Matthew 5:7 – Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
[Note: I did not write up a manuscript for my message on Matthew 5:6. If you interested in listening to this sermon, you may hear it at: http://www.shilohstephenville.com/resources/sermons/?sermon_id=21]
We
are living is an incredibly self-centered, self-oriented culture. Perhaps we are not that different from past
cultures, but there does seem to be a discernible drift in our culture toward
narcissism, an obsession with one’s self, even at the expense of others. For example, child psychiatrist Dr George
Drinka has written that “kids now live in a broader culture buttressed by a
media culture in which the opposite of compassion and empathy . . . are shoved
off stage. The norm has inched toward
youths seeing the vulnerable child not as the one to be protected, nurtured and
encouraged, but rather as a weak link to be made fun of, treated as a laughing-stock,
in need of public humiliation, even on Facebook.”[1]
What
that means is that mercy as a virtue is facing extinction in our culture. Mercy is outward oriented, and is
incompatible with the self-centeredness that is so wrapped up in the warp and
woof of our society.
But
on the other hand, this shouldn’t surprise us.
For though mercy is not trashed as often or as virulently as is
meekness, yet it is not hard to see that it is not popular either, and never
really has been. It’s not really a part
of the values of this age. As John Stott
has put it, “the world (at least when it is true to its own nature) is
unmerciful, as indeed the church in its worldliness has often been. The world prefers to insulate itself against
the pains and calamities of men. It
finds revenge delicious, and forgiveness, by comparison, tame.”[2] Yes, I think that we can all identify with
this desire to isolate ourselves from the pains and miseries of others. Like the priest and the Levite in the parable
of the Good Samaritan, we are curious enough to stop and look at a dying man on
the side of the road, but we pass on and leave him untended. Someone else will take care of him, we reason
to ourselves. Let the good doctors go
over to West Africa and tend to those infected with Ebola, but don’t let them
come back over here for treatment! We’re
okay with other people showing mercy as long as we aren’t the ones who have to
do it, or even as long as we’re not personally inconvenienced by others showing
mercy.
Thus,
when Jesus pronounces a blessing upon the merciful, we must not think that this
is any less counter-cultural than anything else he has said or will say in the
Sermon on the Mount. But neither must we
think that this is any the less a part of the character of those who belong to
the kingdom of God. All the people of
God will display all the characteristics of all the Beatitudes. It is true that none of them will do it
perfectly. But if the Beatitudes are a
description of character, of
fundamental attitudes, then someone who is conspicuously lacking these virtues
has a lot of self-examination to do.
In
other words, what our Lord is saying here is not that a Christian is someone
who merely wants to be poor in spirit, or who admires mercy from afar. No, a Christian is someone who is poor in spirit, who is merciful. We might call this a sort of spiritual
irreducible complexity. There are
machines that, if you take one part away, they lose their function; in the same
way, if a person is lacking even one of these Beatitudes, they lose their right
to call themselves a follower of Jesus Christ.
Of
course, it’s not like you can have two of the Beatitudes and none of the
others. Or all but one. And the reason this is impossible is that
these characteristics are not the result of self-improvement: they are the result
of the grace of God in the heart of an individual. God does not make a person poor in spirit
without producing grief over sin, or without making them also meek and
spiritually hungry and thirsty and merciful and so on. It’s a package deal.
Also,
as we’ve been saying, there is a natural progression in the Beatitudes, a
logical sequence. One inevitably leads
to the next. Last time, we talked about
spiritual hunger and thirst. This
results from seeing our emptiness – our poverty of spirit – so we cry out to
God to fill our emptiness. And Jesus
says that this person will be filled.
But someone who has been filled by God, who has freely received, is also
going to want to freely give. Someone
who is the recipient of the mercy of God filling their own emptiness and misery
is going to want to do the same for others.
And so it’s no surprise, therefore, that our Lord now tells us that
mercy is a fundamental characteristic of those who follow him.
What
then does it mean to be merciful? Some
might say that mercy is a synonym for grace, and although they are related
concepts, there is a difference. Paul,
in his letters to the Timothy and Titus admits as much when he wishes “grace,
mercy, and peace” upon them (1 Tim. 1:2; 2 Tim. 1:2; Tit. 1:4). The fact that he prays for them to be the
recipients of both grace and mercy
shows that there is a distinction between them.
