The Beatitudes - Part 5

Blessed are the merciful

20^th June 2008

The fifth beatitude is:

Matthew 5v7
Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy.

The world says "vengeance is a dish best served cold", relishing the opportunity to hurt those who have hurt us. It also says "do unto others before they do unto you", or “get your retaliation in first”.

Jesus says “blessed are the merciful”.

We Christians really should know about mercy. We became Christians when we turned to God, mourning our emptiness, and turned from our way of doing things to His way, and we received His divine forgiveness. We understood our need of righteousness, and God gave us His righteousness through Jesus's blood. We were born again, we entered into eternal life, we were adopted into God’s own family, we were given His Holy Spirit. All this was due to His mercy.

Jesus told a parable about a man whose master forgave him a large debt. The man refused to forgive someone else a small debt, and his master was so angry he threw him into prison (Matthew 18v23-35). Jesus is teaching here that, since God has forgiven us all our sins, we should be willing to forgive the sins that anyone sins against us.

We, who have been shown God’s mercy, must respond by showing mercy to others. Remember Jesus’s teaching on the Lord’s Prayer:

Matthew 7v9-15
This, then, is how you should pray:
‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’
For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

Let me go further, and say that if we refuse to forgive those who sin against us, it must call into question whether we are really Christians at all.

How can we experience God's forgiveness and still hold grudges against one another? How can we accept His eternal life and still wish harm on anyone? How can we have our debts to God fully paid - when we were incapable of paying them ourselves - and still resent one another? How can we cry out to God because of our own unrighteousness and yet fail to forgive others who are unrighteous?

We have hungered and thirsted for righteousness and have received from God the righteousness of Christ. Surely we can show mercy to others.

And to live in right relationship with God, we need to heed what Jesus said:

… If you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

Not only in the life to come, but also in this life, I want to know God as well as I can, to serve Him as much as I can, and to receive as much of His blessing as possible. To refuse to forgive others is desperately wrong of us, but it’s also very stupid; it cuts us off from God’s blessing. In the words of Jesus’s parable in Matthew 18v32-35:

Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow-servant just as I had on you?’
In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.

Lord have mercy on me, a sinner. And Lord help me to forgive those who sin against me.