— By Michael A. Graham
Introduction: Questioning the Language of “Empathy”
For some time now, I have found myself pausing when I hear the word empathy. It’s a word that often comes up—in conversations with and writing by people I love and respect. The language of “empathy” is usually spoken with moral weight and emotional resonance. And when it is, I do not necessarily bristle—but I do wonder.
What do we mean by empathy? Why is empathy presupposed as loving? Why does empathy carry so much authority? And what happens when we use empathy uncritically—as if empathy were a self-evident good?
This essay grows out of that wondering. It began with reading both popular and theological treatments, and it has grown through continuing conversations with family and others as I have tried to understand the meaning of empathy personally—as a father, a pastor, and a theologian.
Some call empathy essential to Christian love. Others warn it has become a modern idol. Still others assume it without question, as if not affirming empathy is equivalent to not loving. All of this made me want to look more closely, to explore what we might be asking of a single word—and what that word might be asking of us.
I wanted to invite you readers into my inquiry. What follows is not a takedown or a polemic. It is a shared exploration into how the word empathy appeared, how it evolved, and how it came to function today as something far more than a feeling. Along the way, we will trace how Christian thinkers from the early church to the Reformation to the present day have understood love, compassion, and judgment. And, we will ask whether empathy—as a cultural norm—may actually function as a new stumbling block, one that quietly displaces the only true one: the scandal of the cross.
My goal is not to deny the desire behind empathy. That desire—to be seen, understood, and carried—is deeply human. My question is whether the modern elevation of empathy has taken that desire and asked it to do more than it ever could. And whether, in doing so, we have exchanged justification by faith for something softer sounding, but ultimately heavier.
Section 1: The Word We Did Not Inherit—A Brief History of Empathy and Sympathy
The word empathy is a new addition to the English language. It first appeared in 1909, coined by British American psychologist Edward Titchener. But its roots go back a few decades earlier, to a German term used in aesthetics and art theory: Einfühlung, which means “feeling into.” It was a word invented in the 19th century to describe how a person might project themselves into a painting, sculpture, or building—how one might imaginatively enter into a work of art in order to experience its emotional power.
The German ein means “into,” and fühlen means “to feel.” So Einfühlung was literally “feeling into.” Titchener, when translating the term into English, did not want to use a clunky Germanic rendering. He instead intentionally chose classical Greek-looking roots to give empathy a sense of intellectual and moral weight:
- em- (from Greek en), meaning “in”
- pathos, meaning “suffering” or “experience”
Thus, empathy was born—not as a translation of any ancient or biblical idea, but as a modern psychological term dressed in Greek clothing.
It is worth emphasizing there is no biblical Greek equivalent for empathy. No word like empatheia appears in Scripture or early Christian literature. What we now mean by empathy—a kind of emotional fusion or perspective-taking—simply was not part of the classical or theological vocabulary.
By contrast, the word sympathy does appear in ancient texts and Scripture-derived traditions. From the Greek sympatheia, it means “suffering with.” It shows up in Hebrews 4:15, where Jesus is described as a high priest who “sympathizes with our weaknesses.” In the Greek, this is sympathēsai—to co-suffer, to feel alongside, to share in pain, but never to project oneself into another’s experience as one’s own.
There are other related biblical terms:
- σπλάγχνα (splanchna) – the “bowels” or “inward parts,” used metaphorically to refer to deep compassion
- ἐλεέω (eleeō) – “to have mercy”
- ἀγάπη (agapē) – self-giving love
- οἰκτιρμοί (oiktirmoi) – tender mercies
None of these imply the imaginative projection or emotional fusion that modern empathy demands. These Biblical terms all describe a movement of love toward the other rooted not in emotional resonance, but in action, mercy, and covenantal presence.
What this brief study shows is that empathy, as we now use it, is not a recovered virtue from Christian tradition. It is a newly created word from modern psychology, shaped by Romantic aesthetics and moral individualism.
