Passio Dei

A Daily Devotional for Compassionate Leaders

This week we released a new daily devotional that serves as a companion resource for reading through the entire Bible.

This is not your typical daily devotional. Each day’s entry is a blend of commentary, theological treatise, story, devotional, and some guiding questions to help you reflect upon the passages. For the preachers, you could also consider these 365 sermon starters.  

For the past 15 years I’ve sought to read through the entire Bible each year. The One Year Bible has been my guide.

I first encountered the prayer of Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, through my theological forebearer John Wesley,

“Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.”

I believe reading, marking, and inwardly digesting the holy Scriptures is a foundational spiritual practice for every Jesus follower. It is through this disciplined engagement with the word, that we encounter the one who is the Living Word, Jesus the Christ. It was in the dungeon of addiction and incarceration that I picked up a Bible, stuck in my finger, and begged God to help me. The words where my finger landed illuminated that dark cell. Through them, I had a supernatural encounter with Jesus himself and my life has never been the same.

My reading practice evolved and began to include a daily journal exercise which was partly a reflection on something that inspired me in the passages. At some point I started to share these brief reflections to encourage my core ministry team. They in turn encouraged me to share them publicly and so I began to post them on social media. Finally, through a conversation with my publisher I was encouraged to compile them in a daily devotional, and the result is what you hold in your hands.

The overarching interpretive framework for this devotional is the Passio Dei (Latin for “passion of God”). Theologically the passio Dei is grounded primarily in the incarnation, suffering, crucifixion, and death (passion) of Jesus.

It’s possible that you are more familiar with the term Missio Dei (Latin for “mission of God”). In the basic sense, missio means “sent” and comprehends mission as a primary attribute of God. The risen Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit on the disciples and says, “As the Father sent me, so I am sending you” (John 20:21 CEB).

As history shows, to emphasize mission to the detriment of compassion is a harmful endeavor. A team of friends and I are suggesting that the passio Dei offers perhaps a course correction for the missional church conversation.

In fact, an understanding of missio Dei that is not deeply rooted in the passio Dei is flawed. God is a missional God, because God is a compassionate God.

Mission is not, after all, an “attribute of God.” Love is an attribute of God. Consider the two key words that define God’s nature in Scripture.

חֶסֶד (ḥeseḏ, see Exo 34:6): Old Testament description of God’s primary attribute, “goodness, kindness, faithfulness… unfailing love.”

ἀγάπη (agape, see 1 John 4:8): New Testament description of God’s primary attribute, “love.”

The way God moves toward the world in love is through compassion. Or as the Psalmist reveals, “The Lord is merciful and compassionate, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. The Lord is good to everyone. He showers compassion on all his creation” (Psalm 145:8-9). YHWH is רַחוּם (rachûwm) compassionate or filled with compassion.

Because God is love, God is on mission. But mission is a secondary concept. God’s character is love. This is a primary attribute. The task of mission, drawing the world into the Trinitarian life of God, is an action not an attribute. God as trinity, is drawing the world into God’s life, because “God is love.” Because God is compassion.

I love my children. So, I feed them, invite them, organize them, try to spend time with them. Those are actions based on the attribute of my love. But I am not those actions. I am a father, that’s a primary identity, what I do to organize love for them is secondary. And I can do that in a way that is unhealthy and not loving.

When mission is driven by conquest, numbers, or even the revitalization of declining churches, it is the wrong motivation.

Compassion can be described as a sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it. This is what the New Testament describes as Jesus’s motivation.

Matthew 9:36 reports that when Jesus “saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” The Greek word for compassion, splanchnizomai: means to be moved as to one’s bowels, hence, to be moved with compassion. The bowels were thought to be the seat of love and mercy. So, Jesus has a gut-wrenching love that inspires him to act.

The unbounded mercy of God manifests in Jesus’ ministry of compassion and finds ultimate expression in the cross (theophatic). The missio Dei describes what God is about, the passio Dei describes how God goes about it. The quality of God’s being is expressed through immersion in human vulnerability and suffering, expressed most fully on the cross.

The church as the “body of Christ” (1 Cor 12:27) in the world is an expression of Christ’s own compassion. An active, practical, inclusive compassion should emanate endlessly from the church. For Christians compassion is not mere emotionality, but rather a new mode of being, empowered by the Spirit.

When we do mission in the name of Jesus, but not in the way of Jesus… we do harm.

The most healing thing we can do as believers is create new Christian communities that become little islands of Jesus’s compassion in a tempest tossed world. We can create these healing communities by recentering mission in the heart of God’s love.

This is why we need the passio Dei. The Passional Church is a movement anchored in the passionate love of Jesus for the world. Our purpose is to connect, empower, support, and resource 21st Century Christians to embody the compassion of Christ in the everyday spaces and rhythms of life. This resource is a tool towards that end.

Compassion is the place where the way of Jesus takes on flesh and blood in his followers. It is the defining characteristic of God. The entire overarching narrative of Scripture is the story of a God who creates, sustains, and recreates in unlimited compassion.

This daily devotional is a companion to the One Year Bible. It is an invitation to a journey of deeper formation in the way, truth, and life of Jesus. This discipleship resource is for leaders longing for a trauma-informed way of reading and being shaped by Scripture. As we follow the golden thread of compassion that runs through the entire bible, may it further form us as leaders who embody the compassion of Jesus in the world.