Lord, Have Mercy

When reading the penitential psalms, I have often been mystified by the intensity of the emotion being expressed. How does anyone feel that deeply and then cry out to God with such passion over sin? Is it that I have not sufficiently cared about the import of actions or events? Increasingly, I feel the need to number my days (Ps 90:12) as I realize there will be ever-increasing, life-altering circumstances that can be neither ignored nor controlled. To that end, what is my attitude toward sin? Do I scrutinize according to God’s Word or pass it off as a common failing? Do I confess my sin or rationalize that God will just cover it? And finally, am I confident He forgives? Or to summarize, am I sure that He is a promise-keeping God, both to judge and forgive? King David certainly did. That is why he begins Psalm 6 with a request to refrain from reproof and discipline.

O Lord, do not reprove me in Your anger,
Nor discipline me in Your wrath.

Do we know David’s manner of sin? No, but that is irrelevant. We know from the humble opening that he was aware of the Lord’s attitude to sin and that he deserved whatever condemnation was warranted. He had no standing before a holy, righteous God and, therefore, threw himself on His mercy.

Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak;
Heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled;
And my soul is greatly troubled;
But You, O Lord, how long?

The proper approach after sin is to admit weakness and frailty. While we retain youth and vigor, there is an inclination of invincibility in both body and spirit. Whatever may come can be handled by attempting stoicism: we can tough it out and do better next time. Through aging, the realization that we are but dust looms large. Strength wanes and corruption slowly causes us to understand that our lives are not so easily controlled. Order increasingly gives way to disorder. Confidence falters. Questions arise as to when the Lord might intervene.

Return, O Lord, and deliver my soul.
Save me because of Your mercy.
For there is no remembrance of You in death;
And in Hades who will give thanks to You?

In the midst of uncertainty, there remains a certain hope. The Lord is most certainly attentive. There should be no apprehension if we ask according to His will. And how do we know what His will is? Taking in His word. Our God has made Himself known through His precepts and promises. God will answer because He is merciful and will deliver because He does not delight in the death of the wicked (Ez 33:11), much less His children. And why would this be? Mankind was intended to give glory to God on earth as a complete being in His image and likeness. The ultimate reality will be to properly do so in the resurrection when all things are restored. Before we reach that end, we are brought low by burdens and afflictions.

I am weary with my groaning;
Every single night I will dampen my bed;
I will drench my couch with my tears.
My eye is troubled by anger;
I grow old among all my enemies.

When sin entered the world, every deed, every relationship became corrupted. Individuals struggle with one another fueled by selfishness, pride, or a thirst for control, making enemies whose sole focus is to cause the godly one’s demise or diversion from the right. The attack is relentless, not because of a constant barrage from those seeking our harm, though this may be, but also from the knowledge that the struggle and warring within each believer, as the sinful flesh inherited from Adam, continues its unrelenting attempts for control. We succumb to the weariness of it all, in humility crying out to God that He might deliver us being fully assured that He is faithful.

Depart from me, all you workers of lawlessness;
For the Lord heard the voice of my weeping;
The Lord heard my supplication;
The Lord received my prayer.
Let all my enemies be ashamed and greatly troubled;
Let them turn back and be suddenly ashamed.

Believers who know and hold fast to God’s promises know He understands our anguish. We know He hears our request. We know He receives our prayer when we ask rightly, not for our own pleasures. We also can act and speak with proper authority according to His precepts. We can order the lawless to depart and pray that our enemies be ashamed and troubled—not just those of the flesh but also spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies (Eph 6:12). I do not mention this to advocate militancy as a spiritual discipline. Rather my desire is to recognize that we, with full rights and responsibilities of sonship, have full authority to assess situations and request action from our Lord and God.

I began this piece with some personal reflections of my own unworthiness and weakness, being without inherent privilege. Yet, here I am: chosen of God, baptized into Christ, sealed with the Holy Spirit, and adopted as a son. Where someone might increasingly despair while moving toward the terminus of their earthly lives, we believers can look at the increasing unpleasantness that will befall us and rest in knowing that the final enemy, death, has already been brought to shame and defeated. We pray for strength to end well as we look to the Lord’s triumphal return and the final resurrection.

