Matthew 5:7

“The essential act of mercy was to pardon; and pardon in its very essence involves the recognition of guilt and ill-desert in the recipient. If crime is only a disease which needs cure, not sin which deserves punishment, it cannot be pardoned. How can you pardon a man for having a gumboil or a club foot? But the Humanitarian theory wants simply to abolish Justice and substitute Mercy for it. This means that you start being “kind” to people before you have considered their rights, and then force upon them supposed kindnesses which no one but you will recognize as kindnesses and which the recipient will feel as abominable cruelties. You have overshot the mark.”

“Mercy, detached from Justice, grows unmerciful. That is the important paradox. As there are plants which will flourish only in mountain soil, so it appears that Mercy will flower only when it grows in the crannies of the rock of Justice: transplanted to the marshlands of mere Humanitarianism, it becomes a man-eating weed, all the more dangerous because it is still called by the same name as the mountain variety.” C. S. Lewis in God in the Dock

Matthew 5:7 Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy

The Lord’s subject here was not how we are to be saved, but who are saved. He is not here describing the way of salvation it all. He does in many other places; but he here gives us the signs and evidence of the work of grace in the soul. The beatitudes are like a ladder, you build upon each one to get to the other. Unless you are poor in spirit and broken and see how God has shown you mercy, then there is no way you can show mercy. The other four have to take place first before mercy.

How does a heart become merciful?

Where does mercy come from?

What is mercy? Or: what is a merciful person like?

Should a merciful person always show mercy?

Why will only merciful people find mercy from God in the judgment day, if salvation is by grace through faith?

How Does a Heart Become Merciful?

Mercy comes from a heart that has first felt its spiritual bankruptcy, and has come to grief over its sin, and has learned to wait meekly for the timing of the Lord, and to cry out in hunger for the work of his mercy to satisfy us with the righteousness we need.

The key to becoming a merciful person is to become a broken person. You get the power to show mercy from the real feeling in your heart that you owe everything you are and have to sheer divine mercy. Therefore, if we want to become merciful people, it is imperative that we cultivate a view of God and ourselves that helps us to say with all our heart that every joy and virtue and distress of our lives is owing to the free and undeserved mercy of God.

What Is Mercy? What is a merciful person like?

Let’s look at the opposite of Mercy to see what mercy is. Matthew 9:10–13.

And as he sat at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

This is a quote from Hosea 6:6 where God accuses the people that their love is like the dew on the grass. It is there for a brief morning hour, and then is gone, and all that is left is the empty form of burnt offerings.

God wants his people to be alive in their hearts. He wants them to have feelings of affection toward him and mercy toward each other. He does not want a people who do their religious duties in a perfunctory or merely formal way.

Jesus saw sinners as sick and miserable people in need of a physician, even though they were the rich money movers of the day, the tax collectors. They were sick. He had medicine.

But all that the Pharisees saw was a ceremonial problem with becoming contaminated by eating with sinners. Their life seemed to be a mechanical implementation of rules. Something huge was at stake here. But they could not see it or feel it. They were enslaved to the trivial issues of ceremonial cleanness when eternal sickness was about to be healed. The opposite of mercy is bondage to religious trivia.

Matthew 23:23–24.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!

The lesson we learn from the words of Jesus when he says, “I desire mercy not sacrifice,” and when he says, “You strain out a gnat and swallow a camel,” that is a great obstacle and enemy to mercy, the preoccupation with trifles in life.

When Jesus says, “Don’t neglect the weightier matters of the law,” he means, “Beware of going through the day doing only trivial things, thinking only trivial thoughts, feeling only trivial feelings.

Blessed are the merciful, if you want to be blessed, you must make war against the bondage of religious and secular trifles, and devote your life to the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, faith. Mercy is no trifle, it is one of the weightiest matters in all of life.

Mercy in the Parable of the Good Samaritan

Luke 10:25–37.

And behold a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all you mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have answered right; do this, and you will live.”

The man asked Jesus how a person should act who may expect to find mercy at the judgment day and inherit eternal life. The lawyer asks, “Who is my neighbor?” And Jesus answers with the parable of the Good Samaritan

Jesus replied, Which of the three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” [The lawyer] said, “The one who showed mercy on him.” And Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

The Opposite of Mercy

He says, “Go and show mercy like the Samaritan, not like the priest and the Levite.” The priest and the Levite stand for the same thing in the parable that the word “sacrifice” stands for in Matthew 9:13, namely, empty religious formalism.

Mercy is one of the weightier matters of life. It is always in danger of being neglected because of our preoccupation with trifles, whether secular trifles like watching too much television or consuming yourself with some hobby, or religious trifles.

What’s a religious trifle? A religious trifle is any religious activity (from preaching to praying, from teaching to tithing) that does not cultivate a heart that is taken up with the weightier matters of life, like mercy.

Should a Merciful Person Always Show Mercy?

Real life is very difficult for Christian people who seriously want live out their faith in a sinful world.

It is God’s will that as long as this age lasts there should be a mingling of mercy and justice in all areas of life. God’s will is that sometimes we recompense people with what they deserve, whether punishment or reward (call that justice). And God’s will is that sometimes we recompense people with better than what they deserve (call that mercy). In upholding the claims of justice, we bear witness to the truth that God is a God of justice. And in showing mercy we bear witness to the truth that God is a God of mercy.

How Can We Know When to Show One or the Other?

We can know by getting as close to Jesus as we possibly can. There are no hard and fast rules in Scripture to dictate for every situation. The aim of Scripture is to produce a certain kind of person, not provide and exhaustive list of rules for every situation.

The beatitude says, “Blessed are the merciful,” not, “Blessed are those who know exactly when and how to show mercy in all circumstances.” We must be merciful people even when we act with severity in the service of justice.

What About Salvation by Grace Through Faith?

Do we earn his mercy on judgment day because we showed mercy?
No, because an “earned mercy” would be a contradiction in terms. If mercy is earned, it is not mercy; it’s a wage. Be assured, if we get anything good at the judgment, it will be mercy, 100% mercy!

The only person who can show mercy the way Jesus intends, is by someone who understands how much Mercy God has shown them, and they have responded to His mercy by placing their faith in Him.