"Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy." Matthew 5:7.
The first thing that touches you in reading those words, is that Jesus is saying to us, "You get what you give!" He's talking about the law of direct return, the law of reciprocity. For instance, if you go about life being critical of people, chances are very good that you'll wind up being criticized by others. On the other hand, if you strive to treat people with kindness and respect, chances are good that you’ll be treated with kindness and respect in return. The Bible says that we reap what we sow.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. This beatitude prompts the unavoidable question, "What is the right way to treat people?" Well, maybe I should stop and ask myself, "How would I like to be treated?" Jesus exhorts us to choose the path of mercy.
What is mercy? Let me offer a very simple definition. Mercy is simply love in action. In the Scriptures, we often think of compassion and mercy linked together, and indeed, that seems to be the case. Compassion is an attitude of the heart. It's something visceral, something that we feel deeply within us. In Matthew chapter 9 we read that Jesus looked at the great multitude of people that were following him and he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. But mercy is more than just feeling sorry for people. It's more than feeling pity for someone who is down and out. It's doing something proactively to help alleviate their pain and suffering. Mercy is more than kind words and deep feelings, mercy is love in action.
There's no doubt that we live in a world where it's so easy for us to become callused and indifferent towards the pain and suffering around us. We are bombarded daily with news of tragedies, violent acts, and suffering people. And life often brings us our own share of such trials, hurts, and disappointments. Keeping our sanity and protecting ourselves from being hurt requires us to develop thick skin. That's our typical survival instinct. The idea is to keep your distance from the problems and suffering of others and you won’t get caught up in the problems. But the danger is that it's not uncommon for this attitude to make us cynical and merciless. As Christians, God’s ambassadors, none of us want to develop a cynical or uncaring attitude. So, here’s a question you should ponder... How does a heart become merciful? Where does mercy come from?
Mercy grows from the inside out. Mercy grows from a heart that recognizes its own spiritual deficits. The key to becoming a merciful person is to first become a broken person — to realize your own need for mercy. Mercy comes from mercy. Mercy comes to us as we cry out to God and ask for it. In Psalm 28, David cried out, "Praise be to the LORD, for he has heard my cry for mercy." The Bible teaches that having been the recipients of mercy, we're commanded to extend mercy to others. Jesus said in Luke 6:36, "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful."
In Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, one of the characters, Portia, says, "The quality of mercy is not strained. It drops as the gentle rain from heaven upon the Earth below, and it is twice-blessed. It blesses him that gives, and him that takes." Maybe Shakespeare had the Beatitudes in mind when he wrote his famous work.
Certainly one of the clearest pictures of mercy in the Bible is the story of the Good Samaritan found in Luke chapter 10. In the course of a debate, an expert in the law asked Jesus the question, "Who is my neighbor?" And Jesus proceeded to tell him the story of a man who was traveling down the road from Jerusalem to Jericho and was held up by a band of thugs. They robbed him, stripped him of his clothing, and beat him within an inch of his life. As it happened, a priest saw him, didn't want to get involved, and passed him by... moving out of the way to other side of the road. A while later, a Levite saw him and did the same thing, he passed him by too.
But then a lowly, despised Samaritan man came along and helped this poor man. He bandaged his wounds, took him to an inn, cared for him, even paid all of the expenses and promised the innkeeper that if more expenses were incurred, he'd pick up the tab when he returned to check on the poor fellow. Jesus then asked the expert on the law, "Who was the neighbor to this poor, helpless man?" The expert on the law said, "It's obvious, the one who had mercy on him." And Jesus said, "Go and do likewise."
Isn't that a picture of what God did on our behalf? God saw us in our miserable, lost condition and he took pity on us. Mercy was always in his plan from the very beginning. He knew that sin had rendered us spiritually dead and utterly hopeless. He knew that he was the only one that had the power to bring about a remedy. God's remedy was to participate in our sufferings and he did that by sending his Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to pay the penalty of our sins by dying on a cross. The apostle Paul said it this way...
"But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive in Christ even when we were dead in transgression" (Ephesians 2:4). Mercy is love in action!
Something more to ponder... we don't struggle with the meaning of mercy as much as we struggle with the motivation for why we ought to be merciful toward others.
Mercy comes from within... from your heart. How does it grow? It only can be... if you truly love the Lord.
