Chapter 13: The Compassion and Mercy of God — A Father's Tender Heart

If you had to summarize God's character in a single sentence, what would you say? Many of us would reach for words like holy or powerful or all-knowing. And those words would be true. But when God Himself had the chance to summarize His own character — when He stood before Moses on Mount Sinai and proclaimed His name in the most important self-revelation in the entire Old Testament — He did not begin with power. He did not begin with holiness. He began with compassion.

"The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness" (Exodus 34:6, ESV). That is God's own self-portrait. And the very first color He reaches for is compassion.

This chapter argues that God's compassion is not a detached, dispassionate decision to help. It is not a cool, calculated act of the divine will that merely looks like tenderness from our side. It is a genuine emotional response — a deep, visceral, heartfelt movement within God Himself — that moves Him to action on behalf of those who suffer. And this compassion is so central to who God is that it is woven into His very name.¹

I want to walk us through the biblical evidence carefully. We will look at the rich Hebrew and Greek vocabulary for compassion and mercy. We will dig into the most important passage on divine compassion in the entire Bible — God's self-revelation to Moses in Exodus 33–34. We will follow the trail of that passage as it echoes across centuries and genres of Scripture, from the Psalms to the Prophets. We will watch God extend His compassion even to Israel's worst enemies in the book of Jonah. And we will see how Jesus, the incarnate God, put flesh and blood on divine compassion in a way that leaves no room for the idea that God's tenderness is merely figurative language.²

Along the way, we will also ask a hard question: Can a God who is strictly impassible — who cannot be moved or affected by anything outside Himself — truly be compassionate? I believe the answer is no. And we will see why.

The Language of Compassion: Hebrew and Greek Words That Feel

Before we turn to the key passages, we need to understand the remarkable vocabulary the Bible uses for divine compassion. These are not cold, clinical words. They are body words — words rooted in the physical experience of deep emotion. When the biblical writers wanted to describe God's compassion, they reached for language that comes from the gut, the womb, and the bowels. This is important. It tells us that the people who knew God best understood His compassion as something deeply felt, not merely thought or decided.³

The Hebrew Vocabulary

The Old Testament uses a rich family of Hebrew words to describe God's compassion and mercy. Let's walk through the most important ones.

First, there is the verb raham (רָחַם), meaning "to have compassion." This word appears about eighty times in the Old Testament and is used primarily of God toward His people.⁴ What makes this word so striking is its connection to another Hebrew word: rekhem (רֶחֶם), which means "womb." The noun form, rakhamim (רַחֲמִים), often translated "compassion" or "tender mercies," carries the deep resonance of womb-love — the fierce, instinctive, gut-level tenderness that a mother feels for the child she has carried inside her body.⁵ When the Bible says that God feels rakhamim toward His people, it is using the most physically intimate and emotionally intense language available to describe His compassion. This is not a cool decision made from a distance. This is the ache of a mother whose child is hurting.

Second, there is the verb hanan (חָנַן), meaning "to be gracious" or "to show favor." This word appears about ninety times in the Old Testament and is used of both God and humans, though it appears especially when God is redeeming people from enemies or forgiving sins.⁶ The related noun is hen (חֵן), meaning "grace" or "favor." When Moses pleads with God in Exodus 33, the word hen appears five times in just a few verses — Moses is desperately appealing to God's gracious disposition. And God responds by affirming that He is, indeed, a God of grace.

Third, we must mention hesed (חֶסֶד) — that great untranslatable word that we explored in the previous chapter on God's love. It is usually rendered "steadfast love," "lovingkindness," or "covenant loyalty." While hesed is primarily a love word, it often appears alongside compassion language and functions as the motivation behind God's compassionate actions. God acts with compassion because of His hesed — His unwavering covenant commitment to His people (see Chapter 12 for the full discussion).⁷

Fourth, there are several additional Hebrew words that contribute to the biblical portrait of divine compassion. The verb naham (נָחַם) was discussed in the context of divine sorrow (see Chapter 15), but it also carries the meaning "to move to pity" or "to comfort" (Judges 2:18; Psalm 90:13). The related noun nihum can be translated "comfort" or "compassion" (Isaiah 57:18; Hosea 11:8). The verb hamal (חָמַל) means "to feel pity" or "to spare." It is used of God in 2 Chronicles 36:15, where we are told that God "had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place." The related noun hemlah appears in Genesis 19:16, where the angels forced Lot's family out of Sodom — "for the compassion of the LORD was upon him."⁸

What is the cumulative effect of this vocabulary? It is overwhelming. The Old Testament does not use one or two bland, generic words for God's compassion. It uses a whole family of richly embodied, emotionally charged terms — words rooted in the body (womb, bowels), in relationships (mother, father), and in deep feeling (pity, tenderness, ache). If the biblical writers believed that God's compassion was merely a metaphor for His actions — if they thought God acted compassionately but did not actually feel compassion — they chose an extraordinarily misleading vocabulary to express that idea.

The Greek Vocabulary

The New Testament continues and deepens this pattern with its own powerful vocabulary.

The most important word is splanchnizomai (σπλαγχνίζομαι), which means "to be moved in one's bowels" or "to be moved with deep compassion." In the ancient world, the bowels (splanchna) were considered the seat of the deepest emotions — the way we might say someone was "moved in their gut." This word is used repeatedly of Jesus in the Gospels (Matthew 9:36; 14:14; 15:32; 20:34; Mark 1:41; Luke 7:13). When the Gospels say that Jesus "had compassion" on the crowds, the leper, the blind men, or the grieving widow, they are using this intensely physical, visceral word. Jesus did not merely decide to help. He was moved — deep in His gut — by the suffering He saw.⁹

The related noun splanchnon, literally "bowels" but figuratively "compassion" or "affection," is used in contexts describing the mercy of God (Luke 1:78; Philippians 1:8; Colossians 3:12). The adjective polysplanchnos, meaning "full of compassion" or "full of pity," appears only once in the New Testament: "The Lord is full of compassion (polysplanchnos) and mercy" (James 5:11).¹⁰

Two additional Greek words appear together in Romans 9:15, where Paul quotes Exodus 33:19: "For he says to Moses, 'I will have mercy (eleeō) on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion (oiktirō) on whom I have compassion.'" The noun form oiktirmos appears in 2 Corinthians 1:3, where Paul calls God "the Father of mercies (oiktirmōn) and God of all comfort." The noun eleos, meaning "mercy," appears in Matthew 9:13 and Hebrews 4:16.¹¹

Together, the Hebrew and Greek vocabulary paints a unified picture across both testaments: the God of the Bible is a God of deep, genuine, viscerally felt compassion. This is not the language of a deity who merely acts in helpful ways from a position of undisturbed serenity. This is the language of a God who feels — deeply, powerfully, and responsively.

