THE GOD OF MERCY

The Attributes of God: The Mercy of God

INTRODUCTION

"O give thanks unto the Lord: for He is good, for His mercy endures forever" (Ps. 136:1).

The message of The Divine Mercy is simple. It is that God loves us - all of us. And, he wants us to recognize that His mercy is greater than our sins, so that we will call upon Him with trust, receive His mercy, and let it flow through us to others. Thus, all will come to share His joy.

God's mercy is one of his attributes that comes from his goodness, and so it is also closely related to his love and grace.

WHAT IS THE MERCY OF GOD?

A common adage says that Grace gives what we do not deserve, i.e., Eternal Life, while Mercy withholds what we do deserve, i.e., Eternal Punishment; but, Mercy goes much deeper, in that it is the Loving kindness of God.

Of the two Greek words that are translated as mercy in the New Testament, eleeo and eleos, Mercy is not simply the withholding of punishment, but it is the act of giving help or having compassion on someone who is afflicted.

"Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy [Greek, eleeo]" (Matthew 5:7). The loving kindness of Jesus Christ gives to us Eternal Life. "Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy [Greek, eleos] of our LORD Jesus Christ unto Eternal Life" (Jude 21). Our Salvation is an act of the mercy of God, completely unguaranteed by our past actions. "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost" (Titus 3:5). God's loving kindness was demonstrated in giving His Only Begotten Son to die for us. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His Only Begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have Everlasting Life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved" (John 3:16-17).

The grace of God is His "unmerited favor" whereby He gives us what we do not deserve. A companion to His grace is His mercy. For the sake of our discussion let us begin with this definition of mercy: The act of God by which He withholds what we do deserve. We have sinned against God. We have flagrantly violated His laws. We have earned the "wages of sin" which is death (Romans 6:23), and we are condemned already. We have spurned God's love and we have rejected His Son, Who died for our sins. God has every right to judge us, find us guilty, sentence us to a lake of fire, and see to it that we suffer torment day and night forever.

Mercy has to do specifically with God's characteristic attitude toward people who are in trouble. It is God's pity for those who are miserable or suffering or needy, and helpless in their situation; but it includes more than just a feeling of pity, for his mercy has his rescuing power behind it. Out of God's mercy he rescues from difficulty; out of his mercy he saves the powerless; out of his mercy he heals the sick. God's delivering activity toward the oppressed, the afflicted, the poor, and the fatherless are all described as coming from his mercy. Since all of his creation is so dependent upon him, we can sing with the psalmist that "his tender mercies are over all his works (Psalm145:9)."

Like all of God's attributes, God's mercy is intrinsic to him. He is called "the Father of mercies" and a "God of mercy" (2 Cor. 1:3, Neh. 9:17). His mercy is also abundantly great and boundless, higher than the heavens and filling the earth. Scripture refers to "the multitude of his mercies" (Lam. 3:32) because the acts stemming from this attribute are so numerous.
His mercy is eternal and unchanging. God's mercy is "from everlasting to everlasting" (Psalm 103:17) in the same way that God himself is from everlasting to everlasting. His mercies don't cease or fail, because they are new every morning (Lam. 3): constantly fresh and perfect and never fading with age. His mercy endures forever.

 The mercy of God has its spring in the Divine goodness. The first point about God’s goodness is His or bounty, by which He gives liberally to His creatures; thus has He given being and life to all things. The second issue of God’s goodness is His mercy, which denotes the ready inclination of God to relieve the misery of fallen creatures. Thus, "mercy" presupposes sin.

In endeavoring to understand the mercy of God as it is set forth in Scripture, a threefold distinction needs to be made. First, there is a general mercy of God, which is extended not only to all men, believers and unbelievers alike, but also to the entire creation: "His tender mercies are over all His works" (Ps. 145:9): "He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things" (Acts 17:25). Second, there is a special mercy of God, which is exercised toward the children of men, helping them, despite their sins. To them also He communicates all the necessities of life: "for He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust" (Matt. 5:45). Third, there is a sovereign mercy which is reserved for the heirs of salvation, which is communicated to them in a covenant way, through the Mediator.

Two things need to be pointed out in that connection. God can never cease to be merciful, for this is a quality of the Divine essence (Ps. 116:5); but the exercise of His mercy is regulated by His sovereign will. This must be so, for there is nothing outside Himself which obliges Him to act; if there were, that "something" would be supreme, and God would cease to be God.

It is pure sovereign grace which alone determines the exercise of Divine mercy. God expressly affirms this fact in Romans 9:15, "For He said to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy."

