Trinity 4

Luke 6:36-42 - Trinity IV - June 23, 2013 

Be Ye Merciful

Almighty God, merciful Father.  That’s what we call God when we bow down to confess our sins.  We don’t appeal to justice.  We appeal to His boundless mercy.  We ask that He would mercifully spare us from our punishment, which His Son endured in our place, and that He would graciously give us that good, which Jesus has earned in our place.  Grace and mercy go hand in hand. But we see here in the relationship between the two that there is also a distinction worth noting. 

When we say that God is gracious, we are saying that He gives us what we don’t deserve to have.  Take, for instance, everything that we need to support our body and life.  All this God gives to us by grace alone without any merit or worthiness in us.  We don’t deserve what good things we have.  What do we deserve?  Well, this is where mercy comes in.  We deserve God’s temporal and eternal punishment for how we have lived.  We have treated our bodies as though we own them, and everything God gives us as though it were here to serve our own desires.   We act as though we deserved the things God so graciously bestows.  But we don’t.  We deserve wrath.  And yet it is in mercy that God declines to be wrathful.  In mercy, God chooses not to condemn us, but to forgive and acquit us. 

While grace is God giving what we do not deserve, mercy, on the other hand, is God not giving what we do deserve.  Grace and mercy go hand in hand.  In fact, we cannot know or understand how gracious God really is until we see and experience how merciful He is.

That’s why Jesus doesn’t tell us to be gracious as our Father in heaven is gracious, but rather to be merciful as our Father in heaven is merciful.  Not that we shouldn’t be gracious, of course — but Jesus is telling us that our relationship with our neighbor must begin with mercy, because this is where our relationship with God begins.  We come to know Him as our gracious Father only first where He reveals Himself as our merciful Father. —— God always encounters us as sinners.  So first we see what He spares us from.  Only then do we see how generous He has always been. 

Kyrie eleison.  This is the cry of the Christian Church.  Lord have mercy.  Faith cries for mercy, because this is where faith is borne, and this is what faith feeds on.  As the Holy Spirit, through David, in Psalm 51, teaches us to sing:

Have mercy upon me, O God,
According to Your lovingkindness;
According to the multitude of Your tender mercies,
Blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
And cleanse me from my sin. (Psalm 51:1-2)

In order to ask for mercy and receive it from God, we need first identify what it is we have done wrong and what we have deserved because of it.  As David continues in the next verses:

For I acknowledge my transgressions,
And my sin is always before me.
Against You, You only, have I sinned,
And done this evil in Your sight—
That You may be found just when You speak,
And blameless when You judge. (Psalm 51:3-4)

To be merciful as our Father in heaven is merciful consists in this: that we not judge.  By describing what we should do toward others, Jesus is actually describing what the Father has done toward us.  His blameless judgment He has declined to decree upon you.  He has answered David’s prayer.  This is your prayer too.  He sees your sins, because they are ever before Him and against Him.  But He doesn’t judge them.  If He were to judge, He would be blameless.  But He has mercy instead.  Jesus tells us not to condemn.  Because our Father has not condemned us.  Jesus tells us to forgive.  Because our Father in heaven has forgiven us.  Jesus tells us to give, that is, to be generous in our mercy, to put the best construction on others, and to help them in their poverty and weakness.  Because that is how the Father has been toward us.  

Jesus tells us Christians how to be, and in so doing, He tells us how the Father is.  True mercy is patterned after God’s mercy.  We need God’s mercy toward us in order to be merciful toward others. You can’t show what you don’t know.  You can’t give what you don’t have. 

Now, this here is simple enough.  It’s Economics 101.  Your output can only be as much as your income — (although our government doesn’t seem to understand this).  But, you know, even the sociologists do – Those who try to find an explanation for every sort of human behavior will arrive at this very conclusion: you can’t give what you have not learned.  A young man who does not see an example of men respecting women will be unlikely to respect his wife or other female acquaintances.  A young woman who does not see her mother esteem the blessings of motherhood will likely avoid it herself if she can.  The impressionable youth who does not learn the virtues of hard work and responsible sacrifice will be poorly equipped to live such a virtuous life himself. 

There sure seem to be perfectly good explanations for all sorts of aberrant behaviors, don’t there?  A leads to B leads to C.  Sure.  But an explanation is not the same as justification.  Just because a young man has only known a life of petty theft does not make it right for him to steal from you.  Just because a young woman never saw the good example of a committed relationship in her parents’ marriage does not make it right for her to fornicate or to divorce when her own marriage grows dull.  Just because a man did not grow up going to church every Sunday does not make it acceptable for him to skip out on hearing the word when it is preached to him by God’s servant.  It might explain it.  Sure. And such explanations might help us find a solution to the problem on a certain level.  But the real problem is sin.  And this sin must be reckoned with if we will arrive at more than an explanation.  This sin must be confessed before God if we will receive His justification. 

We do not deal with our own sin by finding explanations for why it is done.  We deal with our sin by identifying what God forbids and condemning it.  Explanations may abound: But I was hungry.  But I love him.  But she was beautiful.  But it’s my only morning to sleep in.  My flesh, your flesh might relate.  But God’s law condemns it. 

