Take my life and wash my fears away...

I've been reading this devotion on a semi-regular basis that comes with my Bible app on my phone (yay technology...), and the devotion I read today talked about mercy.  The reason I post this here is I'm not sure I entirely agree with the point the devotion made.  The devotion started out with a long story of this guy who was a runaway slave who shared a cave with a lion.  He helped out a lion, then was captured and forced to fight in the coliseum (custom of the day for recaptured slaves), and then the lion that came out to fight him was this same one...so instead of death, the slave was spared because the lion recognized him as the guy who had helped him out.  Heartwarming story, right?  The devotion went on to say that "the person who shows mercy often receives mercy back, while the person who refuses mercy to others is cheated out of many good things."  That's a great thought and all, but to me, this seems completely contradictory of the Gospel!  The Gospel says that while we were all still sinners, Christ died for us, paying the punishment for our sins.  Christ didn't decide that Bob and Joe and Nate had showed mercy so he died for them...he died for ALL of us, undeserving sinners that we are.  He also didn't consider the reward He would receive Himself if He gave Himself up for us (geesh, that was a lot of prepositions...)

I went to Lifelight music festival over Labor Day weekend and had the opportunity to hear Francis Chan speak.  He reminded us of a great point-so often in churches we might discuss the Good News and how great the cross was (and it was and IS, don't get me wrong)-but we miss reminding ourselves that we NEED good news.  We are all sinners.  We are all damned.  Bleak, you say?  But that's the point.  This is why we need Good News.  We are sinners.  But Christ took these sins from us.  This is the definition of mercy-that God does not give us the fate we deserve.  Christ payed the penalty for ALL of our sins, showing us the true portrait of mercy:  He granted us freedom when we deserve death.

So this is why this devotion didn't sit very well with me.  We didn't do anything to deserve God's mercy, we just receive it and are therefore called to live as a reflection of that mercy.  We have been spared death!  What more fantastic of a gift could we receive?  This devotion, to me, showed a portrait of karma (you know, what goes around comes around?) more than of Christ's mercy.  We aren't called to do good to others so they will do good to us.  I mean, that's naturally (hopefully) going to happen.  But our true calling is to do good to others so that they will see in us a reflection of Him-a reflection of the perfect gift of mercy we are shown every single day as our sins are wiped clean.  His mercy is new every morning!  We aren't called to do good to others because of what we hope will happen to us in return.  I doubt Jesus considered what good would come to himself as he hung from the cross...

The reason I even hesitate to post this is because this devotion justified it's message with this verse from the Beatitudes:  "Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy." (Matt 5:7)  So anyone reading this, help me out!  What are you thoughts?  This verse does seem to justify this devotion, but this devotion doesn't seem to me to be the Gospel message as I have come to understand it.  How do these things fit together?  I definitely am not sure.

We have to be so careful when discussing topics like mercy.  It's so easy for us to turn mercy into karma...but they are not the same thing.  Karma says that we get what we deserve, while mercy says that we don't get what we deserve.  We do not have to earn our salvation, it's been given to us freely.  Thank God for that!  I don't know about you, but I don't feel like I could ever do enough to repay Jesus' sacrifice or earn the perfect love of my amazing God.  And that, my friends, is the Good News-we don't earn our salvation, we don't earn God's love, we don't earn the blessings that are so freely poured out on us each and every day.  We don't deserve any of that!  And that is the definition of mercy.  

Side note:  The title of this blog comes from the Casting Crowns song, "Mercy."  Funnily enough, it's been the song running through my head pretty much constantly for the past day or two.  Check it out here.