Mercy forgives.  Forgiveness does not undo the consequences of our sin; this is why you and I must struggle, continually, against those impulses to sin that come and knock, like opportunity.  God’s Word is responsible mercy.  We are all answerable to God.  We must each give our account.  God’s Word teaches us to practice responsible mercy and warns against irresponsible lenience.  Irresponsible lenience declines to call sin sin.  Irresponsible lenience would sooner call sin no choice, powerless to resist, freedom, journey, right for him, right for her, maybe not right for you but right for me.

So that Moses may know God better, God says of Himself, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion” (Ex 33:19).  Though that may sound arbitrary to others, let it sound sovereign to us.  Scripture often speaks of God’s mercy and praises Him for His mercy.  The only ones upon whom God will never have mercy are the ones who never sought God’s mercy.  The only ones who will have no benefit of God’s compassion are those who never desired or sought God’s compassion.  Do you think there are such people, or is the very idea just too alien or painful?

It’s Nehemiah, fully aware of God’s generous, blessed mercy towards both him, personally, and towards God’s broken people—it’s Nehemiah who prays that God would “show mercy [. . .] according to [God’s] great love” (Neh 13:22).  There’s the clue.  With God, mercy flows from love, great love.  Therefore, mercy, with God, is never permissiveness.  Mercy flows from love.  Love has expectations.  Who says, I love you, so do whatever you want to me, us, and yourself?  Love desires and works for the beloved’s best.  Love hopes to bring out the best in the beloved, God’s best.  Love does not release the beloved to his or her own willful self-destruction: I love you, so who am I to try to keep you from ruining your life?  God’s Word is God’s merciful, compassionate gift to us, to help us not to ruin our lives in the mistaken if oh-so-potent conviction that we are actually pursuing our highest and best self-fulfillment.  God never urges us to be filled with self.  God urges us always to be filled with His love: love after His own heart.  Is there an empty place in your heart?  Let God fill it with His love.  Let God fill you.  If God doesn’t, you can be sure that something that is not God will.

The one who loves has mercy.  The Father has mercy upon the wayward child throwing away the costly inheritance on the things that ruin life, allurements of the flesh, the things with which we stuff our empty places, only to realize, and not only too late, that these things, these deeds, cannot fill, only foil.  If we would have mercy on ourselves, we would cease self-indulgence, self-flattery, self-deception.  To have mercy on yourself is to turn to God who is mercy-full.

The opposite of mercy is what, merciless?  Cruel, unkind, zero compassion, selfish.  Self-indulgence is laboring to keep things your way, your terms, your standards because you’re really the one who matters most, after all.  Self-indulgence allows for others only to the extent that they can serve what you want.  Consider this—mercy is compassion and compassion is selfless.  Mercy does not focus on me but thee.  Mercy extends from me to thee.  Mercy includes, like fellowship.  Mercy lives by the rule of koinonia, and the rule of koinonia is love continually being chosen: each day, let us choose anew to be loving, not lax.  Mercy is not some benevolent but begrudging concession from on high.  Mercy is hearing the cry for mercy and responding with mercy.  Who cries out for mercy?  The one who needs it and knows it.  The one who is aware of the mess he has made, the chaos she has caused.  The one who cries out for mercy is the one who confesses from a broken, contrite heart.  Humility rejoices in mercy.  The proud don’t seek mercy, so mercy isn’t for the proud.

Not everyone seeks mercy.  Not everyone acknowledges the injury that needs the medicine of mercy.  Not everyone seeks mercy for what they have done and failed to do, said and failed to say.  Proverbs says, pointedly, “Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy” (Pr 28:13).  By the grace of God, Morgan has desired Baptism, and today she will be baptized; by God’s grace, we will see renunciation, love, and grace at work.  Confess—and renounce.  That’s repentance.  “Let the wicked forsake their ways,” Isaiah urges, “and the unrighteous their thoughts.  Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon” (Is 55:7).  That turn is the repentance to which Jesus calls.  God is always ready to show mercy; it only needs to be sought.