That is not necessarily a condemnation. Not every good insight needs to be ancient. But it should at least give us pause. If this word is not part of the biblical or theological tradition, and if it appeared in a particular modern moment to name a particular kind of feeling, then we should ask carefully: What does it mean now? What are we doing with it? And what is it doing to us?
Section 2: From Psychology to Law—How Empathy Became a Moral Imperative
In the early 20th century, empathy moved quickly beyond aesthetics and experimental psychology. By mid-century, especially through the influence of humanistic psychology, it was redefined not just as a perceptual or emotional phenomenon, but as a relational and moral good.
Carl Rogers, one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century, placed empathy at the center of his therapeutic model. For Rogers, empathy was not simply about understanding another’s emotions. It was a kind of moral posture—entering someone’s internal frame of reference, without judgment, and reflecting that inner world back to them in a way that made them feel deeply known. “Being empathic,” Rogers wrote, “is to perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto, as if one were the person.” The phrase “as if one were the person” is key. It marks a decisive shift from “suffering with” to “feeling into.”
Rogers’ therapeutic model spread rapidly. Its vocabulary and values were adopted in pastoral care, education, parenting, and leadership. In many places, empathy was no longer just a counseling technique—it became a definition of love. To be loving was to be empathic. To withhold empathy was to harm.
What began as a tool of art interpretation had now become a measure of moral legitimacy.
Over time, this shift hardened into expectation. People began to speak of empathy as a kind of relational justice. Social trust came to depend on emotional resonance. If someone shared their story and you could not “feel it” with them—or if your response did not mirror their emotional tone—you might be seen as cold, unsafe, or even oppressive. Entire communities and institutions began to organize around empathic performance as a signal of care. The result was that empathy, while still dressed in the language of tenderness, functioned more like a law.
But this law was uniquely difficult to keep. Unlike traditional moral commands—do not steal, do not bear false witness—this one required emotional immersion. It demanded you feel what another feels or at least act as if you do. And it offered no clear standard by which to know whether you had done it correctly. The only way to prove your empathy was to have it accepted by the other person. And so, the self must constantly be evaluated by someone else’s internal world.
In this way, empathy quietly became a kind of emotional justification—a way of being declared good based not on truth or love, but on affective attunement. You are right if you resonate. You are wrong if you do not.
This explains why empathy is now nearly immune to critique. It is not merely an emotion; it is a moral claim. To question empathy feels like questioning kindness itself. Believe me, I have experienced those responses when I’ve questioned the uncritical ordinary use of empathy. And yet, that is precisely why we must think carefully. Because if empathy is functioning as a new moral law, we must ask: who does it justify? Who does it condemn? And what does it leave out?
Section 3: Empathy as Judgment—A New Stumbling Block
The Apostle Paul, writing to the early church in Rome, faced a situation that feels remarkably contemporary. Christians were dividing—not over heresy or immorality, but over food and holy days. Each group was using its convictions as a test of faithfulness. Paul’s response is stunning in its clarity:
Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother.
— Romans 14:13 (ESV)
What we don’t see at once in English is that the word “decide” is the same Greek word as “pass judgment”—krinō (κρίνω). Paul is saying, in effect, stop judging this way—and start judging this way instead. He does not eliminate judgment. He reorients it. “Judge this,” he says: not according to your own religious sensitivities, but with careful attention to what places burdens in front of others that God has not placed. Do not obscure the one true stumbling block—the scandal of the gospel—by introducing new ones.
This, in essence, is what empathy has become in our time: a new kind of judgment. It is no longer just a tool for understanding; it is a test of moral worth. A person’s goodness is often assessed not by their conduct or confession, but by how well they “feel into” the suffering of others. Emotional resonance becomes righteousness. Disagreement is not just error—it is harm. And the inability (or refusal) to empathize is seen as a failure of love itself.
Empathy, then, becomes not only a virtue, but a gatekeeper. It offers access to relational legitimacy. It grants permission to speak. It becomes the emotional currency of moral inclusion.