The Definitive Self-Portrait: Exodus 33–34

We turn now to the single most important passage on divine compassion in the entire Bible. In Exodus 33–34, God reveals His name and character to Moses — and compassion is the headline.

The context matters. Israel has just committed the terrible sin of the golden calf (Exodus 32). God is angry — and rightly so. Moses has interceded, and God has relented from destroying the nation. But the relationship between God and His people is strained. Moses wants assurance that God will still go with them into the Promised Land. He wants to know God more deeply. And so he makes a daring request: "Please show me your glory" (Exodus 33:18).

This passage is absolutely packed with divine compassion. As David Lamb observes, references to divine compassion appear nine times in just eight verses of Exodus 33:12–19 — four from the mouth of Moses and five from the mouth of God Himself. God is not embarrassed about His compassion. He wants Moses and His people to know that compassion is at the very core of who He is.¹²

I find this profoundly moving. Moses asked to see the glory of the Creator of the universe. He expected — what? A display of cosmic power? A vision of overwhelming majesty? Instead, God revealed His heart. The most glorious thing about God is not His power but His compassion. When He shows Moses who He truly is, the first thing He says is, "I am compassionate and gracious."¹³

Now, notice the specific language of Exodus 33:19: "I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy." This is not a statement of arbitrary favoritism. It is a declaration of sovereign freedom. God's compassion is not coerced, not obligated, not forced upon Him by external circumstances. He shows compassion because He chooses to show compassion — freely, sovereignly, out of the abundance of His own nature. This is the author's position exactly: God's emotional engagement with His creatures is not a weakness that compromises His sovereignty. It is a free, sovereign choice that flows from who He is.

The Most-Quoted Self-Description in the Bible

What happens next is remarkable. The formula that God proclaims in Exodus 34:6 — "The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness" — becomes the most-cited self-description of God in all of Scripture. It echoes across centuries, across genres, and across authors. No other passage about God's character is repeated as often or as widely.

Think about what this means. When the writers of Israel's hymns, histories, and prophetic books wanted to say who God is — when they wanted to give the most concise and authoritative summary of the divine character — they returned again and again to this same formula. And what does that formula say? Not "The LORD is all-powerful." Not "The LORD is all-knowing." Not even "The LORD is holy" (though He is all of those things). The formula says: "The LORD is compassionate and gracious." Compassion is the headline. It is the first thing God says about Himself, and it is the thing the Bible's writers chose to repeat more than any other description of who God is.¹⁴

I believe this is theologically significant for our debate about divine emotion. If God's compassion is merely anthropomorphic — if it is merely a figurative way of describing actions that have no corresponding emotional reality in God — then the most-repeated description of God in the entire Bible is misleading. Hundreds of years of worship, prayer, and prophetic proclamation built on the Exodus 34:6 formula would be based on a fundamental misunderstanding. I find that very difficult to accept. When God told Israel who He is, and when Israel repeated that self-revelation for centuries, we should take it at face value: God is genuinely, truly, really compassionate. He feels it.¹⁵

A Father's Compassion: Psalm 103

Perhaps no psalm captures divine compassion more beautifully than Psalm 103. The psalmist begins with an invitation to praise and then unfolds a breathtaking portrait of who God is:

Already we see the language of compassion: God "crowns" His people with rakhamim — with that deep, womb-like tender mercy. But the psalm continues:

Notice that verse 8 is a direct quotation of the Exodus 34:6 formula — further evidence of how central this self-description was to Israel's understanding of God. And then comes the verse that gives this chapter its subtitle:

Jesse Morrell makes a helpful observation about this verse. The tender affection of a human father toward his children is presented as analogous to God's tender affection toward His people. This is not a case where the Bible projects onto God an emotion He does not actually have. Rather, because human beings are made in God's image, our fatherly compassion is a small reflection of His. Our feelings point upward to a greater reality — not downward to a lesser one.¹⁶

As we argued in Chapter 6 (the anthropomorphism objection), the direction of the analogy matters enormously. When Scripture says God is like a compassionate father, it is not saying, "God does not really feel compassion, but we humans do, so we project our feelings onto Him." It is saying, "You know what fatherly compassion feels like? God's compassion is the original, the archetype, the thing your fatherly feelings are a pale copy of." Human compassion is the image; divine compassion is the reality.

A Mother's Compassion: Isaiah 49

If Psalm 103 gives us the image of a compassionate father, Isaiah 49 gives us the image of a compassionate mother — and it is one of the most tender passages in all of Scripture.