Lord, have mercy.

The Lord Sees and Hears

I have written before of how the Lord’s promises to Abram (Genesis 12:1–3; 15:4–6) has far-reaching implications. Not only would Abram be blessed, but so would his offspring and all tribes of the earth. The blessing, though given to one person, was intended to extend to all peoples of the earth. One early reception of this blessing I had completely missed until just recently—the situation of Hagar and Ismael.

Hagar is introduced as Sarai’s Egyptian maidservant (Ge 16:1), presumably an acquisition when Abram and Sarai had gone to Egypt because of a famine and was later forced by Pharaoh to leave (Ge 12:10–20). Nothing much is mentioned of her afterward until Sarai became impatient with God’s promise of a son and hatched a plot of her own to gain the result through her own means: she would have Abram go into Hagar so that the resulting son would be Sarai’s by legal right (Ge 16:2–3). While the plan was an acceptable cultural practice of the day, this was not the Lord’s plan. What He had promised would be delivered in His own terms and timing, not through human machinations. As best laid plans so often do, the result backfired. Hagar indeed became pregnant, but she despised her mistress. A lowly servant was able to accomplish something her mistress could not. Sarai blamed Abram for the newly found discord within the family, so he allowed her to handle the situation however she wished. Taking advantage, she treated Hagar harshly so that the pregnant maid fled. During this trip, she had a remarkable encounter.

Now the Angel of the Lord found her…
The story may be so familiar that we lose sight of the import: the Angel of the Lord, the preincarnate Christ, paid Hagar a visit (Ge 16:7). Take note that this is the first appearance of the Angel found in Scripture. That privilege did not come to Abram or Moses or anyone else of great faith found in Hebrews 11. Rather He saw and visited someone who was no person of position and was completely outside the bloodline of the promise.

Hagar admitted that she was running away, and after her confession, the Angel told her to return to her servitude with a humble heart, but He also offered something unexpected.

Again, the Angel of the Lord said to her, “I will surely multiply your seed exceedingly, that it may not be counted because of its multitude.”

The son to be born received the promise of abundant offspring. While the number would not be as overwhelmingly grand as was given to Abram (as sand on the shore and stars in the sky), but he would receive it in similar measure. Hagar recognized that the One before her is the God of Abram and what was being offered and called the name of the Lord “You-Are-the-God-Who-Sees-Me” (Ge 16:13). She knew He saw because He responded and dealt with her attitude, circumstances, and future.

But God heard…
The story of God’s involvement with Hagar and Ishmael continued beyond the initial meeting. Years later, after Isaac was born and tensions once again arose, God told Abraham to follow through with Sarah’s plan to send away Hagar and Ishmael (Ge 21:12–13). While the previous fleeing had presumably been in familiar territory, so that Hagar could stop at springs, now they were in a life-threatening situation, so that she separated herself from Ishmael because she could not bear to watch him die. She had given up hope. Evidently, Ishmael had not, because God heard him and responded.

But God heard the voice of the lad from the place where he was. Then the Angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven , and said to her, “What ails you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heard the voice of the lad where he is.” (Ge 21:17)

Rather than a face-to-face meeting, this time the Angel of God called from heaven. At this point someone may object that this cannot be Christ because of the change of reference from of the Lord to of God, however, notice what the Angel promised:

“Arise, lift up the lad and hold him with your hand, for I will make him a great nation.” (Ge 21:18)

I will make him a great nation. No angel had the power or authority to make, much less ensure, such a promise. This was the same Person who had appeared to Hagar previously. Certain that God had abandoned her, she could not raise her voice to heaven, but Ishmael would, receiving mercy in their dire straits and reassurance for his mother.

Outside the promise, but still blessed
We can only wonder what would have happened had Ishmael clung to the God of his father, yet we know from history the continual conflict between his family and that of Isaac, through whom the promise continued. Even so, Hagar and Ishmael, having no hope of a future, received that very thing within the family of Abraham. They received what they had not right to receive.

