Blessed are the merciful:

The fifth Beatitude is “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”  Mercy is one of those words that pops up very often in the Bible.  It holds a lot of meaning and it is definitely a word that a Christian should be very familiar with.  Often the word mercy or merciful gets confused with the word grace.  They are incredibly similar but the one that I describe the two is saying grace is “getting what you don’t deserve,” where mercy is described as “not getting what you do deserve.”  An analogy that I would describe is that grace is like giving a gift to someone for no apparent reason where mercy is like the judge in a trial case says that the person does not need to pay the sentence that he has been sentenced to.  This is considered mercy because the person who has been sentenced to jail deserves that sentence, but has been shown by mercy by the Judge taking it all away.   

Jesus is the best example of showing mercy.  Jesus died on the cross for our sins.  He showed us a great deal of love and mercy when he chose to die for sins that he never committed.  He never ever did anything wrong, yet he was willing to go through all the suffering and pain for the people who had committed the sins, the people that he loved and created.  We the people have all sinned and not deserving of heaven, yet we have been given an opportunity to go to heaven.  He took away what we really deserved, which was death and no access to the Lord, by paying the price for us and then giving us an opportunity to go to Lord and heaven.   1 Peter 1:3  captures this concept completely when it says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” When we are reunited with God, we also are given a great deal of hope and love.  While we did deserve punishment and judgement, we have instead been granted a relationship.

The thing about mercy is that it is very wonderful to receive and very hard to give.  We live in a world that feels the need to make sure people are punished for the wrongs that they have achieved.  However, as we are commanded in Luke 6:36, “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”  Jesus showed us a great example for us to follow. I have thought a lot about this recently in my career as a teacher. As a teacher myself, there are times when obviously there are times when my students need to have a punishment for behavior that they had.  There are some behaviors that need to be corrected.  However, I have also had some moments where I have given mercy to students.  I have seen students be in a really rough spot emotionally or just really frustrated where I have excused behavior and opted to give a hopefully more meaningful conversation.  I know that in those rare situations, there are times when I need to give that conversation as opposed to give punishment so that way I can show that I really do care about the students.

I was struggling to figure out exactly what to write in this blog post.  Therefore, I looked up more information about this verse in order to write this blog post.  While reading an article in Desiring God titled “Blessed are the Merciful” by John Piper, he pointed out the first few beatitudes that come from a poor spirit that knows they are broken and therefore in need of Jesus.  We also looked at this when we looked at the blessings given to the poor in spirit, those who mourn, and those who are meek.  Those first three Beatitudes create a desire for God that then is promised to be filled and therefore one can act more and more like Christ.  The only way that we can give mercy is through our relationship with Christ.  We are not most likely capable of giving this mercy that Jesus talks about without this relationship with Christ.  Therefore, even though this is something hard, this is made to be a lot easier through our love of Jesus Christ.  

Overall I believe showing mercy goes with the idea that we need to fight going against our desire to seek revenge or seeking to do wrong to those who have hurt us.  We as people have a desire to seek revenge for ourselves.  If someone does wrong to us or the people that we love, there is a deep desire to get them back for the things that they have done.  However, that is not the way of the Lord and therefore not the way of the Christian believer.  This will also not in the end make us feel even remotely better.  What is the better option is to offer forgiveness for the wrongs that they have done against us and even possibly showing them extra kindness and offering to help them in any way that you can.  

In general, we have all made mistakes and have fallen short of the glory of God.  Therefore we need mercy from God.  Like we have been shown mercy and forgiveness for the wrongs that we have done to God, we need to be willing to also show that similar mercy to the people around us. They are not always deserving, but neither were we.  While this can be a hard action, it is found better through our relationship and dependence with Christ.  For the Christian believer who wants to be more and more like Christ as well as receive more and more mercy from God, we also have to be willing to give similar mercy.