The context is the Babylonian exile. God's people feel abandoned, forgotten, forsaken. And God responds with some of the most emotionally powerful language in the Old Testament:

Lamb identifies three key dimensions of divine compassion in this passage. First, God's compassion guides His people. They are traveling great distances as freed captives, and God provides food, shade, and springs of water — even making mountains into roads for their journey. Second, God's compassion comforts His people. He does not just provide for them physically; He sees their captivity and affliction and meets them with emotional comfort in the midst of their pain. Third, God's compassion does not forget His people. Even when they feel forsaken and abandoned, God's memory of them is permanent.¹⁷

The maternal imagery is staggering. God asks: Can a mother forget the baby at her breast? The implied answer is, "No, of course not!" A mother's body will not let her forget her nursing child. But even if the unthinkable happened — even if a mother somehow forgot — God says, "I will not forget you." His compassion is more reliable than the most primal bond in human experience.¹⁸

And then comes one of the most beautiful images in all of Scripture: "I have engraved you on the palms of my hands." Lamb notes that the language evokes something like a tattoo — a permanent, indelible mark. God's people are inscribed on His very body (speaking figuratively). He will never look at His hands without being reminded of them. This is not the language of a detached, dispassionate deity. This is the language of fierce, intimate, personal devotion.¹⁹

The contributor to Andrew Schmutzer's Divine Suffering volume who treats this passage observes that the verb raham (compassion) shares the same root letters as the noun rekhem (womb). The allusions to God's tenderness toward His wounded people employ the language of a compassionate birth mother. While God speaks first as a tender mother, He also speaks as Shepherd, King, and Creator — combining maternal tenderness with sovereign power to deliver His people and judge their oppressors.²⁰

The Compassion of God Across the Old Testament

The passages we have examined are the high points, but divine compassion runs like a golden thread through the entire Old Testament story. Let me trace it briefly.

The story of the Old Testament is, at its core, a story of God showing compassion to His rebellious people. Moses anticipates a future time when Israel has been unfaithful and then turns back to God, and God shows compassion on them again (Deuteronomy 30:3). The book of Judges describes a repeated cycle: Israel worships other gods, God gives them into the hands of their enemies, they cry out to God for help, and God "was moved to pity" (naham) by their groaning and sends a deliverer (Judges 2:18). King David, when offered a choice of punishments, chose to fall into God's hands rather than human hands, "for his mercy is great" (2 Samuel 24:14).²¹

One of the most remarkable examples appears in 2 Kings 13. Even though King Jehoahaz of Israel did evil in the eyes of the LORD, when he prayed, God sent a deliverer. The text echoes the language of Exodus 33:19: "The LORD was gracious (hanan) to them and had compassion (raham) on them, and he turned toward them, because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" (2 Kings 13:23, ESV). As Lamb wryly observes, the prayer of an evil ruler still prompted God to respond with compassion. This is encouraging for all of us who fall short of righteousness.²²

Compassion is also a frequent theme in Israel's prayers. Ezra mentions God's compassion three times in his prayer of national confession (Nehemiah 9:19, 27–28). David, after his terrible sins of adultery and murder, cries out: "Have mercy (hanan) on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion (rakhamim) blot out my transgressions" (Psalm 51:1). The psalmist prays that God will "have compassion on his servants" (Psalm 135:14, NRSV).²³

The prophets are saturated with divine compassion language. Isaiah repeatedly emphasizes God's great compassion (Isaiah 14:1; 30:18; 51:3; 54:7–10; 60:10; 63:7). Jeremiah speaks of God's compassion toward His people and even toward the descendants of David (Jeremiah 12:15; 31:20). Hosea mentions God's compassion toward orphans (Hosea 14:3). Micah declares, "He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot" (Micah 7:19). The prophet Zechariah looks forward to God's compassion restored to Jerusalem (Zechariah 1:16; 10:6). And the great creedal passage in Lamentations, written in the ashes of Jerusalem's destruction, insists: "The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies (rakhamim) never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:22–23).²⁴

The sheer volume of this evidence is important. This is not an isolated theme that appears in one or two passages. Divine compassion saturates the entire Old Testament. It appears in law, in narrative, in poetry, in prophecy. It appears in contexts of national deliverance, individual forgiveness, covenantal restoration, and eschatological hope. It appears on the lips of Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Joel, Jonah, Micah, Zechariah, and Ezra. If all of this language is merely anthropopathic — merely figurative language that accommodates to human understanding but has no emotional reality in God — then the Old Testament is one long, elaborate deception.

The Lamentations passage deserves special attention because of its context. These words — "his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning" — were written by a person sitting in the ashes of Jerusalem's destruction. The temple had been burned. The city lay in ruins. The people had been carried off into exile. If there was ever a moment when it might have seemed like God's compassion had finally run out, this was it. And yet, in the very depths of that devastation, the writer insists that God's rakhamim — His womb-love, His maternal tenderness — is new every morning. Not stale, not exhausted, not burned out. New. Fresh. Inexhaustible. This is not the language of someone who understands divine compassion as a mere metaphor. This is the testimony of someone who has experienced God's genuine, felt, responsive tenderness even in the darkest possible circumstances.

Isaiah 30:18 adds one more dimension that deserves our attention: "Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you." Notice the stunning verb: God waits to be gracious. He is eager. He is leaning forward, looking for the opportunity to show compassion. This is not the posture of an impassible deity who is indifferent to the timing of His mercy. This is a God who longs to show compassion — who is actively, eagerly waiting for the moment when He can pour out His tenderness on His people. The Hebrew word here is hakah, which means "to wait longingly," "to wait expectantly." God's compassion is not reluctant or begrudging. It is eager and impatient to be expressed.

The Jonah Narrative: Compassion for Israel's Enemies

Perhaps the most dramatic test of divine compassion in the Old Testament comes in the book of Jonah. Here God's compassion extends not to Israel but to Israel's worst enemies — the Ninevites. And the prophet who knows God's compassionate character best is furious about it.

The story is well known. God sends Jonah to preach to Nineveh, the capital of the brutal Assyrian Empire. Jonah runs the other direction, ends up in the belly of a great fish, and eventually — reluctantly — delivers God's message: "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" (Jonah 3:4). To everyone's surprise, including apparently Jonah's, the Ninevites repent. And God responds:

And now comes the most revealing verse in the entire book. Jonah erupts in anger — not because God punished Nineveh, but because God did not:

Do you see what is happening? Jonah quotes the Exodus 34:6 formula back at God — but as a complaint. Jonah knows God's character. He knows that God is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and rich in love. And he resents it. He was hoping that, just this once, God's compassion would have limits — that it would stop at the border of Israel and not extend to these pagan enemies who had terrorized Israel for generations. But God's compassion has no borders.²⁵

Rob Lister notes that Jonah was quite familiar with what we might call God's "relational mutability" — the principle that God genuinely responds to the moral actions of His creatures. Because Jonah knew God's compassionate character, he was confident that if the Ninevites repented, God would forgive them. That is precisely why he ran to Tarshish in the first place.²⁶