Gentiles—those outside the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—are outside the family, yet we can come under the promise by virtue of like faith.

Therefore it is of faith that it might be according to grace, so that the promise might be sure to all the seed, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all (as it is written, “I have made you a father of many nations”) in the presence of Him whom he believed—God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did; who, contrary to hope, in hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations, according to what was spoken, “So shall your descendants be.” And not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body, already dead (since he was about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah’s womb. He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform. And therefore “it was accounted to him for righteousness.” Now it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, but also for us. It shall be imputed to us who believe in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification. (Ro 4:16–25)

We who were formerly outside the promise, now stand within it when we believe the God who promised by His Word what is accomplished for us in Christ. We are accounted as Abraham’s offspring and receive the blessing of righteousness.

Patristic Wisdom: Looking to the Second Sunday in Lent

For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world through Him might be saved. (John 3:17)

Many of the more careless sort of persons, using the lovingkindness of God to increase the magnitude of their sins and the excess of their disregard, speak in this way, “There is no hell, there is no future punishment, God forgives us all sins.” To stop those mouths a wise man says, “Do not say, His mercy is great, He will be pacified for the multitude of my sins; for mercy and wrath come from Him, and His indignation rests upon sinners” (Ecclus. 5:6): and again, “As His mercy is great, so is His correction also.” (Ecclus. 16:12) “Where then,” says one, “is His lovingkindness, if we shall receive for our sins according to our desserts?” That we shall indeed receive “according to our desserts,” hear both the Prophet and Paul declare. One says, “You will repay every man according to his works” (Ps 62:12 LXX), and the other, “He will render to each according to his deeds.” (Ro 2:6) And yet we may see that even so the lovingkindness of God is great. In dividing our existence into two periods, the present life and that which is to come, and making the first to be an appointment of trial, the second a place of crowning, even in this He has shown great lovingkindness.

“How and in what way?” Because when we had committed many and grievous sins, and had not ceased from youth to extreme old age to defile our souls with ten thousand evil deeds, for none of these sins did He demand from us a reckoning, but granted us remission of them by the washing of Regeneration and freely gave us Righteousness and Sanctification. “What then,” says one, “if a man who from his earliest age has been deemed worthy of the mysteries, after this commits ten thousand sins?” Such a one deserves a severer punishment. For we do not pay the same penalties for the same sins, if we do wrong after Initiation. And this Paul declares, saying, “Anyone who has rejected Moses’ law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace?” (Heb 10:28–29) Such a one then is worthy of severer punishment. Yet even for him God has opened doors of repentance and has granted him many means for the washing away his transgressions, if he will. Think then what proofs of lovingkindness these are. By Grace to remit sins, and not to punish him who after grace has sinned and deserves punishment, but to give him a season and appointed space for his clearing. For all these reasons Christ said to Nicodemus, “God sent not His Son to condemn the world, but to save the world.”

For there are two Advents of Christ, that which has been, and that which is to be, and the two are not for the same purpose. The first came to pass not that He might search into our actions, but that He might remit; the object of the second will be not to remit, but to inquire. Therefore of the first He says, “I came not to condemn the world, but to save the world;” but of the second, “When the Son shall have come in the glory of His Father, He shall set the sheep on His right hand, and the goats on His left.” (Mt 15:31, 46) And they shall go, these into life, and the other into eternal punishment. Yet His former coming was for judgment, according to the rule of justice. Why? Because before His coming there was a law of nature, and the prophets, and moreover a written Law, and doctrine, and ten thousand promises, and manifestations of signs, and chastisements, and acts of vengeance, and many other things which might have set men right, and it followed that for all these things He would demand account. But, because He is merciful, He for a while pardons instead of making inquiry. For had He done so, all would at once have been hurried to perdition. For “all,” it says, “have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” (Ro 3:23) Do you see the unspeakable excess of His lovingkindness?

