“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” (Matthew 5:7)
“A King wished to settle his accounts…one was brought that owed ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay…out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘pay what you owe'” (Matthew 18:23-35)
The challenge of Jesus to become people of mercy is harder than it sounds. The degree of difficulty seems to increase with each beatitude as each one builds on the next. To be “poor in spirit”, to mourn and to humble ourselves are prerequisites to making our relationship to Christ our central passion. Then, as we experience the overwhelming mercies of God, we become people who extend mercy to others. In this way, the Scripture tells us that the receiving and the giving of mercy are integral to each other. It is when we truly receive mercy from the Father that we can understand what mercy is…and is not.
We know that mercy does not keep score. If it did we could never overcome our spiritual deficit. We have each accumulated more debt, committed more wrongs, wandered farther than we could ever pay back, set right, or find our way home. Mercy is undeserved and cannot be earned. To get what you deserve is the opposite of mercy. The Bible tells us that we are “all sinners” and that the “wages of sin (what we deserve) is death”.
We also learn that mercy cannot be earned. We cannot do anything to get God to love us more. We cannot truly receive mercy until we first realize that we are helpless and unable to save ourselves. This is a particularly hard concept for our “you can do it” modern culture. In order to be able to experience mercy one must admit, “I cannot do it”.
The excerpt from Matthew 18 is from a parable that Jesus gave as the answer to Peter’s question about forgiveness, “How many times should I forgive someone?” This question in itself reveals how hard it is to understand true mercy. The servant in Jesus’ parable begs the master for more time and promises to pay it back eventually. This reveals that he is not in the proper attitude to receive the generous…undeserved mercy that is about to come his way and, since he could not experience mercy he could not extend it to his fellow servant.
O friend of Jesus, you were not forgiven because you promised to be a better person…you can never be good enough. You were not forgiven because you somehow deserved it…you do not. The mercy of God comes to you as a “free gift” based upon the everlasting love of our Heavenly Father. It is because of Him and only Him that you have experienced “so great a salvation” (Hebrews 2:3). The more you understand this…the easier it is to extend the same mercy to others.