While the word “empathy” is modern, its practice is deeply woven throughout Scripture. From God’s commands to care for the vulnerable to Jesus’ example of entering fully into human experience, the Bible offers a vision of empathy rooted in love, humility, and action.
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I thought I knew what empathy meant.
I thought it meant trying to understand what another person was experiencing. Trying to, like my mom would say, put myself in another person’s shoes and imagine what they were feeling.
It seemed like a good thing. A simple virtue.
But then I began hearing empathy described as a weakness. I heard it paired with words like “dangerous,” “ruinous,” or even “sinful.” Confused, I found myself wondering how a word I’d always associated with compassion had some people warning Christians against it.
It made me curious: Is empathy biblical? What does the Bible say about empathy?
What is empathy?
The word “empathy” is a modern term, made popular by the German philosopher Theodor Lipps in 1903. In his doctoral thesis, Lipps adapted the word, Einfühlung, which means “in-feeling,” to explain the idea of “projecting oneself” into a work of art. In 1909, as translators worked to create an English equivalent, they looked to the Greek words: em — meaning “in,” and pathos — meaning “emotion,” “suffering,” or “experience.”
Today, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines empathy as “the action of understanding … vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of another.” While the dictionary definition focuses on empathy as an action, Brené Brown, in her book Atlas of the Heart describes it as “an emotional skillset that allows us to understand what someone is experiencing and to reflect back that understanding.”
That all sounds pretty good, but it made me even more curious. How did empathy become controversial?
It turns out that over time, people have developed different connotations for empathy, perhaps in part to differentiate it from synonyms like compassion, sympathy, and pity.
Some people see empathy as a feeling, like being emotionally moved by another person’s suffering. They might say they “have a heart” for a particular cause because they feel for those experiencing it. This is much like the original root words of being “in-feeling” with them.
Others think of empathy as understanding. They see it as going further than feeling pity or sympathy for others and imagine themselves (like Mom said) in someone else’s shoes or situation. For them, empathy is a way to move beyond “feeling sorry” for someone. As they lean in to understand others, it often leads them to try and relieve the other’s suffering in some way.
And some see empathy as a form of agreement. They believe that when people seek to understand what others are experiencing, they may adopt their viewpoints or prioritize them ahead of their own needs. They feel empathy should be guarded against because it can be exploited. This skepticism toward empathy is becoming increasingly common, with some voices warning that it can make us vulnerable, cloud our judgement, or even weaken society.
So, is empathy a dangerous weakness or an essential part of how God calls us to relate to others? What does the Bible have to say about empathy and the role it plays?
Understanding empathy in the Bible
Long before empathy became a word, Scripture was teaching God’s people how to respond compassionately to the suffering and needs of others.
In the Old Testament, this often took the form of commands to not be “hardhearted or tightfisted” toward people in need (Deut. 15:7). It was a command that came with a promise. If the Israelites would “give generously … without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to” (Deut. 15:10).
In addition to caring for the poor, God’s people were also instructed to welcome the foreigner, protect the oppressed, and remember their history as people who had once been foreigners themselves. In Leviticus 19:34, God tells Israel, “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”
In the prophets, we see that concern for the vulnerable isn’t peripheral to faithfulness. When Israel turns away from God, their unfaithfulness becomes evident in the way they treat people who are poor or vulnerable. In Ezekiel 16:49, God compares Jerusalem’s unfaithfulness to the sin of Sodom, describing a people who had become comfortable in their abundance and indifferent to the needs of others: “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.”
And in a call that still resonates today, in Isaiah 58:6-7, God rebukes those who act religious while ignoring the suffering around them. “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice… to set the oppressed free… to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter.”
Empathy in the teachings of Jesus
In the New Testament, we also see this pattern of empathy and compassion embodied in the person of Jesus Christ.
In Jesus, we find the story of a Savior who didn’t distance Himself from the messy human experience but instead fully entered into it, vulnerable and helpless as a newborn baby.
In His life on earth, He experienced hunger and exhaustion, friendship and rejection, joy and overwhelming grief. The writer of Hebrews puts it this way, “we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses” (Hebrews 4:15).
Jesus doesn’t just have compassion for people. He understands our humanity from the inside.
How empathy leads to action
The Gospels repeatedly show us Jesus seeing the people others overlooked and allowing what He sees to matter. He doesn’t just notice people’s suffering, He stops, listens, and responds.
