What Makes God, God? His Mercy: Ephesians 2:4

 

Ephesians 2:4- "But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,..."

Have you heard the riddle, which came first, the chicken or the egg? I heard someone recently explain why the chicken must have come first, because otherwise where did the egg come from? Seems like a sensible argument. 

The grace and mercy of God offer the same kind of conundrum. Which comes first, the grace or mercy of God? Or are they concurrent acts of a loving God on our behalf? The point of grace and mercy does not relate to how they benefit us, but rather they reflect God's providential choice to relate to us. 

I like to think of God's grace and mercy acting like a door. John wrote in Revelation 3:20, "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me." Grace prompted the Father to knock so we could open the door at the sound of His voice. But mercy keeps the door open. While there are many reasons why the door could close shut, God's mercy always makes it possible for us to enter in. 

So grace and mercy play a specific role for our growing knowledge of God. Grace exemplifies the sovereign choice of God to know us in spite of who He is as the holy God. Mercy makes it possible for us to know Him despite who we are as human beings warped by transgression, stained with sin, and in mortal need of a loving Savior. 

Our key verse points us to the nature of mercy from a holy God and loving Savior. There are two truths that capture the essence of God's mercy toward us. Notice that mercy originated from God's great love for us. "But because of His great love for us," the holy God acted as the loving Savior by making us "alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions" (Ephesians 2:4-5). 

Prior devotions have spoken much about the love of God toward us. But they have not addressed the greatness of God's love for us. The greatness of God's love comes from the word polus, which describes the vast amount of love that God extends toward us, much like the words much or many refer to a collective quantity of an object. 

By using polus, Paul qualifies God's love with a quantifiable description. Grace captures the unconditional quality of God's love. But mercy conveys the width, length, height, and depth of God's love (Ephesians 3:18). God not only extends mercy because of who He is, but He also lavishes mercy in limitless amounts because of His vast love for us. 

Notice after David's sin against God with his mistress Bathsheba, he makes this declaration in the first verse of his psalm of repentance. "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions" (Psalm 51:1, ESV). David understood God's mercy only by experiencing His unending love and incomprehensible compassion, both of which erased the guilt-ridden stain of his unimaginable transgression.  

I think David described the abundance of God's mercy because we think of sin quantifiably. We measure sin, don't we? We compare sins? We ponder which ones are the worst? No matter how great the sin, though, God's mercy is always greater (Psalm 86:15-16). We tend to count ourselves out because of our transgressions, but because of mercy, God always counts us back in. That is the reason why the door always remains open. 

But mercy is not only quantifiable, but it is also a construct of time. Here is what I mean. Lamentations 3:22-23 says, "The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness" (ESV). Mercy relates to time. Because of God's mercy, there is always another chance. There are new opportunities. There are new doors through which to walk. God's grace may swing the door wide for us to enter. But God's mercy acts as His doorstop. 

His mercies never end, because every sunrise follows the finality of every sunset. Because of mercy, there are no sunsets on second chances. There are only sunrises with rays of light proclaiming that His mercies are new with the morning. 

We see this truth in the stories of countless Biblical characters. Adam and Eve disobeyed, but God still asked, "where are you?" (Genesis 3:8-9). Abram lied, but God still directed his steps (Genesis 12:10-20). David committed adultery (2 Samuel 11), but he still reigned as king. Peter denied his Lord, but his Savior never forsook the broken disciple (John 21:15-19). Paul imprisoned and killed the earliest disciples of the Son of God, but Jesus still showed up (Acts 9). God's great mercy acted as the silent player behind the patriarchs' restored positions and new opportunities. With mercy, the sun always rises in the morning.   

Life Application

There are two ways to respond to God's mercy for your life today. 

First, never think that forgiveness happens in a vacuum. Mercy makes God's forgiveness possible. And it makes your forgiveness possible for someone else. And, by the way, mercy makes it conceivable to forgive yourself. The opposite of mercy is not justice. Mercy's antagonist is guilt. Guilt has no place in the Christ-follower's life with Christ. Mercy drives the truth of Romans 8:1 home when Paul says, "therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). How is there no condemnation today if your yesterday was a miserable failure? Because mercy pierces the darkness of guilt's sunset with a sunrise of hope that glimmers in the new morning dew.    

Next, you are in control of your day because of mercy. Sin and death succumbed to mercy when Jesus declared forgiveness on the cross. The cross changes the storyline of your life. The cross is God's divine statement of mercy. The cross makes every day a new day regardless of what happened yesterday, or what may occur tomorrow. 

Peter declared that Jesus died for sins "once and for all" (1 Peter 3:18). That means Jesus covered every sin by His one act of sacrifice with one drop of blood for all people for all time. That means today is a new day. Don't let the enemy encumber you with guilt. Don't let the enemy remind you of past sins. Remind him of these two eternal truths:

• You now stand under God's great banner of love because Christ died once and for all people. 
• You now rest under God's great banner of love because Jesus died once and for all sins throughout all of time. 

Without Jesus, we must remove the greatness of God's love. Without Jesus, the sunsets represent an eternal end one day. Without the cross of Jesus, the sunrise is just a natural phenomenon with no revealed promise of mercy. Just as today's rainbow that first appeared eons ago still proclaims God's covenant of mercy for all of humanity for all of time (Genesis 9:11-16), so every sunrise announces the absolute assurance of God's mercy that was first declared with a sunrise one early Sunday morning when the Son of God stood silhouetted against the light of glory piercing the silence and darkness of death and the grave! 

So the next time you walk through a door remember that God's grace is always greater than your transgression. And the next time you enjoy an early morning sunrise, remember God's mercies are new every morning. O God, great is Your Faithfulness!

Worship our eternal, loving God for His great and faithful mercy! 

"What Mercy Did For Me [feat. Crystal Yates Micah Tyler Joshua Sherman]" 

Scriptures for further study

Study Question 

What new insight or established truth has God confirmed to you about His mercy through this devotion and/or these scriptures?

Psalm 86:15-16 

How do these scriptures describe God? 

How do those characteristics help you understand God's mercy toward you?

Lamentations 3:22-23

How do you think God's faithfulness relates to His mercy?

How have you seen God's faithfulness and mercy in your life?

Ephesians 2:1-10

Compare and contrast grace and mercy in this passage based upon God's self-initiated love toward us. 

How do you see God's grace at work?

How do you see God's mercy at work?

Which came first? Grace or Mercy?