 

WHY THE MERCY OF GOD?

A first step toward understanding the true depth of God's mercy is understanding the depth of our own neediness. We are utterly without hope short of God's merciful activity on our behalf. It is by recognizing that we come before God bringing nothing but our own sinfulness, just as the publican in the parable brought nothing when he prayed, "God be merciful to me a sinner (Luke 13:18)", that we get some glimpse of the abundant richness of God's mercy. Mercy is God’s disposition to pardon the guilty. Its exercise consists in arresting and setting aside the penalty of law which we deserve by transgression. It is, as has been said, directly opposed to justice. Justice treats every individual according to his deeds; mercy treats the criminal very differently from what he deserves to be treated. Deeds are never the rule by which mercy is guided.

He is good

For this perfection of the Divine character God is greatly to be praised for this adorable attributes, for His is good. And surely this is the least that can be asked for from those who have been such bounteous gainers by it. When we contemplate the characteristics of this Divine excellency, we cannot do otherwise than bless God for it. His mercy is "great" (1 Kings 3:6), "plenteous" (Ps. 86:5), "tender" (Luke 1:78), "abundant" (1 Pet. 1:3); it is "from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him" (Ps. 103:17). Well may we say with the Psalmist, "I will sing aloud of Thy mercy" (59:16).

A good way to understand the meaning of mercy is to see how it relates to grace:

1.      Mercy--not getting what you do deserve / withheld punishment

2.      Grace--getting what you don't deserve / unmerited favor

3.      Mercy is like a judge finding you guilty, but then withholding any punishment. Grace is getting something you could never have imagined. An inexplicable gift. It's like a judge awarding you $10,000,000.00, after finding you guilty!

4.      Rom 2:4 (LB) Don't you realize how patient he is being with you: Or don't you care? Can't you see that he has been waiting all this time without punishing you, to give you time to turn from your sin? His kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.

5.      Rom 2:4 (Phi) Are you, perhaps, misinterpreting God's generosity and patient mercy towards you as weakness on his part? Don't you realize that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

6.      2 Pet 3:15 (Jer) Think of the Lord's patience as your opportunity to be saved.

God's mercy is pertains to God's law and pertains to salvation. God's law given in judgments is against the breaking of His commandments. God's law, given in judgments against sin, can be lifted, covered, justified, when God's mercy is granted. Mercy is Christ's law of liberty, and is  God's command or law of promise that grants freedom or victory over the law of judgment that is given as the penalty or judgment of death for sin, but is only given when a person repents of breaking God's commandments.

Mercy is God's favor of compassion and His loving kindness and His forgiveness granted to a person who is repentant of transgressing His commandments. The Scripture says in Luke 1:76-78, "That John was to go before the Lord to prepare His way, to give knowledge of salvation unto His people by the remission of their sins."  John says, v 78, this is granted "through the tender mercy of our God." John taught people how their sins could be forgiven through repentance and the tender mercy of God.

In order to have one's sins remitted, (forgiven) this demands all sinners to repent to God for breaking His law, His ten commandments, in order for God to fulfill His promise of His mercy, that is promised to every repentant sinner.

 The gift of God's grace, which involves God's mercy and the giving of His Spirit, will not be given unless there is  a sinner's total and complete, heart rending repentance, and this repentance must always bear the fruit of obedience to God's law and commandments. Otherwise, God’s mercy will not be given.

While it is true that God is completely free in his acts of mercy, and that he acts mercifully according to his own purpose and as it fits his own plan, it is also true that those who seek his mercy always find it. He is always merciful to the truly repentant. If we confess, he faithfully forgives. This does not mean that he is compelled to be merciful to us in response to our repentance. But we are correct if we believe that our genuine repentance is always and certainly met with his willing and abundant mercy.

Our limitations

We are all sinners. From what has just been before us, let us note how vain is the presumptuous hope of the wicked, who, despite his continued defiance of God, nevertheless count upon His being merciful to him. How many there are who say, I do not believe that God will ever cast me into Hell; He is too merciful. Such a hope is a viper, which if cherished in our bosoms will sting us to death. God is a God of justice as well as of mercy, and He has expressly declared that He will "by no means clear the guilty" (Ex. 34:7). He has said, "The wicked shall be turned into hell " (Ps. 9:17). The fact is that those who neglect the laws of health are carried away by disease, even if God’s mercy is there. Equally true is it that those who neglect the laws of spiritual health shall forever suffer the Death.