God's compassion extends to pagans, to enemies, to people who do not even know basic right from wrong — and even to the animals of Nineveh. God's compassion is universal. It is not limited to the covenant community. It is not restricted to those who deserve it. It reaches out to the most unlikely recipients imaginable.²⁷

Notice also that Jonah 4:11 presents God's compassion as genuinely responsive to the situation. God is not merely executing an eternal, unchanging decree. He is looking at 120,000 confused, ignorant people and their animals, and He is moved by their condition. "Should I not pity Nineveh?" He asks. The question assumes that compassion is the appropriate response to the situation — that when God sees people in need, compassion is what wells up in Him. This is precisely what the passibilist position affirms: God's compassion is a genuine emotional response to genuine suffering, not an eternal, unchanging state that merely appears responsive from the human side.²⁸

We should also note the Jonah story's connection to the Exodus 34:6 formula. Jonah 4:2 is a direct quotation of that formula — but with a revealing twist. In most of its appearances across the Old Testament, the formula is quoted with gratitude, praise, or hopeful trust. The psalmists and prophets celebrate the fact that God is compassionate and gracious. But Jonah quotes it with resentment. He does not deny that the formula is true — he knows it is true, and that is exactly his problem. The fact that even an angry, reluctant prophet treats the formula as settled, undeniable truth tells us something important about how deeply embedded this understanding of God's character was in Israel's consciousness. God's compassion was not a debatable theological opinion. It was an axiom — a given — a bedrock conviction that even the most reluctant Israelite could not escape.

Joel 2:13 — Compassion as the Basis for Repentance

The prophet Joel provides another important window into the role of the Exodus 34:6 formula. In the midst of a devastating locust plague — an agricultural catastrophe that threatened Israel's very survival — Joel calls the people to repent:

Notice the logic of Joel's appeal. He does not say, "Return to the LORD because He is powerful and will punish you if you don't." He says, "Return to the LORD because He is compassionate." The motivation for repentance is not fear of punishment but confidence in God's tender heart. Joel is saying, in effect: "You can come back to God because He is the kind of God who will receive you with open arms. He is not waiting to crush you. He is waiting to embrace you." This echoes what Paul would later say in Romans 2:4 — that it is God's kindness that leads to repentance (see Chapter 19 for the full treatment of divine patience).

Joel adds one crucial phrase that does not appear in the Exodus 34:6 original: "and he relents over disaster." This is the Hebrew verb naham — the same word used in Genesis 6:6 for God's grief and in Jonah 3:10 for God's change of plans regarding Nineveh. Joel is saying that God's compassion is not merely an internal feeling. It leads to action — specifically, to God changing His course of action in response to the moral state of His creatures. A God who "relents over disaster" is a God who genuinely responds to what His people do. He is not locked into a predetermined course. His compassion can intervene, redirect, and transform the situation. This is genuine relational engagement, not the outworking of an eternal, unchanging decree.

The Compassion of Jesus: God's Heart Made Visible

When we turn to the New Testament, the compassion of God takes on flesh. In Jesus, we see what divine compassion looks like when it walks among us in human form. And what we see is not detachment. Not cool, calculated benevolence. What we see is gut-wrenching, deeply felt, visibly expressed compassion.

Matthew's Gospel especially highlights this. Jesus' compassion for the crowds is a recurring theme — and the word used is always that powerful, visceral word splanchnizomai.

This second passage is especially striking. Jesus had just learned that His cousin John the Baptist had been beheaded by King Herod (Matthew 14:13). He withdrew to a solitary place, presumably to grieve. But when the crowds followed Him, His own grief did not shut down His compassion. Even in the midst of His own pain, the needs of the people moved Him to action. He healed their sick and then miraculously fed five thousand people.²⁹

A chapter later, Jesus explicitly names His compassion for His disciples' benefit: "I have compassion (splanchnizomai) on the crowd because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way" (Matthew 15:32). Then He fed four thousand people. Jesus wanted His followers to know what was motivating His actions. It was not merely duty or obedience to the Father's will. It was compassion — deep, felt, genuine compassion.³⁰

Jesus' compassion also shows up in deeply personal encounters. When two blind men cry out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy (eleeō) on us!" (Matthew 20:30), the crowd tries to silence them. But Jesus stops, calls them over, and asks one of the most touching questions in the Gospels: "What do you want me to do for you?" (Matthew 20:32). He does not lecture them about proper protocol. He does not rebuke them for shouting. Moved with compassion (splanchnizomai), He touches their eyes and heals them (Matthew 20:34).³¹

In Luke's Gospel, we see Jesus' compassion for a grieving widow at Nain: "When the Lord saw her, he had compassion (splanchnizomai) on her and said to her, 'Do not weep.' Then he came up and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, 'Young man, I say to you, arise'" (Luke 7:13–14). Jesus saw a mother burying her only son, and He was moved — moved in His gut — to intervene. He did not calculate the theological implications. He saw suffering, felt compassion, and acted.

We should also note that the word splanchnizomai appears in one of Jesus' most famous parables — the parable of the prodigal son. When the wayward son returns home, the father's response is described in terms that echo divine compassion throughout Scripture: "But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion (splanchnizomai), and ran and embraced him and kissed him" (Luke 15:20). The father does not wait at the door with crossed arms. He does not demand an explanation first. He does not calculate whether the son deserves forgiveness. He sees his son, he is moved with gut-level compassion, and he runs. In the ancient Near Eastern world, a wealthy patriarch would not ordinarily run — it was undignified. But compassion overrides dignity. This parable, told by Jesus to illustrate the Father's heart, portrays God's compassion as responsive (triggered by seeing the son), visceral (felt in the gut), and action-oriented (resulting in running, embracing, kissing, and restoring). If this parable describes God — and Jesus clearly intended it to — then God's compassion is not a metaphor. It is the most real thing about Him (see Chapter 14 for the fuller treatment of this parable in the context of divine joy).