In Matthew 14, Jesus’ compassion for a crowd leads Him to heal their sick. And later, when that same crowd is hungry, He responds to that need, too. Though the disciples only have five loaves and two fish among them — clearly not enough to feed thousands — Jesus takes what they have, gives thanks, and multiplies it to feed thousands of people (Matthew 14:13-21).
Later, in Matthew 20, two blind men are sitting by the road when they hear that Jesus is passing by. They call out and the crowd tells them to be quiet. But Jesus stops.
“What do you want me to do for you?” He asks.
“Lord, we want our sight,” they reply.
Jesus is moved with compassion for them and responds, reaching out to touch their eyes and restore their sight.
And then there’s the story of Lazarus.
When Jesus arrives at the tomb in John 11, He already knows what’s going to happen. He knows Lazarus will live again. Still, when He sees Mary and those around her weeping, He isn’t indifferent to or above their grief. Instead, He enters into their sorrow and mourns with them. As John tells us simply, “Jesus wept” (John 11:35).
This is something worth lingering over. Jesus doesn’t stand outside of human suffering, protected by the knowledge that everything will ultimately be made right. He allows Himself to be moved by what’s happening in front of Him.
Sometimes, He responds by meeting a need directly. Sometimes, He invites others to help. And other times, He draws near to someone who is hurting and weeps alongside them.
What can we learn about empathy from Jesus?
Jesus saw people for who they were, met them with compassion, and yet still called them toward transformation. His empathy didn’t make Him passive or undiscerning. But neither did His discernment cause Him to become indifferent.
These distinctions matter because they get at some of the reasons empathy has become controversial. If empathy means always agreeing, being ruled by our emotions, or making ourselves responsible for every pain we encounter, then it’s understandable why some people would be wary of it.
But that’s not the kind of empathy we see in Jesus.
Jesus’ compassion didn’t make Him weaker. He saw suffering and allowed Himself to be moved by it. He listened to people others dismissed. He touched those others avoided. He entered into the grief, hunger, loneliness, and pain of human life, ultimately giving Himself on the cross. His willingness to enter into suffering was not a failure of strength. It was an expression of transformational love.
Perhaps this is the meaning of Christian empathy: to walk humbly, seeing the Imago Dei — image of God — in those around us, while remaining open to the possibility that another person’s experience might reveal something we don’t yet see.
Why empathy matters in the Christian life
Throughout the Gospels, we see that Jesus notices the people others have learned not to see: the woman at the well, the tax collector, the grieving, the sick, the hungry, the overlooked, the stranger.
But where others pass them by, Jesus steps closer.
We’re not so different from the people of His time. Like them, we live among categories and labels: homeless, successful, immigrant, refugee, conservative, liberal, poor, wealthy, us, them. Categories can help us make sense of a complicated world, but they can also become a way of looking at people without really seeing them.
A refugee becomes a statistic. A hungry child becomes a number. A person living in poverty becomes a problem to solve. Someone with a different political conviction becomes an opponent rather than a neighbor.
This is where the Christian understanding of humanity changes everything. Every person bears the Imago Dei, the image of God. Before we fit into any category, we are human beings made in the image of our Creator. As we read in Genesis, “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; make and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).
When empathy helps us see this truth in another person, we’re not simply practicing an emotional skill. We’re learning to see something sacred — the image of God in someone we might otherwise overlook. Perhaps this is why Jesus so often stopped for the people others passed by.
He was teaching us how to see.
A prayer for seeing people with empathy
God, please help us see.
Help us see beyond the labels we place on one another.
Help us see beyond our fears, assumptions, and differences.Give us eyes to see what Jesus saw —
People who are hurting, searching, hungry,
People who are overlooked and misunderstood —
And also loved by You.Help us remember that every person bears Your image.
Give us humility to look again when we think we already know,
Courage to draw near when it’s easier to turn away,
And compassion to let what we see move us toward love.Teach us to see as You see.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.
Empathy and compassion in Scripture
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. —Matthew 9:36
Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. —Ephesians 4:32
Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. —1 Peter 3:8
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. —Colossians 3:12
Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. —Romans 12:15
Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow. —Isaiah 1:17
Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. —Galatians 6:2
Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. —Philippians 2:1-4
For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” —Galatians 5:14