John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of John 28.1

Mercy in Judgment

Many times over the centuries, the God of Scripture has been considered a capricious, vindictive, despotic monster for His actions against sinful actions.  Those stating these descriptors weigh actions of judgment against Jesus’ instruction that God is love and wants to reconcile the world to Himself and us to each other.  The disconnect appears to be insurmountable.  What naysayers (and many Christians) overlook is that God never executes judgment beyond what is necessary: the effects are direct, never extending beyond the intended object—unless we choose to ignore the warning and remain in harm’s way.

The Lord had begun a series of plagues against the nation of Egypt for the way they had treated His people Israel.  The first four that came upon the Egyptians caused great annoyance and discomfort, but otherwise did not harm any living creature save for the frogs, gnats, and flies that were God’s instruments.  The fifth plague, however, was severe and killed all the livestock, and the sixth was personally painful as boils came on man and beast.

It is the seventh plague to which we might turn our attention.  In preparation, God sent Moses and Aaron to Pharaoh to tell him:

For this time I will send all my plagues on you yourself, and on your servants and your people, so that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth.  For by now I could have put out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been cut off from the earth.  But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.  (Ex 9:14-16)

Pharaoh was exalting himself above the people of Israel, and God was going to make an example out of him and his people.  Notice that the plagues had been measured in order to teach all of Egypt a lesson they would never forget, because Pharaoh was too proud to admit his rightful place before the Almighty God.  Even now, though, the coming plague had with it a measure of mercy, so that the hail would not do more damage than was intended.

Behold, about this time tomorrow I will cause very heavy hail to fall, such as never has been in Egypt from the day it was founded until now.  Now therefore send, get your livestock and all that you have in the field into safe shelter, for every man and beast that is in the field and is not brought home will die when the hail falls on them.  (Ex 9:18-19)

Remember that the Egyptians’ livestock had all died in plague five.  Evidently, enough time had gone by to allow the replenishment of livestock through purchase or trade.  So as not to inflict damage to the new livestock or any person, the people were given clear warning to bring them to shelter.  This plague was designed to affect only the crops and trees—two food sources—yet even in this the Lord showed mercy because only a portion of the crop was damaged because the rest had not come up yet.

The flax and the barley were struck down, for the barley was in the ear and the flax was in bud.  But the wheat and the emmer were not struck down, for they are late in coming up.  (Ex 9:31-32)

Some Egyptians listened to Moses’ warning and brought their slaves and livestock into shelter, while the rest stubbornly ignored it and suffered loss of life, bringing trouble on themselves.  The plagues were having their desired effect: the former recognized and believed in the God of the Hebrews, trusting in the word of the prophet; the latter were hardened and chose to cling to their own gods to their loss.

In each plague the Lord was merciful in judgment in order to show the people their sinful ways and show Himself as Lord of all.  He desired that they all (not just the children of Israel) might exalt the Lord.  Indeed, a mixed multitude of non-Hebrews left with Moses for the Promised Land (Ex 12:38), choosing to identify with the God of Israel who had won a great victory.*

Scripture mentions varying responses that God has toward sinful acts.  Some he deals with harshly and suddenly, while others appear to receive of a reprieve for the initial act but detailing the damaging consequences.  Do the varying punishments mean that God is capricious?  No, it means He knows more than we do both of the immediate situation and His grand work of providence.  What we do know is that the Creator of all is patient beyond measure

The Lᴏʀᴅ is merciful and gracious,
    slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
He will not always chide,
    nor will he keep his anger forever.
He does not deal with us according to our sins,
    nor repay us according to our iniquities.  (Ps 103:8-10)

with the end that all might repent

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.  (2 Pe 3:9)

It may be difficult to understand why a righteous God would be so patient with wicked mankind and not destroy them immediately, but then we each only need to look at ourselves and be thankful that He was, else would also be my fate.  Not all will believe that Jesus is the Passover lamb slain for their sin, but for us who do, ponder with grateful adoration and awe that we are now in Him.


*  This group was admittedly problematic.  At one point in the wandering, they led the grumbling against Moses (Nu 11:4), however some, like Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kennizite, were wholly faithful to the Lord (Nu 14:6, 24, 30; 32:12).

