God the Merciful

Well...I'm not really sure what to think right now. I just got finished doing a little meditation on the mercy of God and was looking for a good picture to display what I was thinking. When I googled "God the Merciful" in quotes and searched for images only, I was stunned at what I saw. The first and fifteenth images were pictures of deformed children with a caption of "God the merciful" underneath. Immediately I was saddened by what I thought I was seeing...is someone actually mocking God's mercy? Sure enough, if you go the website hosting those pictures, it is a very troubling site that does just that -- mocks the mercy of God by showing pictures of disgusting creatures as well as deformed children. Of course, it's an interesting but sad topic to discuss ... something like 'Why does God allow the innocent to suffer?' I'm not going to go into that tonight, but what I will go into is defending my God to the uttermost (not that he needs a defense), especially in the area of his great mercy.

A great place the start is usually the dictionary: mercy - compassionate or kindly forbearance shown toward an offender, an enemy, or other person in one's power; compassion, pity, or benevolence. In simpler words, how about withholding judgment on one who deserves it?

Too often, we the people of our day, tend to look at God incorrectly. And we definitely look at ourselves in a false light. We act as though God owes us something. We act as though we deserve whatever we want, we deserve to be happy, we deserve a perfect body and perfect health, we deserve to be loved not only by humans but by God himself. Well, that is simply not the case. Even with one sin against the Almighty (for that is who we sin against), we immediately become deserving on one thing: Hell. Does that sound unfair? It probably does to most, but that's the way it is...because God is holy and too pure to look upon evil, and we are certainly evil. But where does God's mercy come into play if he avenges his offenders by allowing us to suffer? Perhaps God isn't merciful at all, just holy and too good for us. Well I've got one response to that:

Oh! A perfectly innocent man taking the punishment for sinners of all nations! What I think we fail to understand sometimes is that this act is MUCH more than mercy. Sure, God could have been merciful and just gave us all a pass -- had compassion on our offenses. But, just as God is constrained by his holiness, he is also constrained by the fact that he is just. Our sins had to be punished. And God punished his own son for our iniquity. That's much more than mercy. So, to those who have the nerve to question God on his mercy and the audacity to mock it, know that even as you sin in doing so, that sin is paid for with the innocent blood of Christ.

I busted out a book I didn't know I had tonight, finding A.W. Tozer's The Knowledge of the Holy in my meditation of the mercy of God. Here are a few quotes that I wanted to share before I got off on this tangent.

We should banish from our minds forever the common but erroneous notion that justice and judgment characterize the God of Israel, while mercy and grace belong to the Lord of the Church.

He has always dealt in mercy with mankind and will always deal in justice when His mercy is despised.

If we could remember that the divine mercy is not a temporary mood but an attribute of God's eternal being, we would no longer fear that it will someday cease to be. Mercy never began to be, but from eternity was; so it will never cease to be.

Could our failure to capture the pure joy of mercy consciously experienced be the result of our unbelief of our ignorance, or both?

I implore you now... think for a second on the mercy that God has had on you. Why doesn't he just strike us down sometimes for the things we do? Why doesn't he empty his hand of us once we've despised him one too many times? How can he still give us great earthly and heavenly awards after all the selfish things we've done? Well, Christian, rejoice, for your record is spotless and trangressions paid for due to the mercy of God. Now, that's not really fair. But I'll take it.