In my last post, I expressed what I found to be the most pleasing facial features in the 1632 painting by Diego Velazquez, “Christ Crucified”. One of these was benevolence, well-depicted in the portrait. This word, ‘benevolence’, can be misunderstood. It can be mistakenly understood to mean a sickly weakness of character that gives people what they want when that would not be good for them. Christ was perfection. He always knew what people needed and gave them that. This ‘that’ included healing, raising from the dead, miraculously providing food and teaching.
As mentioned before on this blog, Jesus was sent to save the original people of God – the Jews. These are the people He came to address primarily. The Gentiles were to be offered salvation en masse after Pentecost and this is written about in the book of Acts. Even before Pentecost, though, there are recorded in the gospels salvation and healing to some non-Jews including a Samaritan woman, not considered fully a Jew because of the mixed racial heritage of Samaritans, the woman who begged Jesus for the crumbs that fell from the table of the Jews, metaphorically speaking and the Roman centurion whose servant Jesus healed. The servant may or may not have been a Jew. We are not told. What we are told is that the request for Jesus to heal the slave came from his Roman centurion master. We see in this last story what Jesus was teaching the Jews – to return to God in faith. This particularly comes home to us as we read Jesus’ words of praise for the Gentile centurion:
Luke 7:4-9 (NASB) 4 When they came to Jesus, they earnestly implored Him, saying, “He is worthy for You to grant this to him; 5 for he loves our nation and it was he who built us our synagogue.” 6 Now Jesus started on His way with them; and when He was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends, saying to Him, “Lord, do not trouble Yourself further, for I am not worthy for You to come under my roof; 7 for this reason I did not even consider myself worthy to come to You, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed. 8 For I also am a man placed under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, ‘Go!’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come!’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this!’ and he does it.” 9 Now when Jesus heard this, He marveled at him, and turned and said to the crowd that was following Him, “I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such great faith.”
During His earthly ministry, Christ primarily focused on the Jews because He was calling them back to God. This being the case, it would be fitting for Him to address the Jews’ religious leaders because they were responsible for the state of heart of the masses of Jewish people as Jesus found them when He came. These leaders included the Pharisees and Sadducees. Jesus had many strong words of rebuke for them on many occasions. Are these rebukes also to be considered aspects of Christ’s benevolence? This brings us to a closer look at the word ‘benevolent’: how it is constructed and its proper meaning.
The word, ‘benevolent’, comes from two Latin words: ‘bene’, meaning ‘good’ and ‘volent’ or ‘volens’, meaning ‘wishing’.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Thus the word means to wish well on and for others. When did Christ ever not wish well on or for others? Never. Even in His chastisements, of which there are many examples including to the disciples, others like the rich, young ruler and the Jewish religious leaders, we see everything from gentle chastisement to tough rebuke. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to examples of Jesus’ chastisements. These vary in intensity. None of these oppositional stances should be construed as malevolence, that is, wishing harm on others. Jesus never wished harm, only ever good. Christians worship a benevolent God Who always wishes us and everyone good, even if that good can sometimes involve our pain, such as was the case with the Apostle Paul’s blinding on the road to Damascus. But what good came to Paul from our benevolent God; for one thing, and the most important, his salvation.
Our World Our Faith 