her alone with three children. God is in the teenager who does not want to come home and hear his parents fighting again. God is in the prisoner without family. 

There is so much need in this world that the church cannot stop giving. 

What moves the church of Christ to compassion is not a program, a ministry, or an evangelistic outreach. What moves us is simply the love of Jesus made real in the life of a believer. Compassion is the fulfillment of loving one's neighbor as oneself. Jesus sat with women, dined with tax collectors, touched lepers, gave dinners for the dispossessed, and restored the dead to life. Jesus pierced the social, economic, and political barriers of His time to teach love. He taught us that compassion is not exclusive.

“Local churches are the true agents of transformation in this world.”

Local churches are the true agents of transformation in this world. Local churches are able to incarnate the love of God in each community and achieve the powerful advance of the Kingdom. Compassion is not a call for only a few or the responsibility only of a specific ministry. Being part of the church of Christ is enough to make compassion an indissoluble part of life. 

Rev. Loysbel Pérez Salazar is pastor of Iglesia del Nazareno Alquizar in Artemisa, Cuba. He is a graduate of the Nazarene Theological Seminary of Cuba.

Originally published in the Summer 2017 issue of NCM Magazine.