The Biblical Illustrator
Psalms 62:12
Also unto Thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy.
The mercy of God to miserable sinners His distinguishing attribute
I. Its properties.
1. Free and sovereign.
2. Rich and exceedingly abundant.
3. Effectual.
4. Comprehensive.
5. Perpetual.
II. The proper results of this truth upon ourselves.
1. Let us take care to seek God’s mercy in time.
2. Be encouraged to pray.
3. Let humble believers trust and not be afraid.
4. Thank God for His mercy.
5. Imitate it. (G. Burder, D. D.)
The mercy of God
One is at first sight tempted to amend the psalmist’s saying, and for “mercy” to substitute “justice.” It seems characteristically just, rather than merciful, to render to men according to their works. But let us emphasize this word “his.” Let us reflect that in what a man does there are elements which others have contributed, and for which others are responsible. It then begins to dawn upon us that some discrimination is possible, and that such discrimination is merciful. When we separate from a man’s work that which is not strictly “his,” but the work of his parents, or his teachers, or of the spirit of his times, even a bad man seems less culpable. Some, but less than all, of the wrong-doing that we see in him was really his. The savage who delights in torturing his prisoners, the persecutor who kindles the fagots for heretics, need the benefit of this discriminating word, “his work.” Loss of sleep or dyspepsia may induce one to acts of peevishness or moroseness that are not wholly his work. The overworked pointsman who falls asleep causes a catastrophe not all his work. These discriminations society cannot always make and at the same time sufficiently safeguard public interests. But we may be assured that He who only is competent to unravel the complicated web does discriminate, and allots to each man retribution for no more than is strictly his. That there are such discriminations, however beyond our power to draw them truly, gives us a basis for charity in our estimate of those who excite our intensest reprobation. When we see a Nero or a Borgia, and are taxed to account for such an excess of wickedness, we may reasonably think it represents the accumulated contributions of more lives than one, and a responsibility in which more than one has share. Admitting all this, we must equally insist that no man can escape responsibility for the work which is strictly his. One may say, if he will, that man is nine-tenths environment, but one must not cancel the residual fraction for which the responsibility is his. No ship is started on the voyage of life with rudder lashed. In the most ill-starred, storm-crippled life, after all discrimination of the contributing forces which appear in the result, there is a certain remainder due to the free helm in the responsible hand--a work that is his, and a retribution due to that. What we have now to observe further is, that not only is the Divine discrimination merciful, but the retribution is also merciful. What should mercy seek first but to secure men against wreck and loss? And how can it secure them but by securing the moral order in its established lines of cause and consequence? We can do no more merciful thing for ourselves and our neighbours than to give the law of consequences full sweep, in rendering to each according to his work. To interfere, under however good a name, with the necessary trace of a growing character that is supplied by the law of consequences, is not mercy, but murder. For a man to imagine that he can lie, or steal, or scamp his work to his neighbour’s damage or danger, and escape the evil consequence, or any part of it, is to think the most immoral and dangerous thought. And it is merely helping somebody to think such thoughts--taking down the guard-rail on the path along the edge of the precipice--when we allow a weak sympathy to interfere with the hand that is laying on some guilty back the scourge of just consequence. Is there, then, no place for leniency? May not one say with King Arthur in excusing Sir Bedivere--
“A man may fail in duty twice,
And the third time prosper”?
