Our Perception Of God’s Mercy
O Lord, Thou knowest that we are not worthy to come before Thy presence, before the mystery of which angels stand in wonder. Deal with us, not according to our deserts, but according to Thy infinite mercy, by the Holy Spirit, for Christ’s sake. Amen.
The Scriptures abound with the truth that God is a merciful God. Mercy is something that God is; it is a facet of His unitary being. As a diamond has many facets, so does God with regard to His attributes. God is one, and one facet of God’s character is mercy.
Both the Old and New Testaments declare the mercy of God. Sometimes we think there is more of God’s mercy in the New Testament. The odd thing is the Old Testament has more than four times as much to say about mercy as the New Testament— that is, it is oddly seen against a background of error, which we have been taught most of our lives.
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We have been taught that the Old Testament is a book of law, and the New Testament a book of grace. The Old Testament is a book of judgment, and the New Testament is a book of mercy.
If the God of the Old Testament is a God of thunder and judgment, in the New Testament He is a God of meekness and mercy. But the truth is, God is merciful and God’s mercy is perfect. His mercy is infinitely perfect.
It is impossible to separate the Old Testament from the New Testament. It takes the whole Bible to make the Word of God. Trying to isolate one part of the Bible from another part is to do great damage to the Word of God.
Trying to separate law from grace is a very dangerous thing and usually leads to heresy. There can be no law without grace, and no grace without law.
God’s infinite goodness is that God desires His creatures’ happiness. That desire in God, which has an irresistible urge to bestow blessedness, takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked but does take pleasure in the pleasure of His people.
God suffers along with His friends and grieves over His foes. It is that in God which we call mercy that looks with compassion upon men and women who deserve judgment.
I deliberately use the words active and active, for I do not like the words passive and passivity and various forms of the word passive.
The mercy of God is not a passive thing, but active. God is compassionate, but He is actively compassionate.
Grieving over the sins of the world is not going to help the world very much. God is not that kind of a God. His mercy is active, not passive. He has pity upon mankind, but it is active pity. He stops in kindness to FJi’s inferiors.
We must be careful to understand that none of God’s attributes spring out of the need of man. All God’s attributes reveal His character in and of himself. Man, on the other hand, benefits from those attributes, and the great challenge of our lives is to connect with those attributes. The only way we can do that is through Jesus Christ.
Let me lay out a few truths concerning the mercy of God.
First of all, the mercy of God never had a beginning.
If you were to go down to the Mississippi River, you would see a river so wide you could not cross it without getting into a boat and paddling.
If you wanted to find the source, you would have to keep on paddling north until you got to a place where the river became a stream, where you could toss a pebble across, and where a cow could wade in and drink, way up in northern Minnesota. The Mississippi River has its beginnings there. The great broad river of the Mississippi has a source.
Never must we think of God’s mercy as being like that river, originating somewhere and then flowing out. It never began to be because it is an attribute of the uncreated God and therefore always was, and it has never been any more or less than it is now.
Sometimes we think that at one time, way back in the past, God was very wondrously merciful. He walked in the garden with Adam. He walked with Enoch, and then Enoch was no more because God took him.
When we read the Bible stories of God’s mercy, we say, “God must have been wonderfully merciful back there, but that was before the day of gas chambers and brutalities and all the stuff we have today. God is not as merciful anymore.”
To say that is to malign the name of God. Being infinitely merciful, God never can be any more merciful than He is now and never was any more merciful in the past. The God who told Noah to build the ark and save the race of humanity is the same God with whom we have to deal today.
God will never be any less merciful than He is now, because being infinite, He cannot cease to be infinite, and being perfect, He cannot have any imperfection. So the mercy of God is what God is because God is who He is.
God’s mercy cannot be affected by anything anyone does.
So many preachers and evangelists tell tearjerker stories, wanting the stream of mercy to flow out of the human eye, thinking that if we cry and beg, God will have mercy upon us. God will have mercy upon you if your heart is as hard as stone. If you were never to weep over your iniquity, God is still a merciful God.
He cannot be anything else but merciful, and though everybody in the world might turn atheist, every human being turn into a beast, and all the world turn into devils, it would not change the mercy of God in the slightest.
God would still be as merciful as He is now. If Christ were to die a hundred times on the cross, it would not make God any more merciful than He is now, because God is as merciful as mercy can be. Being God, He will never be less merciful.
Nothing can increase, diminish, or alter the quality of God’s mercy.
The cross did not increase the mercy of God. Let us remember we ought to be good, sound Bible readers, and we ought to have our theology right. Let us remember that the mercy of God did not begin at Calvary. The mercy of God led to Calvary.
It was because God was merciful that Christ died on the cross. Christ did not die on the cross in order to make God merciful; God was already merciful, which is why Christ died. It was the mercy of God that brought Jesus to earth.
And when He came down, He came down and died because He was already as merciful as it is possible to be. God is merciful and the source of all mercy, and the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, so that nothing can make Him any more merciful than He has always been.
