Paying Mercy Forward
God expects forgiven people to forgive others!
In response to a question about forgiveness in Matthew 18, Jesus shares the parable of the ungrateful servant. In this parable, a servant is forgiven an insurmountable debt (150,000 years’ worth of wages) that he owed his ruler. The servant then refuses to forgive a manageable debt of 100 days’ wages owed by another servant under the same ruler’s authority. As a consequence of his unforgiveness, the ruler handed him over to the torturer until he forgave the debt. What motivated the ruler to forgive his servant and what did he expect in return? “Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow servant the same way I had mercy on you?” (Matthew 18:33) Mercy received demands that mercy be extended.
There are three words in the Greek New Testament that are translated as mercy. Eleos (compassion, mercy, pity) refers to the general feeling of pity. Oiktirmos (compassion, pity) refers to the exclamation of pity at the sight of someone’s misfortune. Splanchna (bowels, inward parts, the seat of emotions) refers to a heart that goes out to someone and is the more emotionally intense word.
Spanchna is the word translated compassion in verse 27 of Matthew 18, indicating that the ruler’s heart was moved to pity to such a degree by the impossible predicament of his servant that he forgave the servant and released him from the debt. This is a deeply emotional word that describes a compassionate heart which moves to relieve someone from the consequences of their failures.
Later in verse 33, the ruler used eleos (pity) when the ruler confronted the forgiven servant for his refusal to forgive the second servant. The ruler’s point was, “Since I showed incredible mercy on you, are you not obligated to show pity for a much smaller debt?” There was an expectation that compassion received should invoke compassion to be given. To not pass the mercy on towards others dishonors the mercy that has been received. As a consequence of dishonoring this mercy, the ruler handed the unforgiving servant over to the torturers until he met his obligation to forgive his fellow servant.
Jesus’ point in using this story is that God has poured out his heart of mercy on us so our response should be to extend mercy to the people who have wounded us.
God expects forgiven people to forgive others!
A.W. Tozer defines God’s mercy as “an attribute of God, an infinite and inexhaustible energy within the divine nature which disposes God to be actively compassionate.” Because of His mercy, God is eternally predisposed to be kind toward sinful man. God’s mercy is what compelled Jesus to shed His blood to cover our sin debt and rescue us from the eternal punishment our sin deserved. What punishment did we deserve? Death! Death is separation from God, the breaking of mankind’s holy connection with our loving Creator. The punishment for Adam’s sin that passed to all his descendants was a severed relationship with God. We all, every single one of us, have earned death. But God……
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the boundless riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” Ephesians 2:4-7
“But God…” is one of my favorite two-word phrases in the Bible. It indicates that God stepped in and acted to change the situation. What motivated God to step in here? In God’s very essence there is a wealth of compassionate pity that moves Him to act so as to release us from the consequences of our sin. God’s mercy is not an “isn’t that terrible, I wish something could be done about that, but oh well” kind of pity. Oh no! God’s mercy is the “there is no hope for them to get out of this on their own, but I love them too much to not intervene, therefore I’m going to step in and take their punishment so they don’t have to” kind of mercy.
Tozer sums it up this way,
“But we who were one-time enemies and alienated in our minds through wicked works shall then see God face to face and His name shall be on our foreheads. We who earned banishment shall enjoy communion; we who deserve the pains of hell shall know the bliss of heaven. And all through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the Dayspring from on high hath visited us.”
Mercy is the compassion of God that motivates Him to release us from the punishment our sins deserve. It’s His heart toward us that moves Him to relieve us of the consequences of our bad behavior. God’s mercy is His divine pity on us. There is nothing we can do to earn it and we in no way deserve it. It’s His mercy, His compassion, His heart that caused Him to rescue us… nothing else.
It’s important to recognize that we are the ones who had no hope of settling our debt, no matter how much time we were given. It was God’s compassion and mercy that moved Him to save us. Therefore, how can we not allow God’s rich mercy to pass through us to those who hurt us? How can we not forgive forward?