Quieting Fear in the Sinner; Inciting Fear in the Righteous

The Lᴏʀᴅ is near to all who call on him,
    to all who call on him in truth.
He fulfills the desire of those who fear him;
    he also hears their cry and saves them.
The Lᴏʀᴅ preserves all who love him,
    but all the wicked he will destroy.  (Ps 145:18-20)

If [God] frightens the sinner and the person who is remaining in his sins, he carries him into despair and rejection of hope.  But if he blesses the righteous man, he weakens the intensity of his virtue and causes him to be neglectful of zeal as one who has already been blessed.  For this reason he has mercy on the sinner, but frightens the righteous man.  “He is fearful,” [scripture] says, “to all around him,”* and “The Lord is good to all.”†  “He is fearful,” [scripture] says, “to all around him,” and who would these be but the saints?  “For God,” David says, “who is glorified in the counsel of saints, is great and fearful to all around him.”  If he sees someone fallen, he extends a hand of kindness.  If he sees someone standing, he applies fear.  This, too, belongs to righteous judgment.  For he causes the righteous man to stand fast through fear, and raises up the sinner through kindness.  And do you want to learn of his timely goodness and severity that is useful and suited to us?  Pay careful attention in order that the greatness of the thought may not escape your notice.… He says to sinners, “If your sins are like scarlet, I will make [them] white as snow.”‡  And he changes the darkness into light by the change of repentance, and puts an end to so great an abundance of evils by the voice of his goodness.  To the man who walks in righteousness he says, “Whoever says to his brother, ‘Fool!,’ is liable to the hell of fire.”§  He applies such severity to one word, and measures out so much liberality to so many sins.

Severian of Gabala, On Repentance and Contrition, II.13

*  Psalm 89:7
†  Psalm 145:9

‡  Isaiah 1:18
§  Matthew 5:22

God Is Patient That We Might Repent

But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious,
        slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.  (Psa 86:15)
 
The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. (2 Pet 3:9)

If God was quick to punish, the church would not have gained Paul, it would not have received one so great and noble.  For this reason, then, He deferred dealing with him while he was committing blasphemy in order to receive him when he was repenting.  God’s patience made the persecutor a preacher.  God’s patience made the tax collector an evangelist.  God’s patience had mercy on all of us, changed all, altered all.  If you see that someone who was once a drunkard has now [become] someone who fasts, if you see that someone who was once a blasphemer has now [become] a theologian,* if you see that the man who once stained his mouth with shameful songs is now purifying his soul with divine hymns, look with amazement on God’s patience, and praise repentance, and, taking it up from this change, say, “This change is from the right hand of the Most High.”†  While God is good to all, to sinners he shows his own patience to a special degree.  And if you want to hear a strange tale—strange with regard to what is customary, but true as regards piety—listen.

God appears [to be] altogether burdensome to the just, but mild to sinners and swift to kindness.  He raises up the sinner who has fallen and says to him, “Does the man who falls not rise?” or “Does not the man who turns away turn back?”‡  And, “Why did the foolish daughter of Judah shamelessly turn away?”§  And again, “Turn to me, and I will turn to you.”‖  And in another place he confirms with an oath the salvation that comes from repentance because of his great benevolence.  “‘As I live,’ says the Lord, ‘I do not desire the death of the sinner as much as that he turn and live.’”¶  To the righteous man he says, “If someone acts in all righteousness and all truth, and then turns and sins, I will not remember his righteousness, but he will die in his sin.”Δ  He thus uses diverse and various means in his planning, not changing himself, but advantageously distributing the dispensations of his goodness.

Severian of Gabala, On Repentance and Contrition, II.1-2

*  θεολόγος, God-speaker
†  Psalm 77:10
‡  Jeremiah 8:4-5
§  Jeremiah 8:5
‖   Zechariah 1:3
¶  Ezekiel 33:11
Δ  Ezekiel 18:24

Christ's Perfect Patience Extends Even to the Chief of Sinners

But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.  (1 Tim 1:16)

See how he further humbles and depreciates himself, by naming a fresh and less creditable reason.  For that he obtained mercy on account of his ignorance, does not so much imply that he who obtained mercy was a sinner, or under deep condemnation; but to say that he obtained mercy in order that no sinner hereafter might despair of finding mercy, but that each might feel sure of obtaining the like favor, this is an excess of humiliation, such that even in calling himself the chief of sinners, "a blasphemer and a persecutor, and one not worthy to be called an apostle," he had said nothing like it.  This will appear by an example.