Why does Jesus' compassion matter for our argument? Because Jesus is the revelation of God. As He told Philip, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). If Jesus' compassion is genuine — if He truly felt what splanchnizomai describes — then the Father truly feels it too. The compassion of Jesus is not something different from the compassion of God. It is the compassion of God made visible in human form (see Chapter 20 for the full treatment of Jesus' emotions).³²

The Father of Mercies: Compassion in the Epistles

The New Testament epistles confirm what the Gospels and the Old Testament have already established: compassion is central to God's identity.

Paul opens 2 Corinthians with one of the most beautiful descriptions of God in the New Testament:

God is called "the Father of mercies" — a title that places compassion at the very center of His fatherly identity. And notice that God's comfort is described as something active, responsive, and relational. He "comforts us in all our affliction." This is not the comfort of an impassible deity who remains emotionally untouched by our pain and merely causes beneficial effects in our lives. This is the comfort of a Father who enters into our suffering, feels it with us, and responds with genuine tenderness.³³

The writer of Hebrews adds another dimension: "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy (eleos) and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:15–16). The "throne of grace" from which mercy flows is not occupied by a distant, unmoved deity. It is occupied by a high priest who sympathizes — who has experienced temptation and suffering and weakness in His own flesh. His mercy is informed by His own experience. This is the argument from experiential knowledge that R. T. Mullins develops (see Chapter 4): a God who shares in the experience of creaturely suffering knows more — and comforts better — than a God who merely observes it from a distance.³⁴

The Impassibilist Problem: Can a God Without Feelings Be Compassionate?

We have now surveyed the biblical evidence for divine compassion — from the Hebrew vocabulary rooted in the womb to the Greek vocabulary rooted in the bowels, from God's own self-revelation at Sinai to the gut-wrenching compassion of Jesus for the crowds. The evidence is overwhelming. But we must now ask: Can a strictly impassible God — a God who cannot be moved or influenced by anything outside Himself — truly have the kind of compassion the Bible describes?

I believe the answer is no. And two important admissions from within the impassibilist tradition help us see why.

Anselm's Admission

The medieval theologian Anselm of Canterbury (ca. 1033–1109) was one of the greatest minds in the history of Christian theology. He affirmed divine impassibility. And he wrestled honestly with the tension between impassibility and compassion. In his Proslogion, he wrote:

Anselm's solution was to draw a sharp distinction between God's effects on us and God's own experience:

In other words, Anselm said: God acts compassionately — we experience the beneficial effects of His compassion — but God Himself does not actually feel compassion. He is compassionate from our perspective but not from His own.³⁵

As Mullins observes, this is a remarkable admission. Anselm is saying, in effect, that God cannot truly have compassion under strict impassibility. The word "compassion" literally means "to suffer with" (from the Latin com-pati). If God cannot suffer with others — if He cannot be moved or affected by their suffering — then He cannot, by definition, be compassionate. He can act in helpful ways, but He cannot share in the experience that makes compassion what it is.³⁶

Rob Lister notes that Anselm's shortcoming was his failure to elaborate on a more positive alternative. Lister suggests that Anselm may have intended something more nuanced — perhaps that God's compassion is genuinely felt but differs from the experience of "sinfully wretched creatures." On this reading, Anselm would be affirming that God does not join us in being wretched and sinful, but might still have some form of genuine emotional capacity. However, Lister acknowledges that we must make this interpretation by inference, since Anselm never explicitly says so.³⁷

Pink's Admission

Arthur W. Pink, the influential Reformed theologian, made a similar admission from a different angle. Pink insisted that God "is not influenced by things outside of Himself as we are." As Mullins notes, Pink was emphatic that God's love — and by extension, His compassion — is "completely and utterly uninfluenced by anything ad extra to God." Not even some foreseen excellency in creatures can influence God's love. On Pink's account, God's love and compassion are eternal, unchanging states that have nothing to do with what creatures actually need or suffer.³⁸

Pink explicitly stated: "It is not the wretchedness of the creatures which causes Him to show mercy." But wait — if the wretchedness of creatures does not cause God to show mercy, then what does? On this view, God's mercy is a timeless, unchanging attribute that merely appears responsive to human need from our limited perspective. God would have shown the exact same "mercy" whether creatures were suffering or not. The suffering is irrelevant to God's internal experience.³⁹

Contrast this with the biblical portrait we have just surveyed. In the Bible, God's compassion is explicitly described as responsive to human need. God hears the cry of His enslaved people and comes down to deliver them (Exodus 3:7–8). God sees the harassed and helpless crowds and is moved with compassion (Matthew 9:36). God is moved to pity by the groaning of His oppressed people and sends a deliverer (Judges 2:18). God looks at the 120,000 confused people of Nineveh and their animals and says, "Should I not pity Nineveh?" (Jonah 4:11). In every case, God's compassion is a response — a genuine emotional response to a genuine situation of need. The impassibilist must explain away all of this responsive language as figurative. I believe the burden of proof is on them, and it is a burden they cannot bear.⁴⁰

Compassion and Divine Wrath: Two Sides of One Coin

Before we leave the impassibilist challenge, it is worth noting a connection that Mullins draws in his analysis. Biblical compassion and biblical wrath are deeply intertwined. In the Exodus 34:6 formula, God is both "compassionate and gracious" and one who "will by no means clear the guilty." In Hosea 11, God's compassion toward Israel is the very reason He changes from a plan of wrath to a plan of mercy (see Chapter 15 for the full treatment of Hosea 11). God's wrath and His compassion are not contradictory impulses — they are complementary expressions of His holy love. He is angry at sin precisely because He is compassionate toward the people sin destroys.⁴¹

This creates a serious problem for the classical theist, as Mullins demonstrates. Biblical compassion involves being responsive to the suffering and moral condition of creatures. Biblical wrath involves being responsive to the sin and rebellion of creatures. If God cannot be influenced by anything external — if He is truly impassible — then neither His compassion nor His wrath can be genuine responses to creaturely reality. Both must be eternal, unchanging states with no real connection to what happens in the world. But this is precisely what the Bible denies at every turn. God's compassion responds to need. God's wrath responds to sin. Both are genuine emotional responses to genuine situations (see Chapter 23 for Mullins's full wrath argument).⁴²

John Peckham summarizes the biblical vision well: the biblical language of compassion explicitly depicts "suffering along with," something akin to sympathy or empathy — a responsive feeling of emotion along with and for the object of compassion. This kind of compassionate responsiveness is simply not available to the impassible God who cannot be moved or influenced by anything external to the divine nature.⁴³

Compassion as a Perfection, Not a Weakness

Some might object: Does saying that God is genuinely moved by human suffering make Him weak? Does it compromise His sovereignty? Does it make Him dependent on His creatures?

