Tenderhearted

March 24

Tenderhearted

eusplagchnos
Coupled with kindness, which we meditated on yesterday, there is tenderheartedness. In fact, the words kind and tenderhearted actually appear together in Eph_4:32.

The Greek eusplagchnos (G2155) appears only here and in 1Pe_3:8. It’s a compound comprised of the prefix eu (G2095), “good or well,” and splagchnon (G4698), which literally means “strengthened from the spleen.”

In Classical Greek this referred to the bowels. While in our culture we think of the “heart” as the seat of emotion, in that culture it was viewed as being in the bowels.

Figuratively, then, splagchnon, meant inward affection, pity, compassion, even love (phileō, G5368). This idea actually makes more sense than our idea of “heart,” since emotions often give us “butterflies” and other feelings in the stomach.

To be tenderhearted, then, is to have good feelings, good emotions toward others, to have genuine affection for others. In the other occurrence of this word, such feelings are an integral part of unity: “Be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful [i.e., full of pity; eusplagchnos, affectionate], be courteous” (1Pe_3:8).

Kindness and tenderheartedness are both well illustrated in this story:

At one end of a truck terminal in the Midwest is a fuel supply company with a high fence around it and a railroad track running past it. Several freight trains run by each day, and a worker noticed the owner of the yard, a Christian, throwing chunks of coal over the fence at various places along the track.

Curious, he asked the man why he did that. A little embarrassment at being noticed, the man replied, “A poor elderly lady lives across the street, and I know that her old-age pension is inadequate to buy enough coal. After the trains go by, she walks along and picks up the pieces of coal she thinks have fallen from the coal car behind the engine. Her eyesight is failing, and she doesn’t realize that diesels have replaced steam locomotives. I don’t want to disappoint her, so I throw some pieces over the fence to help her.”

That is Christian kindness!

Scriptures for Study: Read Phm_1:7, Phm_1:12, 20, noting the usage of “bowels” (splagchnon). It sounds odd (and even humorous) to our ears, but its meaning is deep. What’s the command of 1Jn_3:17?

 
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