³ Remember the prisoners, as though in prison with them, and those who are ill-treated, since you yourselves also are in the body.

Compassion is a hallmark of Christianity and it has been from the very beginning. Jesus spoke of judgment as hinging on this very thing. He said, “Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me…Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me’ ” (Mt 25:34-36, 40). Have you noticed that the first and the last Beatitude have as their reward, “theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5:3, 10-12). Both the poor in spirit and those who are persecuted for their faith will have a unique standing in the Kingdom, as those who are especially blessed.

Believing that the discourse on the Mount of Olives applies primarily to the coming reign of Christ in the millennial kingdom, we none-the-less see the importance of remembering those who are ill-treated and imprisoned, as our verse for today points out. It was important to our Lord.

One of the first recorded acts of the apostle Paul in ministry was taking the love-offering from the believers in Antioch to the believers in Jerusalem who were going through a famine (Acts 11:29-30). And when he met with the other apostles for the first time, as he recorded in Galatians 2:10, “They only asked us to remember the poor—the very thing I also was eager to do.”

The writer appeals to the readers to identify with these persecuted Christians, as though we ourselves were going through the same thing. We must use our imagination to help stoke our compassion. Short of actually experiencing what they were experiencing, compassion flows from picturing ourselves in their situation, as a sort of contrived “Golden Rule” idea: think of them as you would want others to think of you if you were in that situation. If you or I were in prison, how could Christians minister to us? The last part of the verse might be better rendered, “as though you yourself were having the same bodily experience.” If you or I were being ill-treated, wouldn’t we want others to picture themselves in the same experience, and then respond accordingly?

Lord, help me to grow in my compassion for those who suffer for their faith. Help me to minister to them in the same way as I would want others to minister to me, were I in their shoes.