But what happens when this emotional expectation becomes a new law? It creates new burdens—subtle, but heavy. People begin to measure themselves and others not by the revealed mercy and justice of God, but by the emotional expectations of those around them. The result is a deeply unstable foundation. The ground shifts from what is revealed and finished in Christ to what is felt and demanded by others.
This is why empathy has become what Paul would call a stumbling block. It is a well-meant, emotionally charged, relational expectation that can obscure the true scandal of the gospel.
And what is that true scandal?
Paul tells us in Romans 9:33: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.” The stumbling block, the skandalon, is Christ. It is His cross, His grace, His righteousness freely given. It is the offense of a gospel that justifies the ungodly—not the empathic. Not the emotionally articulate. Not the morally expressive. But the guilty.
When we make empathy the precondition for care, or the standard of righteousness, or the proof of Christian love, we risk obscuring the only foundation that can bear the weight of sin and sorrow: Christ crucified and risen.
And that is no small thing. Because when empathy becomes our stumbling block, we lay down a new foundation—one that is humanly tender, but spiritually unstable. It sounds gentle, but it binds. It sounds humble, but it judges. And it distracts us from the only judgment that can truly heal: the one already given at the cross.
Section 4: A Tradition of Discernment—Sympathy, Affection, and the Gospel of Christ
Long before the word empathy entered our vocabulary, Christians had a clear and careful language for love. The church has long spoken of sympathy, mercy, pity, compassion, and charity—words grounded in Scripture and refined over centuries. These words were not sentimental or shallow. They pointed to something deeply human, and deeply theological: love shaped by truth.
The early church fathers cared deeply about compassion, especially in pastoral life. Gregory the Great, in his guide for ministers, urged gentleness with the broken but clarity with the truth. John Chrysostom said the same: kindness to the weak should never come at the cost of faithfulness. They spoke of compassio—suffering with others—not to mirror their emotions, but to walk with them in hope and holiness.
Augustine added clarity by reminding the church that love must be ordered. What he called ordo amoris—the right ordering of our loves—meant that even our deepest feelings could become disordered if they were not governed by the love of God. Good intentions and strong emotions were not enough. Love without truth could harm rather than heal.
The Reformers continued this concern. Martin Luther warned against emotionalism that confused feeling with faith. “Love is not silent in the face of sin,” he wrote, “nor does it flatter or deceive.” He believed deeply in mercy, but not mercy divorced from the gospel. True compassion, for Luther, was shaped by the cross—not by sentiment.
John Calvin spoke often about the affections, but he was just as careful. He affirmed that Christians are called to sincere affection and mutual compassion, but those affections must be ruled by Scripture and rooted in faith. In his Institutes, Calvin warned against a love that imitates the world—one that looks generous but is not grounded in God’s righteousness. For him, love was not an emotional performance. It was a spiritual response.
The Reformed confessions echo this same pattern. The Heidelberg Catechism reminds us that even when our hearts accuse us, we are justified by faith alone (Q&A 60). The Westminster Confession teaches that good works—including the works of love—are fruits of saving faith, not its basis (WCF 16.2). Biblical love flows from God’s mercy, not from human emotion alone.
The Puritans carried these insights into everyday pastoral care. Richard Sibbes wrote of Christ as a gentle Savior who would not break the bruised reed—but always with the aim of restoration. Thomas Watson warned that misplaced tenderness could actually be a form of cruelty. And John Owen wrote that real compassion sometimes requires hard truths, especially when dealing with sin. To comfort without truth was, in their eyes, to mislead.
Even Jonathan Edwards, writing in the 18th century, offered careful reflections on the affections. In Religious Affections, he insisted that true spiritual emotion flows from a heart changed by grace—not from intensity or sincerity alone. His contribution to the theology of love is a reminder that strong feelings are not always a sign of saving faith.
Across all these voices, the church consistently taught that real compassion is not emotional alignment. It is truthful love. It is not about becoming one with another’s feelings—it is about walking with them toward Christ.
That brings us to the shift.