First, God's compassion is free, not forced. Recall the language of Exodus 33:19: "I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy." God's compassion is His sovereign choice. No one compels Him to feel compassion. No creature has the power to manipulate His emotions. He freely chooses to be affected by the suffering of His creatures — because that is who He is. That is what love does. This is the critical distinction between the author's position and process theology (see Chapter 5). In process theology, God must be affected by everything that happens — He has no choice. In the author's view, God chooses to be affected because His love is so great that it cannot remain unmoved in the face of suffering. His vulnerability is chosen, not imposed.⁴⁴

Second, God's compassion never overwhelms or destabilizes Him. Unlike human compassion, which can lead to burnout, paralysis, or emotional collapse, God's compassion is always accompanied by sovereign power and infinite wisdom. When God is moved with compassion, He acts — decisively, effectively, wisely. He does not wring His hands helplessly. He delivers, heals, forgives, and restores. His compassion and His power work together seamlessly. This is the qualified sense in which I affirm a form of impassibility: God cannot be overwhelmed by His emotions, even though He genuinely has them. He is never a victim of His own compassion. He is always its sovereign Lord.

Third, as we argued in the previous chapter and will argue more fully in Chapter 34, God's emotional responsiveness to His creatures is not a deficiency but a perfection. Consider: which is the greater love — the love of a father who is genuinely moved by his child's suffering, or the love of a father who remains emotionally unmoved but mechanically performs helpful actions? Every parent knows the answer. The father who feels his child's pain — who aches with her, who weeps for her, who would take her place if he could — is the better father. Not because his feeling is a weakness, but because it is what love is.⁴⁵

Fourth, God's compassion does not make Him dependent on His creatures in any essential sense. God's nature — His holiness, His goodness, His wisdom, His power — does not depend on the world. He would be compassionate in His essential character even if He had never created anything, because compassion flows from His loving nature. But having freely chosen to create and to enter into relationship with His creatures, God's experience of compassion is genuinely affected by what those creatures undergo. His essential nature is independent; His relational experience is responsive. This is the distinction between ontological independence (which God retains) and relational engagement (which God freely chooses).

Terence Fretheim, in his groundbreaking study The Suffering of God, argues that the Old Testament pervasively portrays God as genuinely suffering with and for His people. God is not a distant sovereign who observes suffering from a position of serene detachment. He is a God who enters into the suffering of His creatures, shares it, and bears it. For Fretheim, this is not a compromise of God's transcendence — it is the supreme expression of it. The truly transcendent God is not the one who is too great to care. It is the one who is great enough to stoop, to feel, to suffer alongside His creatures without being diminished by that suffering.⁴⁶

Abraham Heschel, in his monumental work The Prophets, introduced the concept of "divine pathos" — the idea that God is not a self-contained, self-sufficient Being indifferent to the world but a God who is passionately, emotionally, intimately involved with His creation. For Heschel, the prophets did not project human emotions onto God. They were the recipients of a genuine divine self-disclosure. God allowed them to share in His own emotional life — His compassion, His grief, His anger, His love. The prophets felt what God felt because God chose to reveal His pathos to them.⁴⁷

I believe Fretheim and Heschel are right on this point. Divine compassion is not a limitation. It is a glory. It is what it means for God to be love (1 John 4:8).

Compassion and the Cross

We cannot leave the topic of divine compassion without at least glancing at the cross — though the full treatment is reserved for Chapter 26. The cross is the ultimate expression of divine compassion. Everything we have seen in this chapter — the womb-love of rakhamim, the gut-wrenching tenderness of splanchnizomai, the Father who aches like a parent over a wounded child, the God who engraves His people on His hands — all of it reaches its climax at Calvary.

At the cross, God did not merely observe human suffering from a distance. He entered into it. God the Son took on human flesh, bore the full weight of human sin and suffering, and experienced death itself. If God's compassion is merely a metaphor — if God does not actually feel with His creatures — then the cross is deeply puzzling. Why would an impassible God go to such extraordinary lengths to enter into human experience if He has no experiential knowledge of human pain? But if God truly feels compassion — if He truly aches for His suffering creatures — then the cross makes perfect sense. It is the ultimate act of compassion: God entering into the worst of human experience because He cannot stand to leave His beloved children alone in their darkness.⁴⁸

Paul connects compassion and the cross explicitly in Romans 5:8: "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." The cross is God's compassion in action — not merely a legal transaction or a judicial exchange, but the outpouring of a heart that could not bear to let us perish.

Compassion and the Companion Books

Before we conclude, it is worth noting how divine compassion connects to the themes of the author's companion volumes. In Beyond the Grave, the author argues that God's love and compassion extend beyond death — that God's relentless mercy does not cease at the moment of death but offers a postmortem opportunity for salvation. A God whose compassion is merely mechanical would have no reason to extend that compassion beyond the boundary of physical death. But a God who genuinely feels for His creatures — who aches for them with rakhamim, who is moved with splanchnizomai when He sees them lost and confused — would naturally continue to pursue them even beyond the grave. Divine compassion, on this view, is not something that has an expiration date.

In The God Beyond the Clock, the author argues that God is genuinely temporal — able to experience temporal succession and sequence. This is relevant because genuine compassion requires temporality. A God who exists in an eternal, timeless "now" — who experiences no before and after, no sequence of events — cannot genuinely be moved by something that happens at a particular moment in time. He cannot weep "when" a child dies or rejoice "when" a sinner repents, because there is no "when" in His experience. But the God who reveals Himself in Exodus 34 — the God who responds to the golden calf, who answers Moses' prayer, who proclaims His name in a specific historical moment — is a God who acts within time, who responds to events as they unfold, whose compassion is genuinely triggered by genuine situations.

