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Gospel mercy v cultural mercy

February 21st, 2010 by Dan

This last month we have been thinking about what we value most as a church. Three of our core values are: missional, merciful, prayerful. And I have been thinking about how these three values are inextricable fruits of the gospel.

While reflecting on mercy, it occurred to me that gospel mercy is much different from every other kind of mercy I have encountered in our culture. Gospel mercy springs from the free grace of God to sin-soaked, enslaved rebels and traitors. And it completely changes how we understand mercy. Let me explain why.

In our culture, mercy is the right thing to do; indeed the culturally ‘hip’ thing to do. It is therefore done for two reasons, both flowing out of this cultural perspective. First, it is done out of duty. Second, it is done to feel good about ourselves, because we have done the ‘right thing.’ Take a look at all the publicly funded, publicly trumpeted charitable walks, races and ribbons and you will see this perspective all over the place.

Two results flow from the culture’s attitude. The first result is a subtle self- righteousness; we think we are pretty good when we do mercy. The second result is a subtle superiority over the person we are offering mercy toward. We are there for ‘their good.’ What we are really saying is that we are their good. ‘We’ are not ‘them’; we are better than them.

Do you see what lies at the heart of this mercy impulse? Selfishness; it is about us at the end of the day. We are dutiful, or we are good, or we are progressive and enlightened. It slides into being about us. And it divides us subtly, but surely, from those whom we would give mercy to.

That is why, when Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, he deliberately included two people who should have helped the robbed, beaten, half- dead jewish man on the Jericho Road. Jesus had both a Levite and a priest – the two classes of people in Jewish society tasked with helping to care for the poor- walk right by the beaten man. They were Jews; he was jewish. They were one with him – but they passed right on by; why?

Because when push comes to shove, when giving mercy becomes dangerous or inconvenient, duty is not enough. It does not give us enough motivation to give mercy – not when our life might be at risk – and in the case of the beaten man, the danger implicit in helping him on a dangerous road were higher than the benefits of feeling good about ourselves.

But in the gospel, mercy is much, much different. Mercy is what a loving God did to us. Mercy is what the holy God, who was under no obligation to help us, did for us. God came all the way down to us; to that beaten man on the road – because that beaten man was us, and is us. We are beaten, beaten and robbed by our sin, our selfishness, our rebellion. We are near death – spiritual death, because of our own choices. And God, like the Samaritan man seeing a hated Jewish stranger on the road, had no natural obligation, outside His own pure love and grace, to render any help at all.

Gospel mercy sees that beaten man on the road and says; ‘that is, really, me.’ Gospel mercy does not pity the broken, but identifies with the broken. Gospel mercy sees me in that addict strung out on the bench; gospel mercy sees me in that homeless shelter.

But gospel mercy goes even deeper. In the gospel, God did not just pick us up off the road and help us, as the Samaritan did for the poor beaten Jewish man. he exchanged places with him, took the beating for him- indeed, died on his behalf, for his healing!!!

So that broken man on the side of the road isn’t just , in some very real way, identified with me- he is also, in a very, very real way – identified with Jesus. That is Jesus i feed when I feed him; that is Jesus I warm when I give her a blanket.

That is mercy without self-righteousness; mercy without duty, mercy without reserve or qualification, mercy that will go the distance and brave the danger and bind up the brokenhearted and do whatever it takes to love my neighbor.

That is the mercy God showed me in His Son. That is the mercy in the gospel I believe and preach. That is the mercy in the gospel I am called to live and incarnate. The gospel of the free grace of God is the gospel of the radical mercy of God. They cannot be separated. May God unite them in my heart and my life today.