Suppose a populous city, all whose inhabitants were wicked, some more so, and some less, but all deserving of condemnation; and let one among that multitude be more deserving of punishment than all the rest, and guilty of every kind of wickedness.  If it were declared that the king was willing to pardon all, it would not be so readily believed, as if they were to see this most wicked wretch actually pardoned.  There could then be no longer any doubt.  This is what Paul says, that God, willing to give men full assurance that He pardons all their transgressions, chose, as the object of His mercy, him who was more a sinner than any.  For when I obtained mercy, he argues, there could be no doubt of others: as familiarly speaking we might say, "If God pardons such a one, he will never punish anybody."  And thus he shows that he himself, though unworthy of pardon, for the sake of others’ salvation, first obtained that pardon.  Therefore, he says, since I am saved, let no one doubt of salvation.  And observe the humility of this blessed man.  He says not, "that in me he might display" His "patience," but "perfect patience;" as if he had said, "Greater patience He could not show in any case than in mine, nor find a sinner that so required all His pardon, all His patience; not a part only, like those who are only partially sinners, but 'all' His patience."

John Chrysostom, Homilies on 1 Timothy

Ignorance of the Law Is No Excuse

Ignorantia juris non excusat is a legal principle holding that a person is liable whether or not the offender knows that law exists.  Mankind does not like a strict, disciplinarian, all-or-nothing approach to governance.  Guilt remains, though a judge may be lenient in the administration of judgment because of ignorance or in cases of mental deficiency or incapacity.  Martin Luther noticed this when he wrote: "In the affairs of government there is room for invincible ignorance, as when someone is at fault because he is encumbered by sickness or is insane" (Lectures on Genesis, Gen 12:17).  Where leniency goes awry is in the application.  Attempting to mitigate the effects of our wrongful actions to our fellow man, we excuse ourselves by claiming ignorance or diminished mental capacity in hopes of escaping the due penalty for willful actions.  What is meant to administer mercy in justice becomes a weapon to allow unbridled expression of our innate depravity.

The same principle of inexcusable culpability is in effect before God.  He has established a law consistent with his character against which all offenses are capital.  The first statute imposed on humanity was simple and clear: do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 3:17).  Obedience is required; disobedience carries the death penalty.  As the Lord continued to reveal more of himself through his commands, the norm never changed.  Man responded by excusing himself rather than acknowledging the problem.  Luther continued:

But these ideas [of invincible ignorance] should not be carried over into religion and matters of conscience.  We are born with the blindness of original sin.  That evil is invincible in the sense that it holds even the regenerate captive; but this does not make it excusable, the way the scholastics have declared invincible ignorance excusable, so that it directly excuses…, that is, does away with sin entirely.)

Ibid, Lectures on Genesis

The reasoning went like this: if the nature of the offense and its penalty could be sufficiently ignored, it never existed at all.  But while people and nations have done this to one another on a regular basis, "God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap" (Gal 6:7).  You and I are guilty, without excuse.

To deal with both the demands of the law and our inability and unwillingness to abide by it, God the Son took on our human nature, fulfilled all the righteous requirements, and freely accepted in himself the full penalty due to us (Rom 3:21-26;1 Pet 3:18).  This he did, not because we deserved any of it, but because he loves us (John 3:16; Rom 5:8).

Not Getting It the First Time

In John 4:43-54 we read the account of Jesus heading into Galilee, back to the city of Cana.  While there he is approached by an official of Capernaum whose boy is ill to the point of death.  The man asks Jesus to come to his house but instead of going, he did something better.

He simply sends the nobleman on his way, but with the message of hope and healing: "Go … your son lives."  And here suddenly we meet for the first time the word "believe:" "the man believed" "(v. 50).

