The Mercy of God

It has been said that the greatest of God’s attributes is His mercy.

Mercy is loving someone who opposes you.  If all of His creation obeyed Him, it would be easy for Him to love us.  Yet we disobey Him.  We oppose Him.  His own creations rebelled against Him.

One of God’s attributes is His justice.  He has every right to punish us for opposing Him.  It would also be easy for Him to do this.  To punish us, to exact justice for our crime against Him.

Yet while we oppose Him, He still loves us, and He goes to the ultimate extreme to bring us back to Him.  He literally suffered horrific sufferings, and died a most painful death, out of mercy.  He did the most difficult thing He could possibly do as God for us.  Every other possible thing He could have done, He did not do.  He did the most difficult, most painful thing He could do for us.  And that required mercy.  That is why God’s greatest attribute is His mercy.  His justice would have entailed that He could punish us for all eternity.  Yet He did not merely act on His justice.  His mercy was what made Him take on that suffering that His justice required, and make Himself the target of His own justice.  His justice exacted the punishment.  His mercy took the punishment we deserved, and exacted it on HImself in our place.

So in this life, other people hurt us.  Other people oppose us.  It would be easy to love everyone, if they all did exactly what we wanted, all the time.  It is easy to love people who do what we want them to do, always make our lives better, never hurt us.  But people don’t co-operate with us.  Other people oppose us.  Other people hurt us.  It would be within the rights of justice to punish them.  But the God who made us, chose the highest path.  God chose the greatest attribute of mercy.  And if the one who has the ultimate justice, the ultimate wisdom, the ultimate judgment, does not condemn us, but rather imputes our condemnation onto Himself, through His only Son, what right do we have to supersede the One to whom we owe everything.

Let us choose the greatest of all the attributes of God, His Mercy.  Let Him be the one to mete out justice, and let us emulate His mercy.

A Prayer Request:

I am praying for God to teach all of us to pray for, forgive, and love our enemies. It is the only way forward. It is hard to do. Some will not be worthy of forgiveness, love, and prayer, but who is? But without forgiveness, love, and mercy, nothing is going to get better. Maybe some will not change their evil ways. But some will. Anyone, by the grace of God, can change their ways. Let us pray for as many of us sinners to be forgiven and loved. Pray for as many of us to change our evil ways as possible. And let us ask God to teach us to pray for, love, and forgive our enemies. Because that is the only way any of us are to change. I can say that I am a different person than I was in the past. And I have changed by the grace of God. I was able to change because people who I had hurt, loved, prayed for, and forgave me. I was able to change because the God who I rebelled against loved and forgave me. So let us pray for all the people in need of change in their lives, people we call our enemies, to change. Let us ask God to teach us to love, pray for, and forgive our enemies, and give them the grace to change. May God give us the grace to change, and be more like Him, and His Son, who died for us while we were still His enemies.