Courage, toughness, and determination: these are considered virtues by many peoples and faiths. They have been required over many generations to cope with a hard world. Tenderness, gentleness, and affection are, however, esteemed as virtues only by those who are instructed in the Scriptures of truth. Flavius Josephus, defending Jewish laws against Greek philosophy in the days of the apostles, comments on their influence: God, he says, “has taught us gentleness and humanity so effectual that He hath not despised the care of the brute beasts.”
The Jews may have been better than the Greeks, but the Lord Jesus was still not overly impressed. He was incensed at prevailing callousness: “Woe unto you . . . ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers” (Luke 11 :46) . Indeed, he brought into a world cold and hard with formalism and hypocrisy the warm touch of gentleness and the glow of tender affection.
A wonderful feature of Jesus’ attitude to others is mentioned at least a dozen times in the gospels: “he touched her hand”; “he touched their eyes”; “he touched his tongue”; “he touched his ear.” There was something about that touch that made multitudes seek him just to experience it. It was not just that there
was healing in those hands; people brought infants to him “that he would touch them.” The disciples presumably thought it was rather soft to bother with infants — that was women’s business, not worthy of the Master’s time.
Jesus freely encouraged genuine expressions of tender affection like that of the woman who “began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet.” In one parable the priest and Levite went about their religious business with callous indifference to an unfortunate sufferer; it was a foreigner who “bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine.” In another story we see the father, waiting long for a wayward son, often scanning the horizon for some sign of a returning figure. Seeing him in the distance, formal conventions are forgotten and he runs, falls on his son’s neck and kisses him. The elder son, proud in his formal conventions of righteousness, refuses to offer even the simplest of greetings. Tenderness heals a broken relationship, strengthens fellowship and cements love.
A loving couple holding hands, a farewell caress, a father playing with his infant child, two friends greeting warmly, the arms of encouragement around a sick one: to some hardened individuals (both men and women) these are to be sneered as a bit soft and unmanly. To such persons the conquest of another’s body is something to aim at and boast about — tender affection and care for the future happiness of another does not even enter their minds. There are those who feel that it is only being “realistic” to treat the aged and the infirm in a formal hard manner rather than with inconvenient compassion and tenderness — even in a home run by a religious body.
In trouble or sickness, what wonders can a hand of encouragement do! When strains, disagreements and problems drive those icy wedges between husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister, what miracles of healing can be wrought by tenderness of arm, hand or cheek, fervently given and as fervently received, sanctified by the Word and prayer, until the warmth of union is rekindled and sundered hearts beat as one again!
The apostle Paul was demonstrative in his affection, and it was not a front or just a characteristic of time and place. It was the unashamed out flowing of what was within, and it called forth a similar response from others. At Miletus, with the Ephesian elders he “kneeled down and prayed with them all. And they all wept sore, and fell on Paul’s neck and kissed him.” At Tyre, the brethren brought us on our way, with wives and children, till we were out of the city: and we kneeled down on the shore and prayed” (Acts 20:37 and 21:5).
In Romans 12:10 we are urged to be afectioned one to another.” In Greek, however, Paul was expressing more than that. The word he used expressed the warm affectionate relationship within a family: “tenderly loving, affectionate.” After all, we are one family in Christ.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One