Grace & Mercy

Today we will be dissecting the difference between the Grace and Mercy of God. This may be news to you but the owner of livinglifegracefully is called Grace and the owner of allthingschristian is called Mercy. As twins, everyone's reaction to our names is "wow this makes sense” or ”your parents knew what they were doing”. The more its been said, the more I recognise the truth in it but more importantly the need to understand what exactly the Mercy and Grace of God entail.

The first pivotal distinction that needs to be made is that:

Grace is a free gift we do not deserve, whilst mercy is God not giving us the true punishment we deserve. In His mercy, God does not give us punishment hell; while in His grace, God gives us the gift we do not deserve, namely heaven.

If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of hell or how it is compatible with a loving God, one way that helps me to grasp an understanding of it, is that if we take it back to the fall in Genesis.

“The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it. But the Lord God warned him, “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.” Genesis‬ ‭2:15-17

God gave Adam & Eve them everything but told them specifically not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good & evil. Unfortunately, Adam & Eve disobeyed God so the consequence of their action was death. Of course, if we follow the story they didn’t immediately die, but what did happen was a spiritual death - sin. What I found so interesting when looking at the etymology of the word sin is that it doesn’t always mean one specific thing. In the Old Testament alone there are 6 different nouns and 3 verbs to describe sin. Whilst they all pertain to different things, it makes it very clear that it is essentially separation from God. Due to this separation from God, we were unable to tap into our identity of being made in his image ( Genesis 1:26-27). Hence, God theorised the redemption plan of Jesus Christ and the Bible follows through with this pattern and anticipation Jesus who would May the ultimate sacrifice. Ultimately, when Jesus came - he came to pay the price for our sins. In other words, because God is a man of his word the promise he made back on Genesis 2 still needed to be fulfilled I.e. someone had to die so Jesus assumed the consequence of sin on the part of man, rather than inflicting death upon the sinner (which is us). This then leaves us with the choice to accept him:

But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the message concerning faith that we proclaim: 9 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is with your heart that you believe and is justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. Romans 10:8-10

If we choose not to accept him, we aren’t entitled to eternal life that is spoken about in John 3:16 & then essentially we have to pay the price of our sins ourselves - which is death. So essentially if we pick Jesus he redeems us from our sins, but if we don’t then we’re trying to repay our sins with our human self which is why hell is a never-ending game. Gods mercy, is the whole redemption story whilst Gods Grace is him giving us salvation. As you can see, they are both intertwined as in without Jesus and the redemption plan we wouldn’t have salvation. This is a very very simplified version but I’m sure we will speak on this further as the days continue.

Understanding this truth and reality allows us to appreciate God and understand his love for humanity. His grace is a free undeserved gift.

“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Romans 6:23 helps us put this into perspective - we deserve death (the wages of death is sin) but the gift of God is eternal life (grace). We were meant to pay for our sins but he gave us a free gift - his saving grace.

Aforementioned, I previously said grace and mercy are closely related but not the same. Your next question is probably, ”what does this mean?”. Simply put, mercy has everything to do with kindness and compassion (it show the nature of God not punishing us as our sins deserve). Whereas, Grace includes kindness and compassion, but also carries the idea of bestowing a gift or favour. Mercy is a subset of grace. Mercy and grace are two sides of a coin – and the coin is love. In the author’s own words, mercy is a compassionate love to the weak, and grace is a generous love to the unworthy. Humans are weak and unworthy – we all need God’s mercy and grace.

You may ask where is the Mercy and Grace of God most evident. Look at Jesus’ sacrifice - because of that we can have salvation. What we deserved was judgement but we did not get that - we got nothing close. We’ve been given a free pass from what we do deserve and on top of them we’ve been given an additional bonus of something we don’t deserve (heaven). Additionally,  In Christ not only do we receive eternal salvation we also receive forgiveness of sins, and abundant life (John 10:10 <https://biblia.com/bible/esv/John%2010.10>)—all gifts of grace.

Our response to the mercy and grace of God should be to fall on our knees in worship and thanksgiving. Hebrews 4:16 <https://biblia.com/bible/esv/Heb%204.16> declares, “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

So today friends, let’s thank God for his grace & mercy. I pray that we continue to live in the reality of his grace and his mercy! Amen!