Lists of the Holy Spirit’s graces are found in several places in the New Testament – as are lists of the sins of the old man that we are to put to death. We might approach these lists by giving a definition and an example or two of these, and then move on. But the Holy Spirit has given us these details of his work so that we may know he is with us, as our Lord Jesus said (John 14:17). It would not be a mystery or a surprise. “You will know them by their fruits.” We know ourselves by our fruits. Is our default to others a nasty attitude or a sweet disposition to do them good? Do we pity the weak and needy, as we have been pitied, or are we judgmental and smug? Do we have high views of our own opinions and insist upon being recognized as right, or do we have lowly minds that reflect gentle and humbled hearts before the Lord? These are not secondary issues. In this context of “seeking the things that are above, where Christ is” (3:1), “putting on the new man” in Christ (3:10), and living as God’s elect, holy and beloved children (3:12), these character fruits are the life of Christ in us.
Let us say it simply. The Lord makes his power felt by changing us. He causes us to bear the family image. He does not want us to live under any delusion as to whose family we are in – the children of wrath and disobedience, or the children of our heavenly Father. Thus, we should study the Christian’s character in a little more detail than is usually done. This is not so that we become morbidly self-focused but to see if Christ be in us (Rom. 8:10; 2 Cor. 13:5). While our age blames everyone else but itself for its calamities, Christians examine their own hearts and seek greater conformity to Christ. The only ones who will survive the Lamb’s wrath, now and at the end of history, are the children of God. They are not saved because they have the most stored food and guns but because they have God’s Spirit. The Lord’s eye is upon those who fear him, hope in his mercy (Ps. 33:18), and with a broken and contrite heart tremble at his word (Isa. 66:2). Godliness in Christ is not about self-improvement or spiritual self-satisfaction. Godliness is the best and only sure way to survive periods of judgment (Ps. 9:12). God marks out those who have a future by giving them his Spirit and working holiness in them. By this he glorifies his grace and mercy to sinners (Eph. 1:6).
Tender Mercy
The God of Mercy
He begins with a word we translate mercy or compassion. It means deep-seated, “in the gut” or visceral compassion for the weak, sinful, and needy. This kind of compassion acts – with regard for the Lord, to alleviate pain or sorrow, with sincere sympathy for the failings and miseries of others, deserved and undeserved. This is different from empathy, which is so much in vogue. Empathy asks that you feel my feelings, for my feelings are my reality. Sympathy is different and more useful. It has real pity upon others and cries with them, but also keeps one leg firmly on the shore of God’s truth to help the sufferer back to him and back to hope. When the Lord revealed his name to Moses, he began with “merciful and gracious” (Ex. 34:6). There the word is pity – heart sympathy for the weak, helpless, oppressed, and in our context, toward sinners who have ruined themselves and their lives by their rebellion against him. He delights in mercy, Micah wrote (Mic. 7:18). There the word is hesed, which denotes God’s goodness and kindness, his steadfast love to sinners. The Psalms especially are filled with declarations both of God’s pity and his steadfast love – his mercy to sinners. It is not that the Lord puts on a merciful front. He is merciful. He is filled with pity toward undeserving, sinful, cursed men. He sympathizes with us in our afflictions (Isa. 63:9). He brought those afflictions into our lives because we need them so that we learn repentance; he also sympathizes with us as we suffer through them, limits their duration and intensity, and brings great good to us through them. This is all mercy. Mercy leads him to forgive our sins and provide a satisfaction for them through his Beloved Son. Mercy is thus closely connected to God’s love to sinners. It is because he loved us that he gave his Son to bear our judgment upon the cross. He is love, and love feeds mercy; mercy is the expression of his love; love reaches out in mercy.
