Happy are the Merciful

It is impossible for us to genuinely understand mercy without understanding the mercy of God first.  God is merciful.  The Bible is replete with verses about God’s love and mercy.  “Gracious is the Lord and just, our God is merciful.  He preserves the simple, when I was brought low the Lord saved me.”  (Psalm 116:5)

 Mercy can be defined this way:  while my sins, my failures, and my shortcomings deserve God’s judgment, God extends to me forgiveness and love.   Perhaps some of the most poignant verses about God’s mercy are can be found in Exodus 34:6-7.  Here God is defines Himself.  “The Lord the Lord, a God merciful and gracious… abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness… forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.” 

What makes these verses interesting is that God says this about Himself after Israel’s failure and sin.   They turned away from Him and made a calf idol and began to worship it in the desert after the great Exodus from Egypt.  God tells us who He is in the midst of failure… merciful, gracious, loving, faithful, and forgiving… things we all need.

Mercy is withholding judgment and extending love, despite judgment being deserved.  Of course the gospel is God’s expression of mercy.  Jesus took our punishment upon Himself for our sins.  Instead of judgment, we receive God’s mercy, forgiveness and salvation.  Romans 6:23, “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” 

In Matthew 5:7 we read, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”   Our call to be mercy here is based on God’s character of mercy.  Now instead of extending judgment to the sinner, we can extend love and kindness to the sinner.

The writer of Matthew’s gospel makes this point in Matthew 9:9-13. Matthew himself is called by Jesus out of a corrupt lifestyle of tax-collecting.  Tax collecting in Israel at that time involved extortion, bribery, cheating, and betrayal.  They were hated by both their fellow Jews because they were in cahoots with the Romans collecting taxes and distrusted by the Romans because they were betraying their own people. 

After Matthew leaves his tax collecting and follows Jesus, he attends a luncheon with Jesus and other tax collectors and sinners.  At that lunch were also some religious leaders, Pharisees who say this, “Why is your teacher eating with sinners?”  Part of Jesus’ response helps us here, “go and learn what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” 

Jesus is quoting from the prophet Hosea, who was condemning Israel for their religion.  They were sacrificing to God, but failed in their mercy to others.   And so mercy in is also defined as our response to a world broken with sin.  Mercy is how we respond to those who are hurting and needy.  Mercy is how we respond to those who sin against us.