GOD-MERCY

God's interest is to magnify the fullness of His glory by spilling over in mercy to us. Therefore the pursuit of our interest and our happiness is never above God, but always in God. God's greatest interest is to glorify the wealth of His grace by making sinners happy in Him.

John Piper

There is mercy with the Lord; this should encourage the miserable to approach Him; this informs the fearful that they need bring nothing to induce Him to bless them; this calls upon backsliders to return to Him; and this is calculated to cheer the tried Christian, under all his troubles and distresses. Remember, mercy is like God, it is infinite and eternal. Mercy is always on the throne. Mercy may be obtained by any sinner.

James Smith
Quoted in: C.H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David, Psalm 130:7.

God really loves us and wants us to turn away from our sins. If He passed final judgment now, we would have no such opportunity; that would be the end of time for us. He has sufficient provocation to do so; that we recognize. We have sinned enough to deserve His infinite wrath at any moment, but we do not receive it. We have an opportunity, therefore, to turn away from our sin and to turn to God. Instead of continuing to offend Him, we can plead for forgiveness and seek to please Him. While there is yet life, that is possible.

John Gerstner

The Problem of Pleasure, Soli Deo Gloria, 2002, p. 20.

Mercy even with us is an optional virtue; we do not have to be merciful. We usually admire people who are, but we do not say that people must be so. We say everybody must be just. We say, for example, an employer, if he agrees to pay a certain wage, must pay that particular wage. If he does not pay it, then he is unjust and is liable to a lawsuit. All our contracts are based on the integrity and honesty and justice of people with whom we do business. They are actually subject to trials and imprisonment and even execution if they violate their duty of man to man. What about mercy among men? We love it. We admire it. We encourage it. We sometimes practice it. But we do not say mercy is obligatory… If this is true even of human affairs, we can see immediately that God does not have to be merciful. He gave us life and conscience. He gave us intelligence to meet our obligations, and He has a right to hold us responsible for using them. He has no further obligation to forgive us if we do not. We say that the Judge of all the earth cannot do wrong, but we cannot say that the Judge of all the earth must be merciful.

John Gerstner

The Problem of Pleasure, Soli Deo Gloria, 2002, p. 21-22.

Only the Christian gospel presents….a way in which justice and mercy kiss each other… First, Christianity confirms the fact that justice must be satisfied. Sin must be condemned according to its demerit. This means eternal doom. The sinner must be damned because God must be inexorably holy and just. His all-powerful Being must vindicate His all-holy Being. Christianity never compromises the ever-blessed purity and excellency of the divine nature. Second, Christianity alone finds a way to satisfy infinite justice and provide infinite mercy at the same time. What no other religion has dreamed of, Jesus Christ has accomplished. He underwent the infinite wrath of God against sin and lived to bestow His mercy on the damned sinners for whom He died. The infinite Son of God took upon Himself a human nature in which He underwent the full fury of the divine wrath. The omnipotent God satisfied His violated holiness by punishing sin completely in His blessed Son, who “became sin” for His people. The justice of God was vindicated in full in the substitute, His own Son, our Saviour dear. He survived that awful vengeance and rose victor over the grave by the power of His own divinity. Now He offers to every sin-sick and “pleasure” – burdened soul an everlasting mercy. Perfect mercy and perfect justice in the gospel of the crucified.

John Gerstner

The Problem of Pleasure, Soli Deo Gloria, 2002, p. 24-25.

God has no obligation to sinful men except to condemn. He may or may not, as His wisdom dictates, exercise mercy upon them. But mercy is not something which God must offer anybody. He offered no mercy to the angels when they sinned. And He says with respect to fallen human creatures: “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy” (Rom. 9:18). He strongly insists that mercy is optional with Him and a matter of His sovereign pleasure alone.

John H. Gerstner
Theology for Everyman, Moody, 1965, Chapter 10.

How would you like to live with somebody who was everlastingly grieving your heart by his conduct?

G. Campbell Morgan

God’s mercy is so great that you may sooner drain the sea of its water, or deprive the sun of its light, or make space too narrow, than diminish the great mercy of God.

C.H. Spurgeon

Sermons 9.441.

When a tear is wept by you, think not your Father does not behold; for, “Like as a father pities his children so the Lord pities them that fear Him.” Your sigh is able to move the heart of Jehovah; your whisper can incline His ear unto you; your prayer can stay His hands; your faith can move His arm. Oh! Think not that God sits on high in an eternal slumber, taking no account of you.

C.H. Spurgeon

The Sympathy of the Two Worlds, Sermon, Luke 15:10.

God delights far more in His mercy than in His wrath. So in order to show the priority of His mercy, He must place it against the backdrop of His wrath. How could God’s mercy appear fully as His great mercy unless it was extended to people who were under His wrath and therefore could only ask for mercy? It would be impossible for them to share with God the delight He has in His mercy unless they saw clearly the awfulness of the almighty wrath from which His mercy delivers them.

Daniel Fuller

The Unity of the Bible, Zondervan, www.zondervan.com, 1992, p. 446-447.

If the end of one mercy were not the beginning of another, we were undone.

Philip Henry

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 123.

God was but six days in making the whole world, yet seven days in destroying one city.

John Trapp

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 121.

Whatsoever is upon you is from the Lord, and whatsoever is from the Lord, to you it is in mercy; and whatsoever comes in mercy ought not to be grievous to you. What loss is it when the losing of earthly things is the gaining of spiritual things? All shall be for your good, if you make your use of all.

Richard Greenham

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 13.

The mercies of God make a sinner proud, but a saint humble.

Thomas Watson

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 187.