The only merciful thing to do toward sin is to do what God does.  And that is to expose it. It seems to contradict, though, the basic injunction of Jesus that we should not judge lest we ourselves be judged, doesn’t it?  So how does this work?  Is there some standard merciful technique or tone of voice that we can use to confront others who have fallen into sin?  Is there some method whereby we are able to both identify sin and yet not judge it?  Is it possible to condemn sin and yet forgive it at the same time?  After all, we see sin in others – others whom we love.  We want them to turn from their sin and live just as God wants it too.  But we don’t want to come across as judgmental.   And then here comes this indomitable decree of Jesus that every clever sinner has learned and used to censure every honest attempt to call good good and evil evil: Judge not, and you will not be judged. 

Well, the answer, of course, is found in Christ.  That is where mercy is found.  It is found where God judges sin – your sin, my sin, the sin of those who hold onto their sin in stubborn impenitence.  All sin was punished by God when God Himself took on human flesh and blood to bear that punishment.  He who lived the blameless life took the life of sin and covered Himself with it.  He claimed it as His own even as He cried for mercy from the cross.  But His cry was not for Himself.  It was for you and your children.  And in order for mercy to be shown to us who have deserved death, Jesus bore our just condemnation.  He was judged.  He was condemned by our merciful Father. 

There is no method of mercy.  There is a message of mercy.  There is no way to say it – to condemn sin – that judges the sinner less, as though by nuancing our words we are somehow fulfilling Christ’s command not to judge.  That’s not how it works.  We fulfill Christ’s command not to judge first by seeing our own sin judged in the Person of Jesus Christ.  Only then, when we confess our own sins, are we prepared to show mercy to others as our Father in heaven has shown mercy to us.  The heart of mercy is borne only in him who has himself received mercy.  So also, if we are to have a humble heart toward our neighbor – even as we gently correct him and lead him to repentance – we must first have a humble heart toward God. 

And this requires that our sin bother us.  We must be perturbed by our sin even as God is perturbed.  Our own weaknesses and failures must annoy us and grieve us.  But truth be told, the sins of others bother us more.  That’s why we judge.  That’s why we grow bitter.  That’s why we place ourselves above others as though we were in a place to condemn.  But we’re not.  We’re in a place to show mercy.  When we don’t, we act as though their sin bothers us more than our sin bothers God. 

But my goodness, look at where our sin bothered God the most — where God, who knows our sin better than we do, who sees every explanation, every extraneous circumstance, every excuse before we figure them out ourselves — this God not only identifies the source of our sins, but He suffers our punishment as though that source were found in Him.   We learn humility toward others, and gain a heart that joys in mercy in the same place where we receive mercy ourselves. 

When Jesus tells us not to judge, He is not abrogating the law that condemns sin.  He is teaching us where sin was condemned, where forgiveness was won, where the multitude of God’s tender mercies overflows.  In the cross of Jesus, we see the judgment of the law fulfilled.  When we confront others with sins they have committed, it is because we want them to see this judgment too.  When we take a stand against open sin flaunted in the public square, it is because we have seen God judge those sins on the cross in order to spare the sinners who commit them.  We want them to see this judgment too. 

Are we in the place of God?  Well, yes.  We are.  We are in the most privileged place God could put us.  We are in a place to show mercy – as His children – to be merciful as our Father in heaven is merciful.  God’s mercy is greater than His condemnation, because He whom He condemned was in Himself greater than our sin.  He was innocent for us.  He rose from the dead in order to give us for whom He suffered life that lasts forever. 

And it is this life that we give when we judge not, when we condemn not, when we forgive as we have been forgiven.  It is life that comes from God.  And the more we give, the more we have.  Because we are only able to give as much as we know we need.  What mercy do you need?  It is yours in Christ.  And so it is also yours to give away. 

Joseph asked if He was in the place of God.  Have you ever noticed the irony?  He was in the place of God.  He was second-in-command of all Egypt.  He had the right to behead each one of his father’s sons for how they mistreated him.  But he didn’t.  He left God’s judgment to God.  Because in so doing, God had taught him mercy – even toward those who hurt him.  He didn’t ignore their sin.  Mercy here did not consist of “don’t worry about it,” or “no harm done.”  No he said, “As for you, you meant evil against me,” – “you did,” he said.  He didn’t mitigate it!  – “but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” 

Joseph’s mercy was based on an honest analysis of sin that hurts, and of wisdom that makes good from all that is bad.  God means our sin and selfishness for good in the cross of His Son through which death many are kept alive – as you are today. 

Jesus is more than in the place of God.  He is God.   He doesn’t ignore our sin either.  Thank God!  He reveals its judgment.  And in so doing reveals the good that God accomplishes in spite of our guilt.  He speaks to us tenderly and kindly as brothers whom He loves.  He removes the plank in our eye that we might see clearly the needs of those who live under God’s judgment – and under our own judgment.  He shows mercy to us.  So we show mercy to others.  His mercy is our mercy.  We receive.  And so we give. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.