Empathy, as we now know it, is not the extension of this tradition—it is the break from it. It was not drawn from biblical categories but created out of modern psychology and aesthetics. Vischer, Lipps, and Titchener introduced something new, not because Scripture was lacking, but because they believed the older terms—sympathy, mercy, pity—were not enough. Whether they realized it or not, they were making a theological judgment: that Christian compassion needed to be updated.
And many today have uncritically agreed.
Empathy now functions in many circles not as a companion to truth, but as its replacement. It becomes the measure of moral goodness. It determines who is safe, who is worthy, who is righteous—not based on grace, but based on emotional resonance. And this change has happened with little reflection.
But the church should reflect. We are not the first to care about pain. We are not the first to love the hurting. But we may be the first generation to confuse that love with emotional imitation. The danger is not just that empathy might be overused. The danger is that it might displace the gospel—offering emotional nearness where we actually need atonement.
Before we assume empathy is what Christian love has always meant, we should listen again to the long cloud of witnesses who came before us. They knew what it meant to weep with those who weep. But they also knew how to tell the truth. They did not collapse into others’ sorrow. They entered it—with hope, and with the Word of God.
Section 5: The Way Up is The Way Down—Jack Miller and the Substitutionary Ethic
Jack Miller did not discover justification by faith in the pages of a systematic theology textbook. He discovered it the way an orphan discovers he has a home, the way a drowning man discovers someone else has already pulled him from the water. It was not just true—it was saving. It was sanity.
From his earliest memories, Jack knew what it meant to be un-held by his father. His Dad died before Jack turned two. His older brother Leo stepped into that gap, becoming the most stable and tender fatherly figure in Jack’s early life. But when Leo was killed in World War II—just days before coming home—Jack was devastated. His stepfather was cruel and unpredictable. Poverty sharpened every grief. And the emotional vocabulary of the world Jack was raised in gave him no other language than “atheism” to explain his loss. He learned to survive by withdrawing, by working, by keeping his thoughts to himself and his fears under control. The silence around him shaped the silence within him.
Jack’s theology did not arise from a platform—it rose out of these ruins. The wounds of fatherlessness and abandonment ran deep, and they never disappeared. But instead of denying them or numbing them, Jack slowly began to face them through the gospel. The cross was not just a doctrine to defend—it was the only place where he felt fully seen, fully judged, and fully loved. He did not need Jesus to merely affirm him. He needed Jesus to save him.
And He did.
Earlier in his life, Jack had been deeply immersed in cultural and political thought. At the Center for American Studies, he worked alongside scholars shaping the American conservative movement, and later at Westminster Theological Seminary, he trained pastors with academic rigor and biblical clarity. But no amount of analysis or theology could reach what only the gospel could heal.
That word came through the gospel of justification by faith. It came not through a new insight, but through the terrifying and freeing realization that Jesus Christ had taken his place. That the full verdict of God had already fallen—on another. And that because of that, Jack could stop trying to secure his life through brilliance, or ministry, or self-protection.
In his 1978 essay “Justification by Faith in the Twentieth Century,” Jack sounded the alarm: the church was losing its foundation. And when justification fades, something else always rushes in to take its place. In Jack’s day, it often took the form of spiritual striving or doctrinal rigidity—a life built on theological correctness, ministry performance, or reputation. Today, it might be emotional resonance or moral sensitivity. The forms change. The instinct remains. When we forget we are justified, we will find other ways to justify ourselves to feel justified. And eventually, those ways will become burdens too heavy to carry. Jack believed this was not just a pastoral issue—it was a crisis of identity. And it called for something more than adjustment. It called for reformation.
Jack understood this. He had tried to be good enough, strong enough, smart enough. And he had failed. But that failure became the turning point. The death of self-confidence gave way to the life of faith. Not faith in faith. Not faith in feelings. But faith in a substitute—crucified and risen.