Conclusion: The Headline of God's Character

We have covered a great deal of ground in this chapter, so let me draw our findings together.

The biblical vocabulary for divine compassion — in both Hebrew and Greek — is deeply embodied, viscerally felt, and emotionally charged. Words like rakhamim (womb-compassion), splanchnizomai (gut-wrenching compassion), and raham (deep tenderness) do not describe detached, calculated benevolence. They describe a God who is moved — moved in the deepest part of His being — by the suffering of His creatures.

The Exodus 34:6 formula — the most-repeated self-description of God in the entire Bible — places compassion front and center. When God tells us who He is, the first thing He says is that He is compassionate and gracious. This formula echoes across centuries and genres of Scripture, from the Psalms to the Prophets, from Nehemiah to Joel to Jonah. It is the closest thing we have to an authorized, divine-given summary of God's character. And compassion is the headline.

God's compassion extends universally — to Israel, to enemies, to pagans, to orphans, even to animals. It is compared to a father's tenderness (Psalm 103:13) and a mother's fierce protectiveness (Isaiah 49:15). It guides, comforts, forgives, delivers, and remembers. It is "new every morning" (Lamentations 3:23) and extends to "all that he has made" (Psalm 145:9).

Jesus revealed divine compassion in human form. He was repeatedly "moved in his gut" (splanchnizomai) by the suffering He saw — and He acted. His compassion was not merely an inner feeling. It led to healing, feeding, forgiving, weeping, and ultimately dying. If Jesus reveals the Father (John 14:9), then the Father shares this same deep, genuine, responsive compassion.

Strict impassibility struggles to account for all of this. Anselm admitted that an impassible God cannot truly have compassion — only the effects of compassion experienced from our side. Pink insisted that creaturely wretchedness does not cause God to show mercy. But the Bible says the opposite: God hears the cry of the afflicted and responds (Exodus 3:7–8). He sees the crowds and is moved (Matthew 9:36). He looks at Nineveh and asks, "Should I not pity?" (Jonah 4:11). Biblical compassion is responsive, felt, and genuine.⁴⁹

I believe the evidence compels us toward the mediating position this book defends. God's compassion is real — genuinely felt, genuinely responsive to the suffering of His creatures. But it is also sovereign — freely chosen, never coerced, never overwhelming or destabilizing. God is not like a parent who collapses under the weight of empathy and cannot function. He is like the perfect parent — one who feels every ache of every child, and yet has the infinite wisdom and power to act, to heal, to deliver, to restore. His compassion is not His weakness. It is His glory.

And here is the beautiful thing: this compassion is directed at you. The God who proclaimed His name to Moses on Sinai — the God who fed five thousand out of gut-wrenching tenderness — the God who asked Jonah, "Should I not pity?" — that God looks at you right now with the same deep, fierce, womb-like tenderness. He knows your frame. He remembers that you are dust. And He is compassionate.⁵⁰

Footnotes

¹ The thesis of this chapter — that divine compassion is a genuine emotional response central to God's identity — is consistent with the broader argument of this book for a mediating position on divine passibility. See Chapter 34 for the author's comprehensive model. ↩

² David T. Lamb, The Emotions of God: Making Sense of a God Who Hates, Weeps, and Loves (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2022), chap. 7. Lamb's chapter on compassion provides the primary biblical framework for this chapter's argument. ↩

³ Abraham Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 223–31. Heschel's concept of "divine pathos" emphasizes that the prophets understood God's emotional engagement as genuinely real, not merely figurative. ↩

⁴ Lamb, Emotions of God, 130. Lamb notes that the Hebrew verb raham appears about eighty times in the Old Testament, used primarily of God toward His people. ↩

⁵ Lamb, Emotions of God, 130. The related adjective rahum, "compassionate," is used exclusively of God in the Old Testament (Exodus 34:6; Deuteronomy 4:31; Psalm 111:4). See also the discussion in Andrew J. Schmutzer, ed., Divine Suffering: Theology, History, and Church Mission (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2023), chap. 4, where the contributor notes that the verb raham (compassion) shares root letters with the noun rekhem (womb). ↩

⁶ Lamb, Emotions of God, 130. The verb hanan appears about ninety times and is used both of humans and of God, especially in contexts of redemption and forgiveness. ↩

⁷ See Chapter 12 for the full discussion of hesed as covenant love and loyalty. ↩

⁸ Lamb, Emotions of God, 130–31. Lamb surveys these additional Hebrew terms (naham, hamal, hemlah) as contributing to the comprehensive Old Testament vocabulary of divine compassion. ↩

⁹ Lamb, Emotions of God, 131. The Greek word splanchnizomai literally means to be moved in one's bowels — a visceral, embodied emotional response. ↩

¹⁰ Lamb, Emotions of God, 131. The related noun splanchnon and adjective polysplanchnos extend this compassion vocabulary across multiple New Testament contexts. ↩

¹¹ Lamb, Emotions of God, 131. The Greek verbs eleeō and oiktirō appear together in Romans 9:15 as Paul quotes Exodus 33:19, demonstrating continuity between the Old and New Testament compassion vocabulary. ↩

¹² Lamb, Emotions of God, 135. Lamb counts nine references to divine compassion in Exodus 33:12–19 and concludes that God is not embarrassed about His compassion. ↩

¹³ Lamb, Emotions of God, 135–36. Lamb observes three dimensions of God's compassion in this passage: it involves God's presence, it is associated with God's name, and it is connected to His glory and goodness. ↩

¹⁴ Lamb, Emotions of God, 130. The Exodus 34:6 formula is repeated in Numbers 14:18; Nehemiah 9:17; Psalms 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2; and Nahum 1:3. No other divine self-description receives this kind of widespread repetition across centuries and genres. ↩

¹⁵ For the full treatment of the anthropomorphism objection — the claim that emotional language about God is merely figurative — see Chapter 6. ↩