Let us not imagine falsely that Jesus Christ our Lord is up before the throne of an angry-faced God, pleading for His people. He is pleading all right, and He is praying there, and He is making intercession for us, but the God to whom He is making intercession is just as merciful now, no more and no less than He was before His Son died on the cross.
The cross did not make the mercy of God any more merciful, or the quality of that mercy any more perfect, or the amount of that mercy any greater. Neither does the intercession of Christ make Him more merciful.
Notice that the mercy of God operates in a certain way.
Whenever there is inequity, whenever there is immorality of any kind, the justice of God confronts it. That which is not moral is immoral. We have one sin; we call that immorality. All sin is immorality in that it is not morality. Jealousy, as well as that snide expression about somebody, is immorality.
That trimming on your income tax report is immorality. Losing your temper and yelling at your husband is immorality. Everything we do that is wrong is immorality. Immorality is inequity, injustice—that which is not just, right, and level.
Judgment is God’s justice confronting moral inequity, whereas mercy, is God’s goodness confronting human guilt and suffering. We are all recipients of God’s mercy.
We think we are not, but we are. There is not an atheist in the world who is not the recipient of God’s mercy right now. We have so much, and we live in such a way that if justice had its way unrestrained, without mercy, God would rain fire from the Rio Grande to the Hudson Bay.
All men and women are recipients of the mercy of God, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, and mercy postpones the execution, for God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
We need to notice one thing that distinguishes Christians from all other people and religions in the world: Mercy can be canceled or forgiven by the atonement when justice sees inequity. Death is a sentence meted out, but mercy brought Christ to the cross.
Justice and mercy see righteousness instead of iniquity, and when the just God looks down upon a sinner who has been covered by the atoning merits of Jesus’ blood, He sees not a sinner anymore, but a justified individual. That is the doctrine of justification by faith, the very foundation of redemption, and one of the great cornerstones of the church today.
When we see it like this, we wonder about one thing: Since God is perfect, self-contained, and self-sufficient, how can He suffer?—for God does suffer. He sent His Son to suffer, so I can only paraphrase the language of Frederick Faber: “How Thou canst suffer, O my God, and be the God Thou art, is darkness to my intellect but sunshine to my heart.”
I know that justice sentenced me to that. The soul that sinneth shall die, and I know that I should die and that hell should swallow me up. But I also know that Christ died on the cross for my sins. He went out there and in darkness did something I do not know. I am afraid of the man who is too smart about the atonement.
I am afraid of the man who can explain it too well, for surely it was the mystery of godliness. Surely what He did can never enter the mind of man or be fully understood. Surely what He did that awful, dark day, when it became as dark as a thousand midnights in the Cypress Swamp, we can never explain or understand intellectually.
Peter, who thought about this as much as you and I, lived with Jesus three years and saw Him go out and die on the cross, and saw Him after He had risen from the dead, said in an odd language, “Angels desire to look into these things.” The very angels in heaven desire to know about this.
I do not know about that atonement. I do not know what He did, but I know that whatever He did satisfied the heart of God forever. I know that whatever He did turned my iniquity into righteousness, turned my inequity into equity, and turned the sentence of death into a judgment of life.
I know it did that, so I can only stand before Him and say, “How Thou canst suffer, O my God, and be the God Thou art, is darkness to my intellect but sunshine to my heart.”
Do not ask your head about this. If you cannot think about it, get on your knees and say, “Thou knowest, O my Lord and my God.” Maybe someday in that bright tomorrow, maybe with clearer eyes and brighter vision, we will look upon the wonder of the atonement and know what it means.
Not all of the theologians who have ever lived can explain this. Together they can only stand before Him and say He gave Himself, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.
I do not understand the mystery of it. I know the joy and the sunshine of His effects upon me and those who know God.
The mercy of God is a moral and theological doctrine to me. The mercy of God is my life and my breath. Oh the mercy of God, that God is compassionate, that He stoops to have pity and mercy upon His people.
How approachable the mercy of God is, how accessible and how completely gracious God is, and how He has no pleasure in the death of anyone, particularly the wicked. He is the Father of mercies. He is very compassionate and full of tender mercy, and He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
This is the message we must tell the world. This is the witness we must give to the world. We need to go into the world and tell them who God really is.
We must go into the world and tell them that God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and full of loving-kindness and that He sent His Son to die for their sins. There is a door open. It is the door of mercy, and it is open wide for us.
The Mercy Of God Is An Ocean Divine
The mercy of God is an ocean of divine,
A boundless and fathomless flood;
Launch out in the deep, cut away the shoreline,
And be lost in the fullness of God.
Refrain:
Launch out, into the deep,
Oh, let the shoreline go;
Launch out, launch out in the ocean divine,
Out where the full tides flow.
But many; alas! only stand on the shore,
And gaze on the pee a so wide;
They never have ventured to its depths to explore,
Or to launch on the fathomless tide.
Others just venture away from the land,
And linger so near to the shore
That the surf and the slime that beat over the strand
Dash o’er them in floods evermore.
Oh, let us launch out on this ocean so broad,
Where floods of salvation overflow;
Oh, let us be lost in the mercy of God,
Till the depths of His fullness, we know. –Albert B. Simpson(1843-1919)