I
think Richard Lenski best draws out the distinction between the two: “The noun eleos (mercy) . . . always deals with
what we see of pain, misery and distress, these results of sin; and charis (grace) always deals with the sin
and guilt itself. The one extends
relief, the other pardon; the one cures, heals, helps, the other cleanses and
reinstates.”[3] In other words, mercy consists in a heart of
compassion and pity upon those who are suffering and a desire to relieve their
suffering. A merciful person is not just
concerned with own problems and condition; they genuinely care about others,
and when they see others hurting, they want to do what they can to relieve
their suffering.
But
of course, it doesn’t just stop there, as the parable of the Good Samaritan
shows us. The Good Samaritan didn’t just
feel mercy, he showed mercy (Luke
10:37). The compassion in the heart
reveals itself in definite actions. The
apostle John put it this way: “By this we know love, that he laid down his life
for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees
his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love
abide in him? Little children, let us
not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth” (1 Jn 3:16-18). A person who claims to be merciful but who is
unwilling to do anything for others in need is simply deceiving themselves.
How
could this be demonstrated in our lives?
Well, for one thing, we can extend mercy when people sin against
us. Lloyd-Jones says that “to have a
merciful spirit means the spirit that is displayed when you suddenly find
yourself in the position of having in your power someone who has transgressed
against you. Now the way to know whether
you are merciful or not is to consider how you feel towards that person. Are you going to say, ‘Well now, I am going
to exert my rights at this point; I am going to be legal. This person has transgressed against me; very
well, here comes my opportunity’? That
is the very antithesis of being merciful.”[4] As if to underline this very point, in the
next chapter in what is called the “Lord’s Prayer,” we are taught to pray,
“Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Mt 6:12). In other words, our Lord does not want us to
have any confidence that our prayers are being heard as long as we retain an
unforgiving, vindictive spirit. Rather,
we are to show mercy, we are to feel pity upon those who sin against us. We are to be like Jesus, who on the cross
prayed, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” (Luke
23:34). Or like Stephen, who, as he was
being stoned, prayed essentially the same prayer as Jesus: “Lord, do not hold
this sin against them” (Acts 7:59).
Or
there is the obvious application in the relief of the sufferings of those
around us. We live in a fallen,
sin-plagued world. People hurt each
other, they hurt themselves, and they are hurt from things outside of them like
natural disasters and from things inside of them like cancer. We are here to help relieve such suffering
whenever we can. When Jesus says,
“Blessed are the merciful,” it is unthinkable that he is just referring to
spiritual problems. Jesus healed the
physically sick. He fed the physically
hungry. He went about doing good, as the
apostle Peter put it (Acts 10:38). We
ought to as well. We ought to do good to
our neighbor, which just means everyone God puts in our way. And in this sermon, he was not thinking about
any particular group. It is not, blessed
are they who show mercy to other Christians, or, blessed are they who show
mercy to their family: it is “blessed are the merciful” in the most general
sense.
Now
it is true that those who do not subscribe to the Christian faith can show
mercy, and we thank God for that. But in
the Beatitudes Jesus is not describing people in general, but his disciples. In what sense then is this a specifically
Christian virtue?
I
would say this is a specifically Christian virtue in its origin, motivation,
and example.
Consider
the origin of a merciful spirit in a
Christian. James tells us that “the
wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be
intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, without
hypocrisy” (Jam. 3:17). Here, the
apostle puts mercy as part of the fruit of that wisdom that is “from above” –
that is, which is from God. It is true
that some people are more naturally sympathetic than others. But the Christian is a person who regardless
of their natural disposition is merciful – in fact, full of mercy – because God through the Spirit of Christ has made
them so.
This
is because God is merciful, and in the new birth we partake of the divine
nature – not in the sense that we participate in God’s uniqueness as God but
that we participate in what theologians have called the “communicable
attributes” (cf. 2 Pet. 1:4). Paul tells
us that God is rich in mercy (Eph. 2:4).
Twice in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus quotes from the prophet Hosea in
which he reminds us that God desires mercy and not sacrifice (Mt. 9:13;
12:7). So if you have been a partaker of
the divine nature, you are being made in to a merciful person. Over and over again we read that Christ had
compassion on the multitudes, that he had mercy upon people; you are being
conformed into his image, so you are inevitably going to mirror his mercy in
your life. If you don’t, there is a serious
question as to the believability of your profession of faith.