The Family Image: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
When we are commanded to put on tender mercies, therefore, we are commanded to be like our heavenly Father. Mercy and its close associate love are the defining family traits. If we do not love our brothers, we do not know God (1 John 4:8). This is to impose a condition upon salvation; it is to express the likeness to God that his saving grace works in us. Because God has been merciful to us, we are to be merciful to others. The merciful are blessed with mercy (Matt. 5:7); those who have received mercy show mercy. We trace the stream of mercy from the Father through the Son. He loved and gave himself for us. He was so filled with compassion and pity toward his fallen and depraved children, those chosen in him before the foundation of the world, that he humbled himself. Mercy humbled itself. Sovereignty humbled itself. God humbled himself – the Son of God humbled himself. And the Spirit is no less merciful and loving than the Father and the Son. The Spirit’s fellowship is in love – his love for us to enjoy fellowship with us (Phil. 2:1) and his love working love in us as his first lesson (1 Thess. 4:9). The Spirit is our teacher, and he teaches us love (John 13:34), because he is love, for he is God. For us, then, to put on mercy is to be like the Lord: sympathy to the hurting, weeping with those who weep, compassion to the needy, forgiveness to those who sin against us, bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, not keeping accounts of wrongs suffered.
God’s Pity and Compassion the Only Hope and Plea of Sinners
Mercy is unnatural to us. Describe mercy in the loveliest, most attractive terms possible, but the sinner is a stranger to mercy. Sin has estranged him from mercy, as Jonah lamented (Jonah 2:8). Not knowing God’s mercy, not wanting it except on sin-indulging terms, we cannot show it to others. Making war against the Judge, we become petty judges of others, holding on to wrongs suffered to vindicate ourselves and pretend to an innocence we do not possess. For, looking higher, if we sin so often against others and are sinned against – and cannot stop it and can hardly be brought to treat with slightest clemency someone who has sinned against us – what hope have we against the holy God? And this is the deep reality of mercy and the reason a merciful spirit defines God’s family. He is pitiable toward sinners. He does not treat us as our sins deserve. He never has (Ps. 103:10). And when we honestly face our sinfulness, this becomes our plea: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” The Lord brings all his children to this place, not once, but throughout our lives – to see that his mercy is our one hope and plea. And since mercy cannot be bought or bargained for, it is granted sovereignly, graciously to sinners. Not one of us can lay any just claim upon mercy. We have a claim to justice, for we have sinned against our Maker and our Lord. And it is the rising beam of the Spirit when he reveals our sinfulness to us so that we make no other plea but for mercy, when we have no other hope than that the one, true God reveals himself as merciful to sinners.
The Price Jesus Christ Paid for Our Mercy
One reason we make so little of mercy and therefore do not show it rigorously and faithfully to others is that we have forgotten how much mercy costs. Mercy costs us nothing – “Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price” (Isa. 55:1). Heaven accepts no payment we possess for mercy. The Son of God agreed to “pay the price,” the ransom price of our redemption, our deliverance from sin’s curse. Someone must pay for our sins – ourselves or a substitute. The Lord, he is God, and he is just. His mercy is precious, for his mercy is holy, just, and righteous. And so, the Lord Jesus Christ agreed to become our Surety, to pay with his precious blood the cost of our sins so that God’s justice is satisfied. This gift of his Son is a love and a mercy we cannot estimate. The unending ages of heaven are too short to make more than a beginning in discovering the wonder of such mercy.
Pay careful attention, believer, to the words that describe salvation: atonement, redemption, ransom, propitiation. Atonement is the covering for us sinners by the blood of Christ’s sacrifice. Redemption is our deliverance from the dominion of sin and the wrath of God due to us for our rebellion. Ransom is the price paid to redeem the sinner so that he can justly go free, without any debt to justice to pay. Propitiation is the satisfaction the Lord Jesus paid to justice, the debt he satisfied, so that we are no longer under condemnation but may be justified through faith in him. The more we understand the person and work of Jesus Christ, the more we shall value God’s mercy – and then be motivated to show mercy to one another and to a lost and dying world. Thus, when the church turns Jesus Christ our Lord into a master therapist or the one who helps you get your way and have the life you want, mercy is attacked on both fronts – the wonder of God’s mercy to us in his Son at the cross, and the transforming power of the cross to help us be merciful to others. The best and surest way to resolve much of the bitterness in our relationships, to break the coldness of our hearts toward others, and even toward the Lord, is to spend regular time thinking about his saving work. Never tire of hearing the preaching of the gospel. As we grow in understanding of the price paid for us to have mercy, the more we shall grow in love for our Savior and for all men, so that all men will know we are Christ’s disciples.