Jesus teaches, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy” (5:7).  Reflect the heart of God; not fools but wise people.  The change, the turn, can often—maybe almost always—take time, a long time, a lifetime.  Setbacks and reversals are all along the way.  We’ve maybe heard that saying: you’ve got to forgive yourself.  Yes, I get it—don’t keep beating yourself up about the past.  I prefer this saying, though: don’t give up hope.  I can’t forgive myself.  Even the Pharisees and scribes understood, though they failed to see: who can forgive sins but God?  Be merciful and you will receive mercy.  To be merciful towards yourself is to turn to God.  Do yourself a favor: turn to God, go to your knees before God, fall on your face before God, and beg for mercy, confessing what you’ve done and failed to do.  This is the good fall, by which God begins to reverse the effects of the bad fall, the fall of pride, ignorance, selfishness, willfulness.  My way always comes to an abrupt end with the free fall into the chasm.  God’s way lifts up.  Lift one another up.  Lift up those poor, benighted souls out there, bumping along from day to day, trying to make their way by their own light.  The merciful shall receive mercy.

Mercy aims at rehabilitation, recovery.  Mercy does not enable sin.  The merciful Father, receiving back his prodigal child, says the one who was lost has been found, recovered.  “Whoever would foster love covers over an offense” (Pr 17:9).  Want love to grow?  Don’t weaponize your hurt.  “Love covers over all wrongs” (Pr 10:12).  To cover over does not mean to forget.  It doesn’t mean act like it’s not there.  We do not simply obliterate from our memory the hurt that has been done to us, any more than others simply forget the hurt you and I have done to them.  Love covers.  Love has this covered.  God is love.  God covers.  We don’t often get justice in this life, but we can receive grace.  We also can give grace, show grace to others, especially when they are seeking it.

Forgiveness truly forgives.  This forgiveness, the forgiveness after God’s own heart, isn’t conditional; it doesn’t weaponize forgiveness: oh, I forgive you—until I choose to bring it up, like when I feel like hurting you.  People were hurt by things Jesus said, not because it was his desire to hurt but because too often in this world where hearts cling tenaciously to beloved falsehood, the truth hurts.  The wound must be probed; the wound must be washed; the wound must have salve applied and be bandaged.  This is not cruelty; it is not hate: it is mercy.  Mercy reflects the heart of God.

One of the most difficult things for me, maybe as a man but more likely just as me, is empathy.  Empathy does not stop merely with some imagining of what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes.  Empathy feels what it’s like.  Empathy doesn’t say “I know what you’re going through.”  Empathy weeps with those who weep and rejoices with those who rejoice.  I don’t think we must do this to have true compassion, but it certainly helps.  Where we tend to go awry is in making compassion, empathy, and mercy a matter of making excuses for sins.  Nobody is blameworthy, you see!  No one is responsible!  You’ve made a mess of your life and deeply hurt our relationship, but, of course, you aren’t responsible!  God does not excuse sins; He does not invent excuses.  God forgives sins, mercifully, with empathy and compassion, in Spirit and truth, from love.  The sure sign of His presence, His blessing, the sure sign of His love, is the Word.

There was an article about a pastor who has committed himself to a ministry of reconciliation.  He always makes one request of those to whom he is ministering: help me understand what it’s like to be you.  Bring me into your life; help me to see with your eyes, think with your mind, feel with your heart.  This is a beautiful, blessed ministry.  May we all desire to emulate and practice it in our own lives, our own dealings with others.  Above all, let us pray that, as we work at extending compassion and empathy to others, God would help us to see with His eyes, think His thoughts, feel with His heart, and act in accordance with His life-giving, life-saving Word.  As we do, we will begin to know mercy in all its holy purity, the truth of grace and the grace of truth.

Mercy is not laxity, permissiveness, or affirmation of what ruins relationship with God.  That is blindness.  That is willed ignorance.  That is complicity.  Mercy is gospel compassion: the Christ-like desire to see the ruined restored.  Paul shared this hope with his beloved Corinthians.  Some 1,900 years ago, when John’s congregation experienced turmoil and fracture, he wondered if those who went away had ever really been part of the body at all (1 Jn 2:19).  God knows!  For those who stray, wounding themselves and harming their relationships with us and with God, let us pray that they would return to the way, and the truth, and the life.  For those who go away to pursue another way, let us pray that God would turn them back to the church.  Mercy is for restoration.  Mercy forgives and calls back to the true way.  Mercy never endorses the bad way, the world’s way.

The restoration of the ruined one requires mercy: Gospel mercy; which means the mercy of truth spoken in love.  Truth is strong medicine; truth is merciful: it realigns us with God’s reality.  Truth must be applied with love; yes, love is very strong medicine, indeed, but it never can do its true work without truth.  Love desires the restoration of the ruined.  Love applies truth lovingly; love trusts that truth, lovingly applied, will do the work for which God intends it.  Truth will hurt, at first, because any contact with the wound will hurt!  In time, by grace, truth heals.  Why else does Jesus say that he is the truth, and the way, and the life?

And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.