We are living in a culture that is often harsh in its treatment of those who are struggling to cope with life. The common attitude is, “They brought it on themselves.” There can sometimes be truth in that statement—the lifestyle choices that some people make can bring all kinds of problems and hardships upon them. Poverty or disease, for example, can be the result of bad decisions or sinful choices, but that is not always the case. Circumstances entirely outside the person’s control can result in difficult experiences or even a life of hardship.

Whatever the causes, the response of those looking on can be very unsympathetic, even hostile. In many societies, sympathy and compassion are often in very short supply. Blame may be handed out more readily than help, and the ways in which help may be abused can provide an excuse for not providing any. The result can be a hard-hearted attitude that views all apparent need with cynicism.

That outlook can all too easily filter into the church. If we are not on our guard, we can slip into the same, hard-hearted outlook that writes people off as the architects of their own problems and struggles. Churches can be cold places for the suffering.

How, then, are we to regard the unconverted, some of whose sins are open and obvious, while others are concealed or even regarded by society as respectable behavior? Is our first reaction, “They’re sinners; they deserve whatever hard times they experience”? Do we derive a degree of satisfaction from the knowledge that the unrepentant sinner will ultimately have to face eternal punishment, separated from God, while we do not?

Maybe you yourself are struggling with hard times, perhaps feeling defeated by all kinds of problems. You may think you have more than enough to cope with, leaving you no scope for feeling compassion for the unsaved around you. Most of us have times when we understand the frequent cries of God’s people regarding the prosperity of the wicked, which contrasts so starkly with the trials of the godly. Psalm 73 is an excellent example. In verse 3, the psalmist admits, “I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.” Perhaps that thought is familiar to you.

Deep down, we may understand that as children of God—as ourselves forgiven sinners—our attitude to the unsaved should not be one of hardness. But what should it be? We need to consider caring about the unconverted.

The Plight of Sinners

If we are to care for sinners as we ought, we have to begin by understanding the true nature of their plight. The Bible paints a comprehensive and very dark picture of the situation in which the unconverted find themselves. Some of the language is used, for example, by Paul. In Ephesians 2:1–2, he writes, “You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.” When he describes “the Gentiles” in Ephesians 4:18–19, he says, “They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.” It makes grim reading, doesn’t it?

Whatever the consequences of sin in this life, it is the ultimate state of the unconverted that is particularly terrible. After listing sins such as sexual immorality, evil desire, and covetousness, Paul states, “On account of these the wrath of God is coming” (Col. 3:6). Because God is a perfectly holy God, His very nature is repelled by sin, and His response is righteous wrath that lasts eternally for the unrepentant. According to Matthew 25:46, the punishment of the unsaved will be as “eternal” as the life of the saved—the same adjective is applied to both.

What, then, should be our response to these solemn facts? We need to remember, first of all, that by nature we all exactly fitted this description: “You were dead in the trespasses and sin in which you once walked” (Eph. 2:1, emphasis mine). Since that is the case, we have no ground and no justification for looking down on those who are still in their sins as if we were somehow superior. We must always say with Paul, “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain” (1 Cor. 15:10). That awareness will make us humble with regard to our spiritual standing in Christ and should deliver us from any self-righteousness or harshness. Only God’s grace makes us different from any unsaved sinner.

Our attitude to the unconverted should above all be shaped by the example of the Lord Jesus. We should note the statement of Mark with reference to Jesus when He saw the crowds who had followed Him around the Sea of Galilee: “He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd” (Mark 6:34). The Lord’s response to their spiritual lostness was that “he began to teach them many things.” The Greek word for “had compassion” is very vivid. The verb is splanchnidzomai, and it contains the word for “entrails” or “guts.” Mark is telling us that the Savior experienced a degree of compassion for these unconverted people that He felt in His own body. The word conveys how powerfully He was moved by what He saw of the spiritual condition of these people. The plight of the unconverted moved Him even physically. What an amazing statement of the Lord’s compassion.

The challenge to us is whether we can think of the plight of the unconverted, in their lostness, their separation from God, and their helplessness without God’s grace, with anything like the compassion of the Savior. He was perfectly holy and uniquely sensitive to the sin in those with whom He mixed, yet He had compassion on these people, many of whom would never come to salvation. Indeed, His presence on earth in His incarnate state was a testimony to His compassion for sinners. For many of them, He would lay down His life on the cross. We should surely pray for a greater compassion for the unconverted that more faithfully reflects Jesus’s compassion.

The Hope of the Gospel

The terrible plight of the unconverted can be changed only by the saving grace of God, and it is that grace that is proclaimed in the gospel message. That message is one of hope, and the more clearly we understand this, the more deeply we will care about those who, as yet, do not share that hope. Two aspects of the hope of the gospel stand out.

The Only Hope

When standing before the Jewish Council to defend his “proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead” (Acts 4:2), Peter stated boldly that “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (v. 12). We have here a clear assertion of the uniqueness of Jesus as the Savior that sinners need and the exclusivity of the way of salvation that He has provided. He is the one, after all, who claimed that “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). He does not leave open the possibility of other ways, truths, or lives. In these words, He laid claim to offering—and indeed being—the only hope for sinners.

When we consider who Jesus is and what He did in order to save sinners, it becomes even clearer that He alone is the sinner’s hope. As the eternal Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity, incarnate in a human body and with a human soul, He is unique. There never has been and never will be anyone else like Him. No claims for any other religious leader can stand beside His. The work that He has done to save sinners is also unique. As Paul states in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Other religious leaders might tell people what they must do in order to be saved (however they define it), whereas Jesus actually did what is needed for salvation. The gospel is good news because it tells sinners what the Lord has done to provide salvation before it tells them what action they must take.

The Full Hope

The work of the Lord Jesus in His life, death, and resurrection deals with every aspect of the plight of sinners, and so the gospel offers the full hope that we all require. The language used in the New Testament to describe the saving work of Jesus makes that clear.

We are guilty before a holy God, but the death of the Lord as a sacrifice takes our guilt and punishment: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24). We are born under the holy wrath of God, but the death of the Lord is a propitiation that bears that wrath in our place: “He [God] loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). We suffer alienation from God on account of our sin, but the death of the Lord effects reconciliation of God to man and man to God: “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself” (2 Cor. 5:18). We are in bondage to sin, death, and Satan, but the death of the Lord provides redemption from all these enemies: “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses” (Eph. 1:7).

There is so much more we could say about the wonderful, rich salvation that the Lord Jesus has secured for sinners, but the aspects we have mentioned are surely more than enough to show that the hope proclaimed in the gospel is a full hope, meeting every need of the sinners for whom Christ died and rose again. Nowhere else can such a hope be found.

Are you reaching out to the lost? This is part of your spiritual wellness.