Mercifully Merciful
Matthew 5:7
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”
What does it mean to be merciful? Likewise, how is this a mark of the Christian? I think in our world today it is really easy for us to view mercy as simply the care of the poor. This is why we hear of things like “mercy ministries” because the idea of mercy has been reduced to simply caring for someone in a difficult situation. But this denigration of the concept of mercy is really a shame. Don’t get me wrong, I do think that it is merciful to care for the needs of the less fortunate, but we must recognize that it really is so much more than that.
If we were to simply hold to the idea that to be merciful meant to be kind to those in our world who were less fortunate, then this beatitude would effectively be saying that if we are kind to those who struggle then we will receive the Lord’s mercy. This is something we just can’t accept. It would make salvation something based on works which goes against the whole grain of the New Testament teaching on salvation. So what exactly does this beatitude mean? What is being talked about here?
The first thing we must recognize as we come to this beatitude is that it is descriptive of the person who is already a Christian. The Christian person is a merciful person, and they will receive mercy because of their faith in Jesus Christ which has made them into a merciful person. But what does it look like to be merciful?
I think we can look to two things to show what it means to be merciful as a Christian. First, we look to the quintessential teaching on mercy by Jesus. The parable of the good Samaritan. In this story, which we probably all remember from the flannelgraphs in Sunday School, a man is going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. On the way he is robbed, beaten, and left to die on the side of the road. In the story various Jewish people pass by this man and they neglect to care for him. However, a Samaritan stops while he is on his journey, cares for this man, and makes sure that his needs are met. Finally Jesus asks which one of these men proved to be a neighbor to the beaten man. The response to this question is, “the one who showed him mercy.” Therefore, in this story we get a glimpse of what mercy looks like. Mercy looks like not turning away from the needs of hurting people but helping them. To be merciful is to see someone hurting or in need, and to be willing to help them. Yet, who are the hurting?
To see this we look at the second thing of what is meant by “mercy” in Jesus’s own teaching. In the Gospel of Mark Jesus is reclining at table in someone’s house and the religious leaders see him eating with tax collectors and sinners. This angers them because a teacher like Jesus should not be fraternizing with this sort of riffraff. However, Jesus responds to their distaste for his choice of dinner buddies and says, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17). What we learn here is of paramount importance to our understanding of this beatitude. Who is it that is in need of help? Who is it that is in need of mercy? It is not just the physically suffering, but it is those who are “sick”. Those who are lost and still in their sin. Jesus knows the true spiritual condition of these people and he has a deep love and mercy for them.
What we have then is an understanding of mercy that looks like this; mercy is having pity for and a desire to help those who are in need. As previously said, this includes those who are physically struggling, but it also includes the spiritually lost. This is, I believe, is a huge paradigm shift for many Christians, and it should be. Many Christians today look at the state of the world and they lament its rampant sinfulness. We look at how lost people are in sexual sin, in greed, and so much more and it makes us angry. However, that anger towards the sin can be distorted by the Evil One to make us angry towards the sinner. What results is hostility towards the sinner where we are angry towards those who are “ruining society”, and our desire is to see their ultimate judgment more than their ultimate salvation. This is not mercy.
Remember, the beatitudes describe the true Christian’s character. The true Christian is to be merciful. Meaning that the true Christian will not see the sinner in their midst as an enemy or someone to be avoided. Instead, they will see them through the same eyes that Jesus saw them. They will see them as someone sick who is in need of a physician. This paradigm shift in our thinking radically changes how we interact with those in our lives who are not Christians. Your colleague who doesn’t believe and has openly admitted that they are opposed to Christianity is someone blinded by Satan and lost in their sin. You friend at university who believes in all sorts of practices that you think abhorrent as a Christian is deceived by their sinfulness and in need of a Savior. Mercy towards these people, therefore, looks like being a witness to the gospel in their lives. Mercy is the quality whereby we hear of these peoples lostness, and it immediately causes us to want to reach out to help them.
We know this is mercy because this is what God did for us in the person of Jesus Christ. Every single one of us—at one point in our lives—was lost in our sin. The beauty of the Gospel is that God saw our predicament, and instead of immediately enacting justice upon us, came himself to take our sin upon himself, and offer us his forgiveness through faith in Christ. What God did was see our plight and he himself, out of an abundance of mercy and grace, took upon himself his own judgement against sin so that we might be saved. This is what Jesus did for us on the cross and it is the ultimate act of mercy. God pitied us and, in his pity, died for us.
So when we read “blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy” we should recognize that what it’s talking about is the true Christian’s attitude towards sin and suffering in the world. The true Christian’s attitude towards these things is pity upon lost people and a desire to help them out of their lostness both materially and spiritually (Matthew 5:7). And the promise of this beatitude is that people who exhibit this quality of mercy—that is the character quality of mercy that all Christians have—will themselves experience the loving mercy of God through salvation because it is the people with this character quality who have been transformed by the good news of the Gospel. Therefore, let us be merciful. Let us see our neighbors, loved ones, colleagues, friends, and peers through the eyes of Jesus. Let us see and understand their lostness, have mercy on them, and share the good news of Jesus with them in love and grace.