Matthew 5:7 (Merciful)
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy” (Matthew 5:7).
Up until this week we have studied Beatitudes that focus on the inner self of man—character attributes that reveal how the transforming power of Christ changes a man from the inside out.
It is vital, though, that we know where we have come from in order to understand Christ’s proclamation that the merciful are indeed blessed. We need context for clarity’s sake to better grasp the depth and breadth that our Lord and Savior sets before us as we grow in our understanding of this prophetic sermon.
Therefore, let us summarize the relationship between the first four Beatitudes and the fifth installment as follows.
“I am poor in spirit; I realize that I have no righteousness; I realize that face to face with God and His righteousness I am utterly helpless; I can do nothing. Not only that. I mourn because of the sin that is within me; I have come to see, as the result of the operation of the Holy Spirit, the blackness of my own heart. I know what it is to cry out, ‘O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me?’ and desire to be rid of this vileness that is within me. Not only that. I am meek, which means that now I have experienced this true view of myself, nobody else can hurt me, nobody else can insult me, nobody can ever say anything too bad about me. I have seen myself, and my greatest enemy does not know the worst about me, I have seen myself as something truly hateful, and it is because of this that I have hungered and thirsted after righteousness. I have longed for it. I have seen that I cannot create or produce it, and that nobody else can. I have seen my desperate position in the sight of God. I have hungered and thirsted for that righteousness which will put me right with God, that will reconcile me to God, and give me a new nature and life. And I have seen it in Christ. I have been filled; I have received it all as a free gift.
Does it not follow inevitably that, if I have seen and experienced all that, my attitude towards everybody else must be completely and entirely changed? If all that is true of me, I no longer see men as I used to see them. I see them now with a Christian eye. I see them as the dupes and the victims and the slaves of sin and Satan and the way of the world. I have come to see them not simply as men whom I dislike but as men to be pitied. I have come to see them as being governed by the god of this world, as being still where once I was, and would yet be but for the grace of God. So I am sorry for them. I do not merely see them and what they do. I see them as slaves of hell and of Satan, and my whole attitude toward them is changed. And because of that, of course, I can be and must be merciful with respect to them. I differentiate between the sinner and his sin. I see everybody who is in a state of sin as one who is to be pitied”
The ability to show mercy to others is an incredible gift that cannot be taken lightly. It was the power of mercy that enabled Stephen the martyr to proclaim, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:60), as he was being stoned for proclaiming the name of Jesus Christ.
It was the power of mercy in the parable of the Good Samaritan that drove the Samaritan, not a priest or Levite, to have pity on a man left for dead and care for his neighbor when no one else would (Luke 10:30-36). And it was the power of mercy that left our Creator God in such a state of pity and compassion to send His one and only Son to save a world of sinners in the midst of their ongoing law breaking by suffering execution for their sake.
Let us not confuse grace with mercy though. While grace is especially associated with men in their sins, mercy focuses on men in their state of misery. Moreover, grace focuses upon sin as a whole while mercy targets the consequences of sin. And it is relatively easy to test how merciful you are based on the next time 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 willing 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. This person is in your power; is there a vindictive spirit, or is there a spirit of pity and sorrow, a spirit, if you like, of kindness to your enemies in distress.”
The litmus test of mercy is simple, and in truth, it reveals whether a man has developed the ability to apply the first four Beatitudes in his life. Mercy is not something that can be faked because it flows from an outpouring of mercy shown unto you via your repentance unto God.
Hence, we are subject to showing mercy to our fellow man because our own necessity for mercy unto God demands it, and thus we gladly welcome the opportunity to give mercy unto others as we undeservingly have been granted the same from our Father in Heaven.