Unquestionably; and yet who will gainsay that, as things go, the danger is not of too little leniency, but too much? No doubt it sounds charitable to say, “Let him off; he won’t do it again.” But mercy demands security for that, not only for society, but for the wrong-doer himself. Nature takes this security of us by enforcing her rule, Pay as you go. Plato profoundly remarks, “That it is better for a man to be punished than to escape. It saves him from a worse punishment in the degradation of his character.” So in Mrs. Ward’s Marcella, Raeburn says of the homicide Hurd, “I believe that if the murderer saw things as they really are, he would himself claim his own death as his best chance, his only chance, in this mysterious universe of self-recovery.” To maintain moral worth, to save manhood from degradation, true mercy prefers the sound way to the soft way, and renders to each according to his work. What, then, becomes of the forgiveness of sins? Certainly, no cancelling of the spiritual law, “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Forgiveness works no cut-off of consequences. It merely shifts the train of consequences from a down-grade to an up-grade, from direction toward the outer darkness to the Father’s house. It is the transformation of She consequences which issue from our indestructible past that forgiveness effects. The evil deeds which cannot be annihilated, and whose causative power must abide in our life either for evil or for good, cannot be cancelled by forgiveness, but only converted from a fatal to a vital issue. So the muck-heap, which above ground poisons the air, fertilizes the soil when put underground. The evil that is buried by forgiveness: becomes a source of fruitfulness to the new-sown seeds of better resolution. (J. M. Whiten, Ph. D.)
For Thou renderest to every man according to his work.
The mercy of God seen in judgment
We have no difficulty in accepting the merciful character of God until we enter the realm of retribution and judgment. In the nature of the ease our conclusions must be imperfect, from our meagre knowledge.
I. The general law. God administers in perfect equity the legitimate results of every man’s efforts to himself. The term “render” has the germinal sense of restoring, paying back, or making up the account of--“rendering judgment.”
1. This law--or method of God’s procedure--is universal in His dominions. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” Material, intellectual, moral. Yet we must not get the idea of law as above the Lawgiver or Executor. Unintelligent power is not a swaying sceptre: “Power belongeth unto God.”
2. Nor must we think of God as held by any force, aside from His own wisdom, in the production of successive events in the universe: “There is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God.”
II. There are two sides to the tremendous fact of law.
1. The awful side. The side which thrills with its tremendous import--which threatens and yet invites. In its security of the reproduction of human actions. In nature. The fifth reproduction of a grain of wheat is 25,600,Isaiah 25:25,Isaiah 25:25 grains. Plant a cottonwood tree beside a stream in western prairies, and soon you will fringe the streams for ten thousand square miles. Memory is a reproductive spring of power as lasting as the soul. Panoramas, words, acts, buried for fifty years, spring from their graves with the bloom of youth upon them. How subtle, majestic and awful this power in moral realms! How large a sum of human life is fashioned by the subtle power of potent influence!
2. The other side of this awful fact of law is a glorious one.
(1) Without it there would be no permanency in the domain of active matter or spirit. Permanency, and the sense of it, is essential to satisfaction in every field of pursuit. We struggle for it in our contest with nature, with the world, with life itself. This underlies our great hope of heaven: it will abide.
(2) Without it there would be no incentive to effort.
(3) Without it there would be no standing and universal warning against sin, or incentive to virtue. The Judgment Day is to test our whole being and doing. The mighty environment of law is to hold our destiny and establish our glory or seal our doom. Sin will generate an awful cyclone. Righteousness will sail into a quiet harbour of eternal placidity and safety.
(4) There seem difficulties. It is hard for us to see and say, at all times, “the Judge of the whole earth doeth right,” and “His mercy is unto children’s children.” In the chamber of death, specially of the young. In the wake of the cyclone. But think: it is after the war-cloud has cleared away that we see and feel the glory of results. When we are so infatuated with one department of life as to lose sight of the import of its outcome, it is difficult to see that mercy inspires justice and law. Yet so we teach our children by painful discipline, if necessary. Is it unkind to hold the boy to his books though he squirm and cry? No; the delights to come from acquired mental power lead us in kindness to hold him to toil now. When we judge of Divine administration from the narrow limitations of human judgment. How often, if we only knew, would our tears be turned into smiles! A mother prayed for her sick young son that “his life might be spared whether it Was God’s will or not,” and he grew up to curse her life and break her heart, Two lessons this life under law should teach us--
1. Faith in God: as an Administrator--Governor--wise, powerful, merciful, good. A personal Friend.
2. Obedience to His commands. How shortsighted the soldier who stops to question the orders from headquarters! (M. D. Collins, D. D.).