DAY SIX: Happy Are the Merciful

Mercy is God presenting himself to us in the midst of our mess.

Tolerance is extolled as one of the greatest virtues in our society. But is mere tolerance really good enough? Would you feel appreciated if someone said to you, “I tolerate you”? Of course not.

We must move beyond tolerance to love. To tolerate another human is to view them in a subhuman way, but to love someone is first to imagine them as God sees them. If you want to know how God sees people, look at the cross.

But we do see Jesus—made lower than the angels for a short time so that by God’s grace he might taste death for everyone—crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death. (Heb. 2:9)

Loving people doesn’t require that we accept everything they do. It simply requires that we see people as God sees them—loved, valuable, and redeemable—and then treat them that way. I have yet to hear someone say they came to faith in Christ because a follower of Jesus was a mean-spirited jerk. It is God’s kindness that leads people into his kingdom (Rom. 2:4).

Jesus spent his life on us so he could bandage us in his righteousness, pour out the power of the Holy Spirit like oil on us, and cover us in his “blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” like the wine in the story (Matt. 26:28). Jesus was the only one rich enough to pay our sin debt so we could enter his kingdom.

For you know that you were redeemed from your empty way of life inherited from your fathers, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of an unblemished and spotless lamb. (1 Pet. 1:18–19)

What if we all showed a little more mercy to those around us? What if we moved beyond tolerance to love? To costly, self-sacrificial, Christ-like love?

Happy are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace! (Eph. 2:4–5)

READ Romans 5:10-11.

How does Jesus’ mercy to you move you to show mercy to others?

PRAY

Holy Spirit, considering the mercy that the Father and Son have showered upon me as a gift of grace and unfailing love, may my life be a song called mercy. May my response to your mercy be a life of mercy. In the name of the One who is mercy, amen.