Unspeakably solemn is it to see so many abusing this Divine perfection. They continue to despise God’s authority, trample upon His laws continue in sin, and yet presume upon His mercy. But God will not be unjust to Himself. God shows mercy to the truly penitent, but not to the impenitent (Luke 13:3). To continue in sin and yet reckon upon Divine mercy remitting punishment is not there. It is saying, "Let us do evil that good may come," and of all such it is written, their "damnation is just" (Rom. 3:8). Presumption shall most certainly be disappointed; read carefully Deuteronomy 29:18-20. Christ is the spiritual Mercy-seat, and all who despise and reject His Lordship shall "perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled " (Ps. 2:12).

Enter the mercy of God. Daniel, the prophet, declares, "To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgiveness, though we have rebelled against him" (Daniel 9:9). The evidence is against us; we have rebelled. We deserve judgment. But, mercy prevails and God withholds the punishment called for by our sin. Jeremiah expresses the same idea by saying, "It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not" (Lamentations 3:22). By God's mercy He withholds His judgment upon our sin.

From whom does He withhold the judgment? "From us." And that is correct. But does judgment go unsatisfied? Does nobody pay for the sin and rebellion of mankind? Does God get no satisfaction for the wrongs done to Him? Can He not exact the wages of sin? Ah, yes. He gets full satisfaction, but upon a Substitute. He gave out His judgment of our sin upon the Lord Jesus Christ Who "was made sin for us" and Who "bore out sins in His own body on the tree." Sin has indeed brought forth death. Christ has died for us, in our place, paying our penalty, so that God can withhold from us our deserved judgment. Mercy avails for us and we go free the very moment we trust Jesus Christ as our personal Savior.

Eph 2:3-5, like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions; it is by grace you have been saved.

It is a call for us to think of how much mercy God has given us. Most of us have never contracted herpes, AIDS, or gotten pregnant out of wedlock! We've miraculously avoided accidents we deserved due to reckless, inattentive, even drunk driving. And so on. God's angels must be working overtime administering His mercy.

Prov 28:13, he who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.

Ezra 9:13, "What has happened to us is a result of our evil deeds and our great guilt, and yet, our God, you have punished us less than our sins have deserved... Shall we again break your commands...?"

1 Tim 1:13 (Jer) Even though I used to be a blasphemer and did all I could to injure and discredit the faith. Mercy, however, was shown me, because until I became a believer I had been acting in ignorance.

1 Tim 1:15-16 (Phi) ...I realize that I was the worst of them all, and that because of this very fact God was particularly merciful to me. It was a demonstration of the extent of Christ's patience towards the worst of men, to serve as an example to all who in the future should trust him for eternal life.

Rom 3:23-27 (Jer) Both Jew and pagan sinned and forfeited God's glory, and both are justified through the free gift of his grace by being redeemed in Christ Jesus who was appointed by God to sacrifice his life so as to win reconciliation through faith.

The Parable of The Unmerciful Servant Mat 18:23-31

It is necessary for us to acknowledge that we are sinners and cannot do anything to save ourselves. It is through faith that we need to recognize that it is the sacrifice that Jesus made for us at Calvary that we can be saved. Paul reminds the Ephesians and us today that salvation is ‘not of works so no man may boast'. There is no work of any quality or quantity that any man can do, thus no person can boast of their works as having any power to save themselves. If their works could save them in any way; Jesus sacrifice would have been in vain.

Come to Jesus today, from your heart recognize that you are a sinner in need of salvation, ask Jesus to come into your heart and save you from your sin. If you ask Him with a sincere and trustful heart He will save you.

Not only are we the objects of God's mercy, but we are enjoined to be the givers of mercy. "Be you therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful" (Luke 6:36). Only as we demonstrate mercy, do we receive God's mercy. "Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy" (Matthew 5:7).

Because God has been merciful to us, we have reason to be merciful in our actions toward those who are in need. We must "be merciful, just as our Father also is merciful (Luke 6:36)." Mercy is one of God's communicable attributes, meaning that he shares it with us and expects it from us. Just as our Father is moved to act by the plight of those in need, so too, those who are his children are motivated by mercy. The poverty of others, both material and spiritual is our opportunity to be like our Father. Their trouble is our opportunity to help. (Cfr. Our Father)

Trust in God's mercy implies a belief that he is merciful. We could not trust him if we had no such belief. This belief must always lie at the foundation of real trust.

