Holy Father, Thy wisdom excites our admiration, Thy power fills us with
fear, Thy omnipresence turns every spot of earth into holy ground; but
how shall we thank Thee enough for Thy mercy which comes down to the
lowest part of our need to give us beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for
mourning, and for the spirit of heaviness a garment of praise?
We bless and magnify Thy mercy, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
When through the blood of the everlasting covenant we children of the
shadows reach at last our home in the light, we shall have a thousand
strings to our harps, but the sweetest may well be the one tuned to
sound forth most perfectly the mercy of God.
For what right will we have to be there? Did we not by our sins take
part in that unholy rebellion which rashly sought to dethrone the
glorious King of creation? And did we not in times past walk according
to the course of this world, according to the evil prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now
works in the sons of disobedience? And did we not all at once live in the lusts
of our flesh? And were we not by nature the children of wrath, even as others?
But we who were one time enemies and alienated in our minds through wicked works
shall then see God face to face and His name shall be in our foreheads. We who
earned banishment shall enjoy communion; we who deserve the pains of hell shall
know the bliss of heaven. And all through the tender mercy of our God, whereby
the Dayspring from on high hath visited us.
When all Thy mercies, O my God,
My rising soul surveys,
Transported with the view, I’m lost
In wonder, love, and praise.
Joseph Addison
Mercy is an attribute of God, an infinite and inexhaustible energy within the
divine nature which disposes God to be actively compassionate. Both the Old and
the New Testaments proclaim the mercy of God, but the Old has more than four
times as much to say about it as the New.
We should banish from our minds forever the common but erroneous notion that
justice and judgment characterize the God of Israel, while mercy and grace
belong to the Lord of the Church. Actually there is in principle no difference
between the Old Testament and the New.
In the New Testament Scriptures there is a fuller development of redemptive
truth, but one God speaks in both dispensations, and what He speaks agrees with
what He is. Wherever and whenever God appears to men, He acts like Himself.
Whether in the Garden of Eden or the Garden of Gethsemane, God is merciful as
well as just.
He has always dealt in mercy with mankind and will always deal in justice when
His mercy is despised. Thus He did in antediluvian times; thus when Christ
walked among men; thus He is doing today and will continue always to do for no
other reason than that He is God. If we could remember that the divine mercy is
not a temporary mood but an attribute of God’s eternal being, we would no longer
fear that it will someday cease to be.
Mercy never began to be, but from eternity was; so it will never cease to be. It
will never be more since it is itself infinite; and it will never be less
because the infinite cannot suffer diminution. Nothing that has occurred or will
occur in heaven or earth or hell can change the tender mercies of our God.
Forever His mercy stands, a boundless, overwhelming immensity of divine pity and
compassion.
As judgment is God’s justice confronting moral inequity, so mercy is the
goodness of God confronting human suffering and guilt. Were there no guilt in
the world, no pain and no tears, God would yet be infinitely merciful; but His
mercy might well remain hidden in His heart, unknown to the created universe.
No voice would be raised to celebrate the mercy of which none felt the need. It
is human misery and sin that call forth the divine mercy.
“Kyrie eleison! Christe eleison!” the Church has pleaded through the centuries;
but if I mistake not I hear in the voice of her pleading a note of sadness and
despair. Her plaintive cry, so often repeated in that tone of resigned
dejection, compels one to infer that she is praying for a boon she never
actually expects to receive. She may go on dutifully to sing of the greatness of
God and to recite the creed times beyond number, but her plea for mercy sounds
like a forlorn hope and no more, as if mercy were a heavenly gift to be longed
for but never really enjoyed.
Could our failure to capture the pure joy of mercy consciously experienced be
the result of our unbelief or our ignorance, or both? It was so once in Israel.
“I bear them record,” Paul testified of Israel, “that they have a zeal of God,
but not according to knowledge.” They failed because there was at least one
thing they did not know, one thing that would have made the difference.
And of Israel in the wilderness the Hebrew writer says, “But the word preached
did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.” To
receive mercy we must first know that God is merciful. And it is not enough to
believe that He once showed mercy to Noah or Abraham or David and will again
show mercy in some happy future day. We must believe that God’s mercy is
boundless, free and, through Jesus Christ our Lord, available to us now in our
present situation.
We may plead for mercy for a lifetime in unbelief, and at the end of our days be
still no more than sadly hopeful that we shall somewhere, sometime, receive it.
This is to starve to death just outside the banquet hall in which we have been
warmly invited.
Or we may, if we will, lay hold on the mercy of God by faith, enter the hall,
and sit down with the bold and avid souls who will not allow diffidence and
unbelief to keep them from the feast of fat things prepared for them.
Arise, my soul, arise;
Shake off thy guilty fears;
The bleeding Sacrifice
In my behalf appears:
Before the throne my Surety stands,
My name is written on His hands.
My God is reconciled;
His pardoning voice I hear:
He owns me for His child;
I can no longer fear:
With confidence I now draw nigh,
And “Father, Abba, Father,” cry.
Charles Wesley