It
is also specifically Christian in its motivation. Why should we show mercy to others? Should we not because Christ showed mercy to
us? Right before Paul reminds us that
God is rich in mercy, he has laid before us our lamentable state by nature
apart from grace. We were dead, rotten,
stinking spiritual corpses. We were
enslaved to this world and to its prince, the devil. “But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great
love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses and in sins,
hath raised us up together” (Eph. 2:4). Elsewhere,
he writes that “we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient,
deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy,
hateful, and hating one another. But
after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, not by
works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his own mercy he
saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; which
he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour; that being justified
by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life”
(Tit. 3:4-7).
Nothing
compares to the miserable state we are in apart from God. Sin doesn’t just make us miserable in this
life – it ruins us forever. Christ has
saved us from that by dying for us. He
didn’t just relieve us of our misery, he endured misery himself for us – became
poor so that we might be made rich. Those
who feel the reality of this are going to want to show mercy to others.
This
is the lesson of the parable of the unmerciful servant (Mt. 18:21-35). Here is the story of a cruel servant who is
so in debt that his master orders him and his family to be sold into slavery to
pay off the debt. But when the servant
pleads with his master, he forgives the debt.
But then this guy goes out and finds another servant who owes him a few
bucks and takes him by the neck and throws him into prison. When his master finds out about this, he
takes back his offer of forgiveness and has the guy delivered to the jailors
until the impossible debt is paid off.
Jesus told this parable to a question Peter asked him: “Lord, how often
will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus responds by saying, “I do not say to
you seven times, but seventy-seven times.”
He then launches into the parable, when he ends by saying, “So also my
heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother
from your heart.” In other words, there
is such an incongruity between someone being forgiven by God and refusing to
extend that same mercy to another that no one should imagine themselves a
forgiven person while they withhold the same mercy from someone else.
When
someone has sinned against you, or even if they are just a person in need of
kindness and compassion, how can we look at that person and not see ourselves
in need of Christ? How can we say we
believe the gospel and love Jesus and not act the gospel out in our lives and
mimic our Lord’s character?
And
thus we see that the great example of
mercy for us is not some great saint, but Jesus Christ. What is so important here is that when Jesus,
as the only sinless human being who ever lived, showed mercy, he always showed
mercy upon the undeserving. In other
words, though grace and mercy are different, they are inseparable in
Scripture. We come to a throne of mercy that we might obtain grace (Heb. 4:16). Therefore, we when show mercy to others, it
is not with some kind of spiritual Geiger counter to see if there is too much
sinful radiation that might preclude our showing mercy. We are to show mercy even upon those who are
undeserving because that’s exactly how God has dealt with us.
When
we truly understand the right motivation and example of mercy, we are not only
going to show mercy, but we are going to do it in the right way. Paul wrote to the Roman Christians, that
those who show mercy are to do so with cheerfulness (Rom. 12:8). In other words, don’t do it because you have
to, do it because you want to. There is
nothing more abhorrent than a person who is obviously being forced to do the
right thing. It’s also scary, because
when a person doesn’t give mercy because they want to, they are like a spring
that is pulled from its equilibrium state: it will eventually spring to the
opposite side. Those who are forced to
do good will inevitably end up doing evil.
Let
us close by considering what is promised to the merciful: “they shall obtain
mercy.” This evidently has often been
misinterpreted and misunderstood as meaning that those who are merciful merit
God’s mercy. That by doing good you get
good as a matter of right and merit. But
that is obviously not what our Lord meant by this. As we’ve already pointed out, mercy in
Scripture is inseparable from grace, and grace is not getting what we deserve
but what we do not. Obtaining mercy out
of merit is impossible because it is a contradiction in terms. We need mercy not only because of our
miserable state but because of the sin that put us in that miserable
state. No human being other than Jesus
has ever been in any position to bargain with God.
What
then does our Lord mean? Well, it’s not
hard to see. If it is true that those who
truly belong to the Lord are those who are being conformed to the image of
Christ, who are partakers of the divine nature, and that nature is one of
mercy, then all those who shall obtain mercy in that great Day of days are precisely those who show mercy as Christ
showed mercy. And it is then that we
will need mercy the most and then when mercy from God will be infinitely and
eternally meaningful. Do you and I need
mercy now? Yes. But we will need mercy most of all when we
stand before God’s throne to give account.
It’s what Paul prayed for Onesimus, who showed mercy to him and at the
risk of his own reputation sought Paul out.
Paul wrote to Timothy, “The Lord grant unto him that he may find mercy
of the Lord in that day” (2 Tim. 1:18).
The
only way any of us will find that mercy is in the Christ who makes us
merciful.
[1]
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/when-the-media-is-the-parent/201401/self-centered-the-new-normal
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