DAY 142 - Have Mercy

Matthew 18:32-35 (NIV)  ³²"Then the master called the servant in. 'You wicked servant,' he said, 'I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. ³³Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?' ³⁴In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.  ³⁵"This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart."

James 2:8-13 (RSV) ⁸If you really fulfill the royal law, according to the scripture, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," you do well. ⁹ But if you show partiality, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors. ¹⁰ For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. ¹¹ For he who said, "Do not commit adultery," said also, "Do not kill." If you do not commit adultery but do kill, you have become a transgressor of the law. ¹² So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. ¹³ For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy; yet mercy triumphs over judgment.

We are all in the process of “turning into” someone. James saw some people in the early church changing from a very caring people to a very callous people, to people very much like the people in Roman society at the time.  What kind of person are you becoming? What kind of spirit has hold of you? What kind of spirit is growing inside you? A spirit of anger and retribution, or of mercy?

James says “judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy” more as a statement of fact than as a threat from God. Those who do not show mercy will not be able to receive mercy. Jesus said we are like a debtor who owed a great debt to God. Yet, though God forgave us that debt, we go out and refuse to offer the same spirit of forgiveness and mercy to others.

Mercy is having a heart for the fallen and the needy, having a heart for the need of the fallen. Mercy is a giving spirit toward the undeserving and even the self-destructive people of this world. Mercy triumphs over judgment. Mercy breaks the cycle of violence that grows a little larger each day, and breaks the callousness of people that grows a little harder each day. Mercy triumphs over the injustices done in our society and over the injustices done to us.

So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. We speak and act as those who have received God’s mercy. Acts of mercy free our own soul and are the best preventive medicine we have against the buildup of callousness and hardness over our own spirit. We have the power to choose and to leave behind us the merciless prison of anger and hurt and resentments. When we do acts of mercy, those acts of mercy triumph over the judgmental spirit in our soul. When we have mercy on others because we know God has had mercy on us, we receive mercy.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope August 22, 1999

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell Broyles