¹⁶ Jesse Morrell, The Emotions of God: How Man Can Bless or Hurt God (Open Air Outreach, 2016), chap. "Divine Compassion." Morrell argues that Psalm 103:13 uses fatherly compassion not as a projection onto God but as a reflection of the divine original. ↩

¹⁷ Lamb, Emotions of God, 138–39. ↩

¹⁸ Lamb, Emotions of God, 139. ↩

¹⁹ Lamb, Emotions of God, 139–40. Lamb humorously imagines God's "tattoo" as a permanent mark of devotion and memory. ↩

²⁰ Schmutzer, Divine Suffering, chap. 4. The contributor observes that the same Hebrew root letters connect raham (compassion) and rekhem (womb), reinforcing the maternal imagery of God's tenderness. ↩

²¹ Lamb, Emotions of God, 136. ↩

²² Lamb, Emotions of God, 136–37. ↩

²³ Lamb, Emotions of God, 137. ↩

²⁴ Lamb, Emotions of God, 137. See also Terence Fretheim, The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 107–48, for a comprehensive survey of divine compassion in the prophetic literature. ↩

²⁵ Lamb, Emotions of God, 132. Lamb notes the dramatic irony: Jonah quotes the Exodus 34:6 formula as a complaint rather than a praise. ↩

²⁶ Rob Lister, God Is Impassible and Impassioned: Toward a Theology of Divine Emotion (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), 211. Lister observes that Jonah's familiarity with God's compassionate character is what made him flee in the first place. ↩

²⁷ Lamb, Emotions of God, 132–33. Lamb emphasizes the universality of God's compassion in the Jonah narrative — extending to pagans, enemies, and even animals. ↩

²⁸ Morrell, Emotions of God, chap. "Divine Compassion." Morrell argues that God's compassion leads Him to change His plans about destroying a nation if He is given good and sufficient reasons — demonstrating genuine responsiveness. ↩

²⁹ Lamb, Emotions of God, 140–41. Lamb highlights the striking fact that Jesus' compassion for the crowds persisted even while He was grieving John the Baptist's death. ↩

³⁰ Lamb, Emotions of God, 141. Jesus explicitly tells His disciples that compassion is what motivates His actions — He wants His followers to understand and imitate divine compassion. ↩

³¹ Lamb, Emotions of God, 141–42. See also Chapter 20 for the full treatment of the emotions of Jesus. ↩

³² See Chapter 20 for the full treatment of Jesus' emotions as the revelation of the Father's heart. The argument that Jesus reveals the Father's emotional life is central to the passibilist case. ↩

³³ D. A. Carson, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2000), 47–48. Carson's treatment of God's providential love includes the compassion with which God engages His suffering creatures. ↩

³⁴ R. T. Mullins, God and Emotion, Elements in the Philosophy of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), §3.2. Mullins develops the argument from experiential knowledge: a God who shares in creaturely experience has a richer form of omniscience than one who merely observes. See Chapter 4 for the full treatment. ↩

³⁵ Lister, God Is Impassible and Impassioned, 108–9. Lister quotes Anselm's Proslogion VIII at length and discusses the interpretive options for Anselm's intent. ↩

³⁶ Mullins, God and Emotion, §5.1. Mullins observes that Anselm effectively admits that strict impassibility is incompatible with genuine compassion. ↩

³⁷ Lister, God Is Impassible and Impassioned, 109. Lister suggests a more charitable reading of Anselm but acknowledges this must be inferred rather than derived from any explicit statement. ↩

³⁸ Mullins, God and Emotion, §5.1. Mullins notes that Pink's account of God's love is "completely and utterly uninfluenced by anything ad extra to God." See also Arthur W. Pink, The Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1975), 74–79. ↩

³⁹ Pink, Attributes of God, 74. Mullins quotes Pink: "It is not the wretchedness of the creatures which causes Him to show mercy, for God is not influenced by things outside of Himself as we are." ↩

⁴⁰ John Peckham, The Love of God: A Canonical Model (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015), 178. Peckham argues that the biblical language of compassion explicitly depicts "suffering along with" — responsive feeling toward and for the object of compassion. ↩

⁴¹ Mullins, God and Emotion, §5.1. Mullins observes that in Hosea 11, God's compassion is the reason He changes from wrath to mercy — demonstrating the interconnection of these emotions. ↩

⁴² See Chapter 23 for the full treatment of Mullins's four-step wrath argument, which demonstrates that divine wrath is incompatible with strict impassibility. ↩

⁴³ Peckham, Love of God, 178. See also Mullins, God and Emotion, §5.1. ↩

⁴⁴ This is the key distinction between the author's position and process theology. In process theology, God is passible because He has no choice — He must be affected by everything. In the author's view, God is passible because He freely chooses to be affected by His creatures out of love. See Chapter 5 for the critique of process theology. ↩

⁴⁵ Roberto Sirvent, Embracing Vulnerability: Human and Divine (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2014), chap. 4. Sirvent argues that emotional vulnerability is constitutive of genuine love — a love that is invulnerable is not truly love. ↩

⁴⁶ Fretheim, Suffering of God, 107–48. Fretheim's study remains one of the most comprehensive arguments that the Old Testament portrays God as genuinely suffering with and for His people. ↩

⁴⁷ Heschel, Prophets, 221–31. Heschel's concept of "divine pathos" — that God is passionately, emotionally, intimately involved with His creation — is one of the most influential contributions to the passibility debate in the twentieth century. ↩

⁴⁸ See Chapter 26 for the full treatment of the cross and divine suffering. The argument that the cross reveals God's emotional engagement with His creatures is central to the passibilist case. ↩

⁴⁹ J. D. Kim, Constructing a Mediating Theology: Affirming the Impassibility and the Passibility of the Triune God (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2022), chap. 3, "The Economic Trinity Is Passible." Kim argues that God's compassionate engagement with His creatures in salvation history reveals genuine passibility in the economic Trinity. ↩

⁵⁰ For the pastoral and relational implications of divine compassion, see Chapters 32 and 33. ↩

The Compassion and Mercy of God

Introduction: Compassion at the Center