Mercy and grace. These are such lovely words, aren’t they? I would like to be described like that: “Oh, she’s a merciful and gracious person.” In Exodus 34:6, God is speaking to Moses, and He tells Moses that He is a merciful and gracious God. What does that mean?
Mercy and grace are kind of like opposite sides of the same coin. Let’s talk about mercy first. Let’s say you’ve done something wrong. There’s a punishment coming. If you receive mercy, whoever is handing out the punishment decides to forget about it. Let it go. Even though you deserve some kind of punishment, you don’t get it. The punishment just goes away, or is something less harsh than what you had coming. That’s mercy. When God is merciful, He’s not handing out the punishment that is deserved.
Grace is kind of the opposite. It’s receiving something good, some benefit that you don’t have any right to receive. You’ve done nothing to receive this good thing, you don’t deserve it, and yet you get it anyway. When God is gracious, He’s giving a gift that hasn’t been earned and isn’t deserved.
So…here’s how God is merciful and gracious. God made a perfect world a long time ago but sin messed it all up. Sin is committing wrongs against God, and He hates sin. Sin is like this giant barrier between God and man and it can’t be crossed. There’s no way around it, over it, or under it. There’s not a thing you can do to break it down, nothing I can do…PLUS there’s a price for all that wrongdoing against God. That price must be paid to make things right with God. So, because God is both merciful and gracious, He did something about both the barrier and the price. First, He made a way for the sin barrier to be broken down by providing a way for the punishment of sin to be paid. Jesus is how. You see, sin always has a price and someone has to take the punishment for sin. So, in dying on the cross, Jesus paid the price for sin for those who believe in Him. This is God’s mercy. You aren’t punished. If you put your faith in Jesus, God will not punish you for your sin as you should be—Jesus already did that for you.
Next, there’s God’s grace. Do you deserve this great reprieve of your sin being paid for? No. You’ve done nothing to earn it, nothing to deserve it. It’s a gift. It’s a benefit that you don’t deserve. But you can receive it. This is God’s grace. What does it take to experience the mercy and grace of God? Faith in Jesus Christ. If you’d like to know more, let me know. If you need prayer or would like a Bible to start finding out about God and Jesus, let me know.
