By: Jacob Wright
There’s one word in our church covenant at Liberty that has always seemed out of place. Reciting this covenant aloud (as we do once a month after receiving communion) can become robotic, but one word always stirs my mind. That word is cultivate.
It’s an agrarian term, referring to the year-round work of farmers to prepare and care for the land where they grow their crops. But we’re not covenanting to be farmers, rather we commit to “cultivate Christian sympathy in feeling and courtesy in speech.” Sympathy and courtesy are not naturally occurring characteristics. Hence the word cultivate. You would not expect to happen upon a wild field where mature corn stalks grew in perfectly spaced rows. Those only come when the farmer has faithfully worked the land— clearing, tilling, seeding, and watering until it is time to harvest.
In his book, The Bruised Reed, Richard Sibbes advises, "It would be a good contest amongst Christians, one to labor to give no offense, and the other to labour to take none” (p.23). Covenanting with other sinners is messy business. Offense is unavoidable. This is why so much ink is spilled in the New Testament commanding and reminding Christians to show grace to one another. Consider Ephesians 4:1-3, where Paul urges the believers “to walk worthy of the calling you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” The last two commands of that verse— “bearing” and “making every effort” — help us see that it takes real work to live at peace with one another. Even if we possess humility, gentleness, and peace, we must work at bearing with each other and keeping unity.
So, how can we cultivate this sort of sympathy? There are two primary ways that come to mind. They are ordinary means, but both powerful and effective.
We submit to God’s Word and allow Scripture to shape how we view ourselves and those around us. You must “be transformed by the renewing of your mind” so that none of us “think of himself more highly than he should'' (Romans 12:2-3). The more we submit ourselves to Scripture, the more we ought to see what great need we have of humility. In the Bible we see our sinful state and the immense work of Christ to save us. This should keep us from being puffed up about our own state, sitting in judgment of our fellow believers.
When we submit to God’s word, we also find that the Bible has a lot to say about how we ought to think about others. In Philippians 2, Paul commands believers, “in humility, consider others as more important than yourselves”. This is other-worldly thinking, but he takes it even further by ordering that “everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4). What the Holy Spirit commands believers to do in this passage is to sacrifice not only our preferences but our very selves for the sake of our brothers and sisters. We can and should think this way because of our union with Christ, as Paul goes on to showcase Christ’s example of this kind of sympathy.
Jesus set aside his rightful privilege and humbled himself all the way to shameful death, all for the sake of loving sinners like you and me, to the glory of God (Phil 2:5-11). If Jesus can humble himself all the way to death on the cross, surely we can humble ourselves enough to live at peace with one another, live in an understanding way, and seek each other’s good. Or, as Sibbes puts it, “shall man be proud after God has been humble?” (p.27). So as we submit ourselves to God’s word we begin to see the need we have for Christian sympathy, and that Christ both models it for us and empowers us to follow.
In addition to submitting to Scripture, I’d argue that prayer is an effective means of cultivating sympathy. Not only should we pray for God’s help in growing our affection for others, we ought to pray for others. I’d encourage you to look at Paul’s prayer for the churches at the beginning of most of his letters as an example of how to pray for fellow Christians. Not only will your prayer seek their spiritual good, it will transform you in the process. What I mean is, you’ll find it increasingly difficult to dislike or disparage someone when you consistently pray that they “may be pure and blameless in the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God” (Phil 1:10-11).
You may notice that I’ve focused on cultivating the “sympathy in feeling” part to the neglect of “courtesy in speech.” But the primary issue is not the mouth; rather, it is the heart. As Jesus teaches, “the mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart” (Matthew 12:34). Make no mistake, this does not excuse careless words, since Jesus says immediately after that, “on the day of judgment people will have to account for every careless word they speak” (Matt 12:36). Instead, the point is that if our hearts are not transformed through the means of grace provided by God, our words won’t change, either. Discourteous words begin as unsympathetic thoughts. Some folks may have better manners, and will perhaps keep the harshest words held firmly behind their teeth, but the heart will gush forth eventually.
Let’s commit to sympathy, friends. May the peace of Christ rule our hearts, and may his word dwell richly among us (Colossians 3:15-16). Let’s do the difficult, constant work of cultivating Christian sympathy in feeling and courtesy in speech.