MARY, THE MOTHER OF MERCY: HER UNEQUALLED ROLE IN GOD’S PLAN

                We are right to call Mary "Mother of Mercy" because she was the one chosen to be the Mother of God — in other words, she was the Mother of the merciful Savior, and in this way she literally brought Divine Mercy Himself to birth in our world. When Mary humbly accepted the angel Gabriel's call, she actually conceived in her womb, and brought to birth into our world, the merciful God made flesh, Mercy Incarnate, Jesus Christ.

In the conclusion of his encyclical Veritatis Splendor (1993), Pope John Paul II summarized this Gospel truth for us:

             Mary is Mother of Mercy because her Son, Jesus Christ, was sent by the Father as the revelation of God's mercy (cf Jn 3:16-18). And the greatest mercy of all is found in His being in our midst and calling us to meet Him and to confess, with Peter, that He is "the Son of the living God" (Mt. 16:16).

                Mary is our Mother of Mercy because she gave birth to this merciful Savior. As Christian, we claim that Mary as Mother of Mercy, she is also the "Co-Redemptrix," and the "Mediatrix of all graces."

               Sacred Scripture profoundly reveals the role of our Blessed Mother as Co-Redemptrix. At the Annunciation, when Mary says "yes" to the angel and thereby gives her "fiat" (Lk 1:38), she gives to the Redeemer the instrument of redemption, His human body. "Of course she is Co-Redemptrix. She gave Jesus his body and the body of Jesus is what saved us." (from Divine Mercy: The Heart of the Gospel, published by the John Paul II Institute of Divine Mercy, 1999).
               As Mother of Mercy and Co-Redemptrix, Mary is also rightly called the "Mediatrix of all graces," and in his encyclical Redemptoris Mater (1987), Pope John Paul II called her "Mediatrix of Mercy." The truth behind these exalted titles, "Mediatrix" is that we see the beginning of Mary's unique sharing in the salvific mediation of Christ at the Annunciation, where the free consent of the Virgin to be the Theotokos, the "God-bearer," mediates to the world Jesus Christ, Savior and Author of all grace.

It is in virtue of Mary's yes that He who is the source and mediation of all graces of redemption came to the human family. "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth...And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace" (Jn 1:14, 16). Mary's moral and physical mediation of Christ as Mother brought into the world the Uncreated Grace from which flows every grace received in his Body, which constitutes the People of God. The Church confirms: "From Him flows out into the body of the Church all light through which the faithful receive supernatural enlightenment, and every grace, through which they became holy, as He himself is holy ... (Pius XII, Mystici Corporis).
            It is Mary, the New Eve, who by freely and physically mediating the New Adam, source of our salvation in grace, becomes "for the whole human race," as St. Irenaeus tells us, "the cause of our salvation."
             In short, Mary, as Mother of our merciful Savior, is rightly called the Co-Redemptrix and the Mediatrix of all His graces and mercies to us. She plays a unique and unequalled role in God's plan to shower His mercy upon us all. Like any true and loving mother, her children can be trustfully and completely dependent upon her to bring us all that we need for life and growth. And that's all that Mary's "mediation" really means. It sounds complex at first, but it's really as simple and dependable as a mother's love!

CONCLUSION

Mercy and this Lenten period

“On wednsday we begin the liturgical period of Lent with the emblematic ritual of the imposition of the ashes by which we intend to take on the task of turning our hearts towards the horizons of Grace”. “This is not some superficial or transitory conversion, but a spiritual itinerary which has a profound effect on our conscience and involves a sincere intention to amend our lives”.

“This means undertaking an authentic conversion to God – returning to Him – recognising His sanctity, His power, His majesty”. “Such conversion is possible because God is rich in mercy and great in love. His mercy is regenerating. … God, in fact, does not want the death of sinners but their conversion to life. He offers us His forgiveness, so as to give us a new heart purified from the evil that oppresses it, so as to lead us to participate in His joy. Our world needs to be converted by God, it needs His pardon, His love, it needs a new heart”.

“‘Christ’s call to conversion’, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church, continues to resound in the lives of Christians. This is an uninterrupted task for the whole Church who, caring sinners to her bosom, is at once holy and always in need of purification, and follows constantly the path of penance and renewal’. This struggle for conversion is not an exclusively human effort. It is the dynamism of the ‘contrite heart’, attracted and moved by grace to respond to the mercy of God”.

“Everyone called to open himself to the action of God, to His love”. One further reason to live Lent properly is to offer a witness of lived faith to a world in difficulty, a world which needs to return to God, a world which needs conversion”, a world which needs the mercy of God.