Mercy Softens the Heart and Breaks Pride
As with love in the list of the Spirit’s fruits (Gal. 5:22-23), so with mercy here – there is a reason it is placed first. It is at the heart of all the rest, the headwaters of our Savior’s living waters that flow from the throne of God. How can we forgive others unless we live with the conviction that we are God’s forgiven, beloved children? We quickly lose our patience under provocations unless we remember how much we have provoked the Lord – but he has never stopped loving us. And this is really why the spigot of mercy often runs dry. We provoke the Lord constantly and test his patience, but we think but little or with dangerous shallowness about the depths of mercy he extends to us – and is extending even at this moment. We lament how bad the world is, but do we lament how bad we are? We often compare ourselves to others and especially the worst examples rather than to the Lord. Once we face even the smallest part of our wickedness against the Lord – ingratitude, withholding of praise, unbelief, anxiety, and selfishness – the root of pride will shudder under the blow of mercy. He has forgiven us? He laid our sins upon his beloved Son? We have provoked him, but he looks upon us with pity? Our hearts have been cold toward him, but he always loves us and is working good for us as his children? This is the softening that enables a sweet and kindly disposition toward life and toward others. A believer who is conscious of having been forgiven by the precious blood of Jesus Christ cannot withhold mercy, or remember the wrongs of others, or treat others with disdain. It is part of the family bond of the new man in Christ that we begin to treat one another as we have been treated.
Go, and Do Thou Likewise in Christ’s Strength
Some of our Lord’s most memorable parables are about showing mercy as we have received mercy – the Good Samaritan and the Unforgiving Steward. The Good Samaritan saw the beaten man, moved with compassion, stopped what he was doing, spent his own money to help. This is mercy, and we are commanded to imitate it. Again and again the weak and needy called out for mercy as our Lord walked by (Matt. 9:27; 15:22; 17:15; 20:30) – and he always stopped and helped them. He was merciful toward those who had no helper, who called upon him for mercy. However badly his own people treated him, he went about doing good and helping all who came to him. This is the principle of mercy – no thought of return, no worry about spending too much to help others, no exertion too great – no, just stand ready to serve and seek nothing for yourself, pray for others quietly, help them as you can, and never draw lines and say – “thus far and no farther will I go to help.” This is the opposite of mercy – mercenary, giving to receive, rather than giving because the Lord has given to us.
One way we fulfill our Lord’s command to “go and do thou likewise” is by sharing the gospel. Do you want a better country? We need redeemed men and women who are humbled by mercy and want to be ruled by the merciful Son of David, who is enthroned at the Father’s right hand. Our friends and neighbors are perishing. Every receiver of mercy is under the strictest obligation to share mercy – “Go home to your friends and neighbors and tell what great things the Lord has done for you, and has had compassion upon you” (Mark 5:19). All the redeemed share this same story – the compassion of the Lord. We have tasted that the Lord is gracious. We have been redeemed by the mercy of God our Savior. And in the telling of the story of God’s mercy in Christ, the gospel remains fresh to us. We grow in love for our Savior. We live and die blessing the Lord that he had pity upon us. Nothing like mercy to kill the root of bitterness, the peevishness we feel at the slights of others, and the cold indifference to the eternal misery waiting to fall upon multitudes all around us. Heaven is a place of great joy, but I pray there is a barrier that prevents us from hearing the howls of those yelling at us for not telling them about God’s mercy in Christ.
Do not, however, try to be merciful until you have drunk at the fountain flowing from the cross of Jesus Christ. The world’s mercy is twisted for this reason – it is trying to help others to make itself feel better, to atone for its own guilt, to give it some defense when it stands before God. The world’s mercy is indulgence of sin; God’s mercy is deliverance from sin. Some shy away from showing mercy for fear of being misunderstood. No one has ever been more misunderstood than God and his Son. But, he was willing to take the risk and to make sure he did not destroy the world but save it. And being forgiven through Christ, there is strength to forgive as we have been forgiven, to have and show real pity toward the sinful and miserable. Putting on mercy is impossible unless we are in a living union with Jesus Christ. He helps us forgive, go the extra mile, share the Lord’s compassion, and embrace even our enemies with love. Are we full of tender mercy? Do we want the Lord to burn up our nation for its present wickedness, or is our heart moved like his was to save the world by his mercy? If we have his merciful heart, we will open our mouths and share what he has done for us. Smug and silent men know little of mercy, perhaps nothing of mercy. Mercy received opens the well of tears, the fountains of compassion.
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