He wrote:
As the ethics of justification by faith, it is faith which leads me joyfully to embrace the First Commandment as the supreme goal of life and thereafter to do all good things possible to my neighbor out of love for the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Relieved of the terrible burden of trying to fulfill the unfulfillable law, my faith looks to the cross. I learn to live and die for others because I see by faith that Jesus died for me in all my ungodliness … From my faith in a substitutionary atonement, I inevitably pass into the substitutionary ethic required by the Golden Rule. I am able to put myself in another’s place in my human relationships just because that is what the Lord did for me in His death … Christ has come, and the age of faith has come with Him.
This quote was not just a theological claim for Jack—it was a summary of his entire life in Christ.
He and Rose Marie opened their home to people the world had given up on—people who frightened them, confused them, drained them. There was Gwen, who later confessed that while living in their home, she had wanted to kill them. There were pastors burned out from legalism. Missionaries undone by hidden sin. Students who came with questions but stayed because of love. Jack did not fix them. He walked with them. Because someone was walking with him.
Jack did not talk about a substitutionary ethic to impress others. He lived it because he had no other choice. The gospel had undone him. And now he could love—not because he finally understood everyone, but because he had been forgiven everything.
That is why when Jack said to Rose Marie, “You’re living like an orphan,” he was not correcting her from above. He was identifying with her. He had lived that way himself—acting like the Father had left, even when He was still present. Jack was not pointing out a flaw. He was naming something he knew from the inside. And he was inviting her, gently, to return with him to the place of security they both needed: the righteousness of Christ and the presence of the Spirit.
The only thing strong enough to quiet the inner orphan was the gospel Jack had spent his life returning to. For Jack, Sonship was never a new idea. It was a rediscovery of the gospel he had almost lost himself—a gospel that did not just save sinners but secured them in the ongoing verdict of justification. It returned him to the foundation he needed not once, but daily.
Their ministry in Uganda only deepened this. Jack collapsed from exhaustion. He got sick. He lost strength. And yet kept returning to justification by faith and crying out for the Spirit. Not because he was strong. But because he had begun to see weakness as his advantage. He did not need to secure his value. He did not need to finish someone else’s healing. He needed only to love because he had been loved.
And he was loved. That’s what Rose Marie’s presence reminded him of every day. Rose Marie once told Jack he could face anything as long as he and Rose Marie were okay. His children saw his insecurity. They saw his neediness. They saw his tears. And they saw his joy.
Jack used to say, “To be near to God and to have God near to us is the whole purpose of human life.” That nearness was not sentimental to Jack. It was not metaphor. It was the center of everything he believed—and everything he had come to depend on.
After the Fall of man, Jack taught, the only way for that nearness to be restored was through the work of Christ: justification from beginning to end, and the pouring out of the Spirit—the very life of the risen Jesus—into our hearts. That work did not stop at forgiveness and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. It included the pouring out of the resurrection life of Jesus into the hearts of believers—the gift of Pentecost. The Spirit of Christ was sent to make the nearness of God not a concept, but a reality Jack came to lean on every day.
It was how he could love, even when he did not understand. It was how he could endure, even when he was exhausted, confused, or spiritually empty. It was how he could forgive, stay present, keep going. Not because he was emotionally strong, but because the Spirit of the risen Christ was in him—filling him, guiding him, reminding him that he belonged. The presence of God was not a theological abstraction for Jack. It was the reality that made love possible, even when nothing else seemed to work.
Justification gave Jack a foundation no sorrow could shake. Union with the Living Christ gave him the presence he had always needed. And the Spirit gave him a strength not of his own—the love of God poured into his heart, not once, but daily.
In that gospel, Jack did not just find answers.
He found his Father.
He found his home.
Section 6: A Foundation Far Greater than Empathy
What we see in Jack Miller is not a reaction to empathy. It is something deeper: a rediscovery of what the gospel is for. Not to elevate the emotionally strong. Not to create categories of the caring and the uncaring. But to justify sinners. To adopt orphans. To pour out the Spirit of Christ into those who could never save or sustain themselves.
Empathy, as we have seen, attempts something good. It names a longing to be known, to be seen, to walk with others in pain. But when a desire for empathy becomes untethered from the gospel—when it is asked to do the work only justification and union with Christ can do—it collapses under its own moral weight. It cannot carry us into healing. It cannot cleanse a conscience. It cannot hold together people who disagree, who fail each other, or who suffer alone in silence.