But the word appears again later, as in conclusion: "And he himself believed" (v. 53).  This was considerably later, however, only after the journey northeast to Capernaum, only after his servants had told him that his son had gotten better precisely in that same hour of utmost need when Jesus spoke His Word.  Then "he himself believed."  In other words, the first "he believed" was not the faith, but rather a juncture on the way.…

This reading is evidence that even faith often comes to precisely those people on the periphery, at the outer limits, and that God's loving miracles often occur not "for the sake of faith," that is, faith that is already present, but rather confront, even wallop, a person so that he or she is shoved or dragged forward to the faith, the saving faith—saving because it received God's saving gifts.

Eric Andrae, sermon on John 4:46-54, Gottesdienst, Vol 20:3

I was struck when this sermon pointed out the timing and scope of the two mentions of the man's faith.  In Jesus' presence, he hears a promise and leaves believing the certainty of what was said.  There was no reason to doubt this man of God would effect a change in is son's condition.  That was good enough: he got what he came for though without a definite time when the son would be healed.

We might expect him to think there would be gradual improvement over a period of time, but when he got close to home the next day, the servants relayed that the son's condition turned around at the hour when Jesus spoke the word.  Now he really believes.  What had been the day before, an acknowledgment that a miracle worker was in their presence, was suddenly turned into believing faith that this Jesus was without doubt sent from God.  He was greater than first thought and could be trusted fully in all matters of life, both here and hereafter.  What began as a request to get someone over the hump of a serious illness became the vehicle for the entire household to be saved.

This pretty well undercuts the entire mantra that miracles only happen to those with greatest faith, which is rampant in the Word of Faith movement.  Yes, the official thought the trip might be worth the trouble, but he was probably grasping for any hope available.  We cannot even say he was a Jew, much less a God-fearing one.

What we have in this account is an example of the Lord extending his mercy upon his creatures to bring them to faith.  God does that regularly, though it is often so subtle we miss it until after the fact.  We overlook the bestowal of his goodness and end up presuming "the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience … meant to lead you to repentance" (Rom 2:4).  Here, though, the end was life, not just for the son who was physically ill, but for the entire house who needed a Savior from sin.

Believers, Sin, and the Mercy of God

From Johann Gerhard (October 17, 1582 – August 17, 1637):

That some [sins] are called venial and only some are called mortal is not because of the nature of the sins but because of the mercy of the Father, the merit of the Son, and the sanctification of the Spirit.  This distinction does not pertain to all people in general but only to the reborn.  It is not to be taken from the Law which accuses and condemns all sins regardless of their type and size, but from the Gospel which demonstrates that sins of weakness and ignorance and corrupt lusts are not imputed to those who believe in Christ if they resist them; that is, if the reborn,

1. acknowledge these evils which dwell in their heart;
2. grieve seriously over them;
3. ask and believe that they are covered by the merit of the Mediator as by an umbrella;
4. by no means relax the reins upon them but resist them by the Spirit, crucifying the flesh along with its desires.

Made Alive With Christ

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, 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 coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

But though our condition was so bad, the Lord God in the depths of his goodness made us sharers in the immortal life of our Lord—the meaning of made us alive together with Christ.  Since he is risen, we also hope to rise, as through him our condition has been set to rights.  Then he brings out more clearly the greatness of the gift: you were called not on account of the excellence of your life but on account of the love of the one who saved you.

Since he is risen, we rise in hope, and since he is seated with the Father, we also participate in the honor; it is our head that is seated with him, our first-fruits who reigns with him, since He is clothed in our nature.  Here and now the greatness of the good things hoped for, while completely hidden from the nonbelievers, the faithful at any rate gaze upon as in a mirror and in shadow, walking through faith and not in appearance.  But then they will see face to face; then both faithful and nonbelievers will see the nature taken from us adored by all creation, and the saints reigning with him.  "If we died, we shall also live with Him," Scripture says, remember, "if we endure, we shall also reign with Him."

Theodoret of Cyrus, "The Letter to the Ephesians" on Ephesians 2:4-7