Aggressive Compassion

Every individual human life is sacred. Every individual person is of infinite value. In Genesis 9, at the end of the flood, God assures Noah and his family of this truth. He says that if a person takes the life of any other human, he will hold that person accountable.

This passage is meant to get everybody to feel the weight of your neighbor’s glory, to feel the weight of the value God has invested in every human being. If you really let this passage have its effect, you will come out saying to yourself, “I cannot ignore people the way I do. I have to treat people seriously. I have to honor them. I have to be aggressively compassionate.”

Let’s see how this passage makes a case for us to be a compassionate people. The case is 1) every human being is made in the image of God, and 2) every human being is held accountable for that image.

This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 25, 1989. Series: Ten Commandments 1989. Scripture: Genesis 9:1-7.

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