It may help us feel close. But only in the gospel are we both known to the bottom and loved to the bottom.
This is why the Reformed tradition has always insisted that our righteousness must be alien—outside of us, given to us, secure. And it is why Jack Miller spent his life helping Christians return to that foundation, not just for doctrine, but for spiritual survival. Because he knew firsthand how easy it is to look put together, to sound spiritually healthy, and to live with a heart that quietly aches for something more.
Jack knew that even those who try hardest to care—who offer presence, who look to enter others’ pain, who long to love well—can be the very ones most burdened by guilt, fear, or self-doubt. And he knew that the gospel of justification by faith alone was the only word strong enough to meet them there. It was not a reward for the faithful. It was a rescue for the weary. And it was the only place Jack had ever found rest.
What Jack offered was not a critique of empathy. It was an invitation to return to a foundation deeper than emotional connection: to the finished work of Christ. To the cross that does not just go with us in pain but stands in our place. To the risen Jesus who does not just confirm our suffering but justifies the sinner and sends the Spirit to dwell within us.
This is the heart of the substitutionary ethic: not simply that we imitate Christ’s love, but that we are united to Him—crucified with Him, raised with Him, and now sent to love others from Him. The gospel does not bypass emotion. But it gives us something sturdier to feel from. Something truer to judge by. And someone greater to live in.
Empathy cannot do that. It cannot hold that kind of weight. But justification can. Union can. The Spirit can. And that is why, for all its sincerity and appeal, empathy must never be our foundation.
Christ must be.
Conclusion: Christ Who Sympathizes with Us in Our Weakness
Hebrews 4:15 (ESV):
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.
This essay began with a question—what are we doing when we ask for empathy? What are we looking for when we elevate emotional resonance as the sign of moral legitimacy or spiritual maturity? And what happens when we no longer feel safe naming our concerns about it?
Empathy has become one of the most unquestioned ideals in the modern world. It offers intimacy, moral clarity, and connection. But when we treat empathy not as a limited human response, but as a kind of substitute righteousness, we do not deepen love—we distort it. We create a new law that looks like compassion but binds the soul with expectations no one can consistently fulfill.
That is what I have tried to explore in this essay. Not to dismiss the ache that empathy arises from, but to name the deeper story behind it. The longing to be known, the desire to be safe, the hope that someone else might really see us in our pain—these are not trivial things. But they cannot be answered by emotional mirroring. They cannot be resolved by moral sensitivity. And when empathy becomes not just a gift, but a demand—when it becomes a standard by which we judge ourselves and others—it becomes a burden we cannot carry and a righteousness we cannot live up to. The gospel offers something better: not a feeling echoed back to us, but a Savior who bears our sin and stays.
Jack Miller understood that burden because he lived under it. As a man who had known profound emotional suffering and deep personal insecurity, he longed to be understood and received. But what changed his life was not the empathy of others—it was the righteousness of Christ. It was the message that someone else had taken his place. That he was justified. That he had been forever, once and for all time declared righteous not because of what he felt, understood, or could explain, but because Jesus had died and risen for him. And from that verdict came the power to love others—not as an emotionally whole person, but as one who had been made clean and secure by grace.
This is the danger we now face—not just that empathy is overused, but that it is uncritically used. That it has become a new law—one that we impose on each other and silently impose on ourselves. But the righteous shall live by faith. Not by emotional skill. Not by moral posture. Not by being understood. And not by understanding others perfectly. The righteous shall live by faith—because they have been justified, indwelt, and sent into the world to love not as orphans, but as sons and daughters.
To be near to God and to have God near to us—that is still the purpose of human life. And in Christ, it is not an ideal. It is a reality. He has justified us. He has come to dwell in us. And through His presence, we are free—not to manage the burden of righteousness through emotional effort, but to walk in the security of grace. That is our better foundation. And it is enough.