Take heed of abusing this mercy of God… To sin because mercy abounds, is the devil’s logic… He that sins because of God’s mercy, shall have judgment without mercy.

Thomas Watson

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 188.

Mercy is not for them that sin and fear not, but for them that fear and sin not.

Thomas Watson

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 188.

God is more willing to pardon than to punish. Mercy does more multiply in Him than sin in us. Mercy is His nature.

Thomas Watson

All Things for God.

Without faith we are not fit to desire mercy, without humility we are not fit to receive it, without affection we are not fit to value it, without sincerity we are not fit to improve it.

Stephen Charnock

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 189.

Presume not upon God’s patience. The exercise of it is not eternal; you are at present under His patience, yet while you are unconverted you are also under His anger: “God is angry with the wicked every day” (Psm. 7:11). You know not how soon His anger may turn His patience aside, and step before it. It may be His sword is drawn out of the scabbard, His arrows may be settled in His bow, and perhaps there is but a little time before you may feel the edge of the one or the point of the other, and then there will be no more time for patience in God to us, or petition from us to Him. If we die without repentance, He will have no longer mercy to pardon, nor patience to bear.

Stephen Charnock
God's Patience Abused.

A visitor (seeking to console the dying Thomas Hooker): Sir, you are going to receive the reward of your labour. Thomas Hooker: Brother, I am going to receive mercy!

Thomas Hooker

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 189.

Sinners come to God knowing that although there is no reason in them that God should be merciful, God has every reason in Himself to show mercy (Isa. 43:25).

Scott Hafemann

This We Believe, John Armstrong and John Woodbridge, ed. Zondervan, www.zondervan.com, 2000, p. 86.

The only real, practical measure of my apprehension for the goodness and mercy of God to me is the extent to which I am, in turn, prepared to show goodness and mercy to others.

Phillip Keller

A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, Permission by Zondervan, www.zondervan.com, 1970, p. 133.

Mercy can never be earned. Its very necessity is evoked by unworthiness, else there would be no need for it. Because we have sinned, we need mercy, not because we have obeyed. The only qualification for mercy is affliction.

Bob LaForge

Contemplating the Almighty, Perth Publishing, 1984, p. 137.

How perverted the creature who sins against His Creator and then demands and expects mercy from the just consequences of such… How dare we think that we should be allowed continue in the deceitful pleasures of our sin and then expect mercy when the despairing consequences result. We are called to repent and obey, not expect and demand that which we do not deserve.

Bob LaForge

Contemplating the Almighty, Perth Publishing, 1984, p. 139.

The damned, instead of getting what they deserve, may be given the opportunity to stand forever in the presence of the High and Holy God. Condemnation may be wholly replaced with justification. Shame may be replaced with glory. Hell may be replaced with heaven. This is pure mercy.

Bob LaForge

Contemplating the Almighty, Perth Publishing, 1984, p. 140.

Longsuffering, forbearing patience is to be the Christian’s reflection of the character of God. It is part of God’s character to be slow to anger and quick to be merciful. Part of the incomprehensibility of God in terms of my own relationship with Him is this: I cannot fathom how a holy God has been able to put up with me marring His creation to the degree I have for three score and five years. For me to live another day requires a continuation of God’s gracious patience with my sin… It becomes even more difficult to fathom when we see a sinless Being being more patient with sinful beings that sinful beings are with each other.

R.C. Sproul

Tabletalk, p. 7, vol. 28, no. 9, Ligonier Ministries, Used by Permission.

God has a holy temper, but He has a very long fuse! Even those who deny and blaspheme His name are recipients of His patience and long-suffering. He permits His enemies to live, to spew forth their horrid blasphemies, all the while blessing them with food and air and earthly pleasures (see Romans 2:4-5).

Sam Storms

Unspeakably solemn is it to see so many abusing this Divine perfection. They continue to despise God’s authority, trample upon His laws, continue in sin, and yet presume upon His mercy. But God will not be unjust to Himself. God shows mercy to the truly penitent, but not to the impenitent (Luke 13:3). To continue in sin and yet reckon upon Divine mercy remitting punishment is diabolical. It is saying, "Let us do evil that good may come," and of all such it is written, whose "damnation is just" (Rom. 3:8).

A.W. Pink

The Attributes of God.

Grace is God giving us what we do not deserve and mercy is God not giving us what we do deserve.

Author Unknown

In the exercise of His common grace, God displays patience and forbearance with the world. But patience and forbearance ought to lead men and women to repentance. Instead, it emboldens the unbeliever in his sinful rebellion and mocking of God, and the patience of God is then turned into a rationale to rebel further against God. This does nothing more than store up greater judgment because of their ungodly response to His kind patience (Rom. 2:4-5).

Harry L. Reeder III

Tabletalk, p. 10, vol. 28, no. 9, Ligonier Ministries, Used by Permission.

I think of all the questions that I ask the Lord, and then I think of my stubborn streak against Him; I think of my inability or refusal to learn. I think of how many times God shows me the way of righteousness and how I turn away. I think of my faltering and failing steps and my outright rebellion against Him – even as a believer. Oh the patience of God and the riches of His forbearance and grace!

Harry L. Reeder III

Tabletalk, p. 11, vol. 28, no. 9, Ligonier Ministries, Used by Permission.

The original law of the universe is that “the soul that sins, it shall die.” Life is a divine gift, not a debt. Sin brings the loss of the gift of life. Once a person sins he forfeits any claim on God to human existence. The fact that we continue to exist after sinning is owing wholly to divine mercy and gracious longsuffering.

Sam Storms
Is God Guilty of Genocide, November 6, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.